"[1] He opened the school with 39 students on 30 January 1888, at Fernlea, a fourteen-roomed gentleman's residence in Ashfield (the current site of the Sydney Private Hospital), with Miss M. McCormick as lady superintendent.

That year the College had outgrown the Ashfield site, and so the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales purchased Shubra Hall, the home of Anthony Hordern III, at Croydon.

[1] Marden administered both of his schools with firm discipline, kindness, understanding and generosity, and winning the respect and affection of his pupils, strongly influenced them.

"[4] He scorned the idea that P.L.C Croydon was some kind of finishing school for daughters of the wealthy,[1] and was quoted as saying: I am ... out of sympathy with the cry that education is unnecessary for girls, and that all they require is a few accomplishments.

Although trained as a lawyer, he gave physics, chemistry and biology a prominent place at a time when few schools included much science in the curriculum.

[2] Upon his retirement in 1919, Marden purchased a residence at Wentworth Falls where he spent his leisure time and holidays, and exercised his horticultural skills.