History of CHIJMES:
4 French nuns were on a mission from Penang to build a convent in Singapore. Within 10 days of moving into the residence, the nuns began taking in students for their school, which later they had established to have 2 classes of students: one for fee-paying students and the other for the orphans and the poor.
The Gate of Hope:
The Gate of Hope was a gate that many babies abandoned by their families were left at for the sisters to pick up and raise them in the orphanage. This was the start of the Home for Abandoned Babies. These children were left there because either their family was broken or too poor to raise them, or they were unwanted, especially in the year of the Tiger as the Chinese believed that girls born in the year of the Tiger were unlucky.
The Caldwell house was where the nuns took up residence in, and it was constructed in the 1840s by G.D Coleman, and now stands as one of the oldest buildings in Singapore.
The neo-gothically designed Chapel was designed by Father Charles Benedict Nain, and was consecrated in 1904. It features colourful stained glass windows and column capitals.
