ST SAVIOUR’S CATHEDRAL

GOULBURN, NSW      ANGLICAN

PAUL SCOTT

HISTORY

[Wikipedia]

The St Saviour’s Cathedral is the heritage-listed Cathedral Church of the Anglican Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn in Goulburn, New South Wales. The Cathedral is dedicated to Jesus, in his title of Saviour. The current Dean is the Very Reverend Phillip Saunders. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 20 April 2009.

History
In 1840 a simple brick church to the designs of a Sydney architect, James Hume, was erected. This Church of Saint Saviour was in the manner of English parish churches with a bold square western tower and a simple axiality complementing the Georgian town plan. Built by James Wilson, a convict arriving in the colony aboard the Lord Sidmouth in 1819, and his relation Henry Wilson, the foundation stones were obtained from the quarries known as Munoz’s on Church Hill. James Wilson died during construction of the church after falling from the roof. A painting of the original church hangs in the narthex of the current Cathedral.

By the early 1860s, when the Diocese of Sydney could not functionally minister to the Goulburn area, it was decided that the Diocese of Goulburn should be created. Accordingly, Bishop Mesac Thomas was consecrated in 1861 and the need for a cathedral church came to be considered. When the brick church was taken down the bricks were reused in the floor of the current Cathedral.

Construction
It was not until 1871, however, that Cathedral plans came to be actively considered. Three years later, on 15 January 1874, the foundation stone of the Cathedral Church was laid. The Cathedral Church of Saint Saviour was designed by Edmund Blacket, a noted Colonial ecclesiastical architect. Blacket had already had some involvement with the church site at Goulburn. In 1843 he had designed a pulpit for James Hume’s original brick church which was approved by Bishop Broughton and then installed.

Since Blacket’s cathedral was to take ten years to construct, Blacket was also asked to design a smaller pro-cathedral and parish Sunday school. This building was completed in 1874 and still stands within the Cathedral precinct, to the west of the Cathedral itself. The first Anglican church, St Saviour’s, was completed in 1839 and this later became the pro-cathedral. The first resident Anglican priest of that church was William Sowerby, who had been trained at St Bees Theological College in Cumberland, England, and moved to Australia in 1836 to answer the call for more clergy. Sowerby later became the first Dean of St Saviour’s.

The Blacket cathedral was one of the architect’s greatest works. It was really the only cathedral he designed unencumbered by distance, financial stringency and unsympathetic clients. It was a favourite building and Blacket spent much of the last nine years of his life working on it. Blacket gave to the cathedral a crucifix which he had carved in his youth; a controversial gift which the authorities hid away for many years. The Cathedral is unmistakably a Blacket church, on a grand scale, with nave, aisles, transepts, chancel, porches and tower. It has large and elaborate stone traceried windows and an interior with a heavily carved hammer beam roof, clustered columns and foliage capitals, elaborately moulded arcades and chancel arch and the use of figurative roundels in the nave, transepts and chancel. The tower and spire, however, were never completed. The Cathedral cost 20,000 pounds at the time of its completion in 1884.

Many attempts were made subsequent to Blacket’s death in 1883 and the completion of the Cathedral proper one year later, to complete the Cathedral’s tower and spire but all these attempts were to no avail. In 1909, Edmund’s son Cyril prepared documents for the completion of the tower and spire. A commemorative stone was even laid within the tower base to signal recommencement of the tower building but nothing more was done. In the 1920s, a Melbourne architect, Louis A. Williams, was asked to advise the diocese on the state of the tower footings. He reported that ‘... as a result of my examination of the structure and [Blacket] drawings, I can assure you that the present tower stump and footings are of ample strength to bear the proposed superstructure.’ Still no further work was undertaken.

Some ten years later, Williams and a Sydney architect, Sir Charles Rosenthal, produced a joint scheme for the new Cathedral tower and spire. Again, however, no work issued from all this activity. Perhaps this inactivity resulted from particularly pessimistic analyses of the tower foundations to carry the weight of the building. The stringencies imposed by World War Il also dampened enthusiasm and restricted available monies. It was not until 1984 and the introduction of the Australian Bicentennial commemorative program that funds became available for the completion of the tower and spire. A grant of $1,000,000 was announced in that year by the Premier of New South Wales and the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn agreed to provide additional funds.

Tower spire project ...

A detailed account of the problems encountered in undertaking the building of the tower follows under this link.

The spire is yet to be completed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Saviour%27s_Cathedral,_Goulburn