(ANGLICAN)
MACKENZIE STREET, BENDIGO
Derelict after a century and a half.
This unassuming Gothic Revival church in the Early English style on a hill in the heart of Bendigo long did service as a cathedral. It is now derelict and much desecrated by vandals, who invariably, such is the respect for the past (and other people’s property) in our society, lie in wait to pounce on any building as soon as it is left empty.
The church consists of a nave and porches built of freestone, not the most durable building stone but the best that could be obtained with the funds then available. A chancel and vestries were added later.
The nave was opened for worship in June 1856. All Saints’ remained a parish church until 1902 when the diocese of Bendigo was established and All Saints’ became its pro-cathedral. The new diocese had greater aspirations for its permanent cathedral than this simple building and intended eventually to replace it. Various proposals were made at successive annual synods until in 1925 the prolific church architect Louis Williams was commissioned to design a new cathedral on the site. Williams’s drawings, prepared in association with the firm of Gawler & Drummond, show a soaring cathedral in his characteristic and attractive personal version of Neo-Gothic, with nave, transepts and chancel, twin towers on the façade and a much taller tower over the crossing, capped with a square lantern. This building would have seated 1000 people.
A certain amount of euphoria greeted the publication of these plans. The Bishop of Bendigo, the Right Rev. Donald Baker, waxed lyrical in a letter to the editor of the Melbourne Argus appealing to past Bendigo residents for funds to start building:
Sir.-The splendid design of the proposed new Anglican cathedral for Bendigo … will, no doubt, thrill all old Bendlgonians who can visualise the magnificent site of All Saints’ hill from which it will dominate the whole of the city, and its environs.
Its “domination” of the city would in time have been shared with the even more imposing Sacred Heart Roman Catholic cathedral on the same hill. The profile of these two great buildings would have made the Bendigo skyline among the most impressive in Australia. It was not to be, and only the R.C. cathedral was built.
The appeal for the Anglican cathedral was not wholly unsuccessful, but didn’t raise enough to embark on the entire project. Only chancel and vestries were built as an extension to the nave of All Saints’. The foundation stone of the additions was laid on 7 December 1935 by the Governor of Victoria, Lord Huntingfield.
Embellished with some fine fittings and furnishings, among them a pulpit donated by Westminster Abbey of grained Purbeck marble, with figures of the apostles, presented to Bishop Baker in 1936, All Saint’s remained the pro-cathedral of the diocese until 1981 when a larger central Bendigo church, St Paul’s, its lofty brick tower a city landmark, was designated the cathedral in its place. After that, All Saints’ quietly declined until it was closed in 1989. It had a brief lease of renewed life between 1991 and 2015 with a revivalist group, the View Hill Fellowship, but was sold in 2016 – 160 years after its opening. There are plans to make it the centrepiece of a housing development, which of course will effectively erase its ecclesiastical character. Many of its furnishings, including the Westminster pulpit and screens and stalls designed by Louis Williams, were transferred to St Matthew’s, Albury, when that church was rebuilt after being gutted by fire in 1991.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANTHONY BAILEY
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