(FORMERLY ANGLICAN)CORNER OLD MELBOURNE ROAD and BROUGHAM STREET, GORDON Arts and Crafts touches on a cottage-like church. This attractive little church, half-hidden behind silver birches, has the lattice-windowed charm of a Hansel and Gretel cottage. It has not been used as a church for seventeen years and is now a hat shop. St Mark’s wasContinue reading “ST MARK’S, GORDON”
Tag Archives: 20th Century
ST ANDREW’S, DAYLESFORD
(FORMERLY PRESBYTERIAN)CAMP STREET, DAYLESFORD An impressive church gazing with forlorn dignity over a town that has no use for it. The coronavirus has not so much concentrated my mind as concentrated my sphere of activity on an area close to home. This will account for what might seem an over-representation of Ballarat and district amongContinue reading “ST ANDREW’S, DAYLESFORD”
ST PAUL’S, BOX HILL
(FORMERLY LUTHERAN)STATION STREET, BOX HILL Squeezed out by the high-rises. It is no new thing for a church to be sold for the value of its land. In Melbourne this happened as long ago as 1913 when the historic site on which St James’s Old Cathedral had stood since 1842 was sold and the buildingContinue reading “ST PAUL’S, BOX HILL”
ST STEPHEN’S, HIGHETT
(FORMERLY ANGLICAN)DONALD STREET, HIGHETT Empty for seven years and demolished overnight. This church was at risk when I wrote the description that follows. It had been sold in 2013 but was still standing locked and empty. Out of the blue it was demolished in late March, before I could get a photograph. The location ofContinue reading “ST STEPHEN’S, HIGHETT”
ST THÉRÈSE’S, BALLARAT
(FORMERLY ROMAN CATHOLIC)WENDOUREE PARADE, BALLARAT The church of the Little Flower, St Thérèse’s on Lake Wendouree, has been sold and is used for non-religious purposes. Here’s another Ballarat church – really, the number is remarkable, such was the church-building prolificity of nineteenth-century piety. Zeal for the Lord’s House plus vast sums from gold-mining filled thisContinue reading “ST THÉRÈSE’S, BALLARAT”
ST STEPHEN’S, CAULFIELD NORTH
(FORMERLY PRESBYTERIAN, NOW UNITING)BALACLAVA ROAD, CAULFIELD NORTH A church design of great originality in Caulfield, once Presbyterian, now Uniting and home to an Indonesian congregation. For how long? Christian churches in Caulfield are in a parlous state, since the district, once solidly Anglo in character, became predominantly Jewish after the second world war. The Caulfield IndonesianContinue reading “ST STEPHEN’S, CAULFIELD NORTH”
SECOND CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, CAMBERWELL
(CHRISTIAN SCIENCE)COOKSON STREET, CAMBERWELL The Christian Science church in Camberwell is one of Melbourne’s best examples of 1930s Modernism. But its once flourishing denomination is declining. In its country of origin, the United States, once a seemingly inexhaustible fount of new variations on the Christian theme, Christian Science was founded in 1879 as Mrs MaryContinue reading “SECOND CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, CAMBERWELL”
HERE TODAY... 