(PRESBYTERIAN)PRINCES HIGHWAY, TERANG A superb church which must be preserved at all costs. This is a magnificent church which would not be out of place as a provincial cathedral – indeed it is more imposing than some of the cathedrals of rural Australia. As a building it is a product of generosity and imagination. AsContinue reading “THOMSON MEMORIAL CHURCH, TERANG”
Tag Archives: Gothic Revival
ST PATRICK’S, ROKEWOOD
(ROMAN CATHOLIC)COLAC-BALLARAT ROAD, ROKEWOOD One more disposal in what looks like a clearance sale. The Roman Catholic authorities in Ballarat are at it again, selling off a perfectly good solid church building which will now be mutilated architecturally by being put to some secular use, probably as someone’s house. They’d hardly got the very handsomeContinue reading “ST PATRICK’S, ROKEWOOD”
ST ANDREW’S, WILLIAMSTOWN
(PRESBYTERIAN)CECIL STREET, WILLIAMSTOWN A fine tower on an historic church. St Andrew’s is a substantial church with a tower of great dignity and noble proportions. It stands in well-kept grounds and looks, if one can say this of a building, rock solid. But the correspondent who suggested that I write about it told me thatContinue reading “ST ANDREW’S, WILLIAMSTOWN”
HOLY TRINITY, BALACLAVA and ELWOOD
(ANGLICAN)CORNER BRIGHTON ROAD AND CHAPEL STREET, BALACLAVA Palms give this substantial church the exotic air of an English expatriates’ church in the Mediterranean. “We’re asset-rich but people-poor,” announced an elderly lady I encountered when I looked inside Holy Trinity, Balaclava, and asked what the attendance was like on a Sunday. She might have spoken forContinue reading “HOLY TRINITY, BALACLAVA and ELWOOD”
SCOTS CHURCH, BALLARAT
(PRESBYTERIAN)LYDIARD STREET, BALLARAT Its graceful spire is one of only three in Ballarat. This charming and unpretentious brick church on Soldiers Hill was built for the Presbyterians of North Ballarat in 1890 to a Gothic-inspired design by local architects Figgis & Molloy. Its spire, slender and graceful and visible from all over north Ballarat, isContinue reading “SCOTS CHURCH, BALLARAT”
ST JOSEPH’S, BLAMPIED
(ROMAN CATHOLIC)MIDLAND HIGHWAY, BLAMPIED Left to the rats and bats. PLEASE SEE UPDATE BELOW St Joseph’s, Blampied, well illustrates the kind of church nineteenth-century rural faith was capable of building and twenty-first-century indifference doesn’t want to know about. It is a substantial bluestone building, very satisfying to look at in its solidity and proportions, andContinue reading “ST JOSEPH’S, BLAMPIED”
ST THOMAS AQUINAS’S, CLUNES
(FORMERLY ROMAN CATHOLIC)BAILEY STREET, CLUNES Unfinished but impressive, and sold because no priest was available. The existing building is the nave of what would have been a very imposing church, designed for a town that was a rich centre of gold mining in central Victoria. More than a thousand people attended the opening on 9Continue reading “ST THOMAS AQUINAS’S, CLUNES”
HERE TODAY... 