St Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn

About

St Saviour's Cathedral is an Australian Anglican cathedral. It is the 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 Gavin Krebs. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 20 April 2009.

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.

It was not until 1871 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 10 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 is one of the architect's more notable works. It was 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." [ citation needed ] 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.

Architectural drawing Of the New Tower, Peter Freeman & Partners Pty Ltd 1986

Artist impression of what the completed cathedral would look like

East elevation of the cathedral with spire

A series of tasks were early identified as critical to the project's success. The first task was the undertaking of a thorough geotechnical examination of the existing tower founding material. This investigation showed quite clearly that the existing footings to the tower were not adequate to carry the load of the intended tower and spire. Nine metre bore holes were drilled through the existing foundations and a footing/soil profile was established. This soil profile showed that beneath the sandstone and lime concrete footings was a 1.5 to 2.0 metre band of sandy clay, and weathered sandstone, which was judged inadequate to carry the tower loads, particularly under the stress of wind and seismic loading.

As a result of this study, engineering documentation was prepared for the underpinning of the existing tower. This work involved the excavation of the interior of the tower base to a depth of 8.5 metres. For this excavation, "drives" were taken out diagonally under each buttress for a length of four metres. These drives were then excavated clean and a reinforced concrete structure poured into the drive. The drive was then sealed and an adjacent area excavated. This process was continued until the tower walls were underpinned. This underpinning work was made more complex by the requirement to preserve intact the grave of Bishop Chalmers, directly to the east of the tower wall. At the completion of underpinning, the tower core was filled with mass concrete. During the excavation preparatory to the underpinning work, considerable ground water was also encountered at the cathedral sub-floor level. This ground water had followed the underlying rock strata and pooled at the cathedral east end and tower walls. Drainage of this sub-floor water is part of the associated cathedral conservation project.

A second task faced by the project team was the preparation of adequate "base" drawings for the tower project, and for the related conservation project that was to proceed simultaneously with the tower. Fortunately, the team was aided in this work by the Australian Survey Office, who undertook the photo grammetrical survey of the entire cathedral. Base plans had also to be produced of every stone course within the proposed building, to allow an early understanding of stone sizes and quantities.

A third task was the investigation of suitable stone types and sources for the proposed building. The demolished remains of a local stone bridge, the Fitzroy Bridge, which once spanned the Wollondilly River east of Goulburn were available. This stone, though plentiful in quantity and though from the same quarry source, was not adequate in quantity or dimension to fulfil the requirements for the proposed tower and spire. A search for the original quarry was begun and it was eventually found just east of a small town called Marulan, some 30 kilometres east of Goulburn. The quarry, which had not been disturbed for almost a hundred years, was an archaeological site, but not suited to the extraction of stone in the quantities required by the project. The costs of re-opening the quarry were outside the resources of the project. Other sources were investigated and eventually an operational quarry north of Sydney was selected for the supply of stone to the project. This quarry, Central Coast Quarries, had the ability to provide the quantities of stone work required as well as the capacity to produce profiled stone. The Fitzroy Bridge stone was used for the "rock faced: body work, being appropriately sized for that use. When the project commenced other sources became known, particularly another source of (original) Marulan stone left unused at another Goulburn church.

The final task of this first, investigative phase was for the consultant team to visit other bell towers and spires within Australia. Only one other "completion" project of similar size and philosophical intent has been completed in Australia. That project, at Bendigo in Victoria, was visited by the consultant team and considerable data was exchanged with that project's architects.

On 1 August 1986 the stonemasons commenced work at the Goulburn site. The team had been assembled from Goulburn and environs, which had a rich and continuing tradition of stonemasonry work. The project manager and a specialist setter-out draughtsman were brought out from England to assist the project as no similar expertise existed within Australia.

Initially, the stonemasons were engaged in preparing the Fitzroy Bridge stone for the rock faced work. The setter-out draughtsman commenced the preparation of stone "shop drawings" for use by the masons. Working from a 1:100 scale plans and elevations, the draughtsman prepared drawings scheduling every stone in the building. Full-size drawings were then prepared of architectural elements, such as windows, string course, profiles and friezes. From these full-size drawings profiles for all stones were prepared as well as isometric drawings for each "special" stone were made available to the stonemasons. With the profile and isometric shop drawings, the masons prepared the worked stone for the project.

Parallel with this activity, engineering drawings were prepared for the concrete structure within the tower. This structure was required to stabilise the tower upper structure and support the thirteen bell bell-peal to be hung on the tower. Considerable work was done on the likely loadings imposed by the large bell peal and the concrete internal frame adopted as a result.

On 1 August 1986, the stonemasons commenced work at the Goulburn site. The team had been assembled from Goulburn and environs, which had a rich and continuing tradition of stonemasonry work. The project manager and a specialist setter-out draughtsman were brought out from England to assist the project as no similar expertise existed within Australia.