Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle

About

The Cathedral Church of Christ the King, also called Christ Church Cathedral, is an Anglican cathedral in Newcastle, New South Wales. It is the cathedral church of the Diocese of Newcastle in the Anglican Church of Australia. The building, designed by John Horbury Hunt in the Gothic Revival style, is located on a hill at the city's eastern end in the suburb called The Hill. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 28 June 2011. The current dean, the Very Reverend Katherine Bowyer (former rector of the Parish of Cardiff), was installed on 4 October 2017. She is the first woman to hold the position.

Development of the Anglican Church in Newcastle

The ground on which Christ Church Cathedral stands has been the site of at least one other church: Christ Church, built in 1817–18. Unlike the rushed construction of Christ Church, the building of Christ Church Cathedral was a long and complicated process; it was exactly one hundred years from the beginning of construction to its consecration. John Horbury Hunt was the principal architect involved in the project, with other prominent Newcastle architects also contributing to its design.

The first known church on this site was built on the order of Governor Lachlan Macquarie to provide services for the civil and military officials and convicts who were posted there. The population of Newcastle had swelled following the closure of Norfolk Island as a penal settlement in 1814, making this need more pressing. Christ Church School, the first school in Newcastle, operated from the church vestry from mid-1818 to the early 1830s.

Probably because of a combination of the haste of Christ Church's construction on a sandy site, the use of salt-impregnated sandstone quarried locally, and the largely unskilled convict labour employed, the strong winds which constantly buffeted its hilltop location so close to the sea soon exposed structural flaws in the foundations. Several years after its completion, the upper tower and the steeple were taken down because of instability. It remained in this form for a period of 43 years. With the establishment of the Diocese of Newcastle in 1847, Newcastle officially became a city, Christ Church became a cathedral and the first bishop, William Tyrrell (1848-1879), was appointed.

Early version of Christ Church with steeple removed

Christ Church with Tower removed and small Bellcote,

Original 1817 Christ Church with steeple

During the second half of the 1850s, with coal production greatly increasing, there was a doubling of the population of Newcastle and it was decided that there was a need for a new or expanded cathedral. In the 1860s, Bishop Tyrrell argued that there was no need for a new building, and instead advocated an addition to the existing church. However, the diocese disagreed and in 1868 ran a competition for the design of a new cathedral. The requirements were that contestants design an establishment to be built of stone or brick, large enough for 1,000 people and at a maximum cost of ten thousand pounds. The winners were Terry and Speechly from Melbourne. John Horbury Hunt, who had become one of Australia's most significant ecclesiastical architects during the last third of the 19th century, had also entered the competition and was appointed supervising architect. After the cost of the winning design was found to have been seriously underestimated, Hunt's own plans were adopted.

Hunt was influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement with its emphasis on truth to natural materials, particularly brick and timber, and asymmetry of form. Hunt's other ecclesiastical projects included St Peter's Cathedral, Armidale (1871) and Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton (1880) as well as many parish churches in the Hunter Valley. Christ Church Cathedral was the largest and most ambitious building designed by Hunt. His design for the cathedral was for a cruciform Victorian Academic Gothic style building with a central tower over the crossing, supporting a spire.

Although Hunt had completed the designs for the cathedral in 1868, work was not started on it until 1883 and the building of the cathedral was marked by many delays and disputes. The original Christ Church remained in use until completion of the staged demolition in 1884.

During the comprehensive repairs undertaken after the 1989 earthquake the original 1817 foundation stone was repositioned within the cathedral in a location as close as possible to the original one.

While Christ Church Cathedral was being constructed, Selwyn commissioned Hunt to also design a pro-cathedral opposite Christ Church (now Horbury Hunt Hall ). This was used until the opening of the new cathedral for services in 1902 and is still intact. It is listed on the State Heritage Inventory. In 1895, the relationship between Hunt, A. E. Selwyn, Dean of Newcastle, and the builder, John Straub, had become so bad that both Hunt and Straub were dismissed. By this stage, 27 years after Hunt had sketched the original design for the cathedral, it was far from complete. Even so, Hunt's attention to the construction of the foundations and ensuring that brick perpends were tight and mortar-filled preserved the cathedral's walling relatively unaffected nearly a century later when it suffered severe damage during the 1989 Newcastle earthquake. The full extent of Hunt's designs was not realised until 1979 with the addition of the tower, albeit without the spire Hunt had intended.

In 1900, John Francis Stretch replaced the late Selwyn as dean and he appointed John Hingestone Buckeridge as the cathedral architect. Buckeridge was responsible for overseeing the temporary roofing of the half-built nave. The cathedral was dedicated on 21 November 1902 during a service held in the presence of the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Harry Rawson, and the Premier of New South Wales, Sir John See.

There was great consternation in 1906-7 when severe mine "creep" in The Hill area of Newcastle damaged the foundations and brickwork of the western end of the newly occupied cathedral. For a time it was feared that this part of the building might have to be demolished. Repairs were required and the cost had to be met by parishioners.

The London firm of Charles Eamer Kempe planned and supplied the Gothic Revival stained glass windows in the nave and baptistry. The firm and its successor, Kempe & Co., were to do so for most of the cathedral's windows over the next three decades, the most celebrated being the western rose window installed in 1928. The cathedral would eventually contain more than 60 of the 72 Kempe & Co. windows in the whole of Australia. By contrast, in the whole of England the largest remaining collection of stained glass windows from the Kempe studio, in the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, has just 20 examples.

Included in Christ Church Cathedral's repository of stained glass was one further jewel: the Dies Domini ("Day of the Lord") window designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and executed by Morris & Co. of London, considered to represent Burne-Jones' powers at their peak and to constitute a national treasure, although not accorded such accolades at the time of its installation. The Dies Domini window, installed in 1907, is unique in Australia and is one of only two such windows of this design in the world, the other being installed in St Michael and St Mary Magdalene's Church, Easthampstead, Berkshire, England, in 1875.

The next architect assigned to work on the project was Frederick George Castleden, prominent in Newcastle as the designer of many houses and commercial buildings in the region. Castleden's firm supervised the completion of the cathedral between 1909 and 1928. In 1911, the ambulatory around the east end of the church and the Tyrrell Chapel was built and in 1912 the eastern walls were completed and roofed and the east window finished with yet more stained glass from the firm of Kempe & Co.

The Warriors' Chapel followed in 1924. It was intended as a permanent memorial to all those who died in World War I, especially men and women of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. As with other war memorials in Australia until the Vietnam War, the primary intention was to create a place where, in the absence of a grave, people could come to grieve and to give thanks for the sacrifices of those buried overseas who were never to return home. In designing the chapel the architects F. G. and A.C. Castleden drew on Buckeridge's earlier design for the east end of the cathedral. It was built by C. Davis & Sons.

The Warriors' Chapel's sandstone walls were embellished with carved inscriptions and the emblems of the armed services. Set into the walls were 13 stained glass windows executed by Kempe & Co., collectively telling the story of service and sacrifice by men and women in theatres of war and on the home front. In an era when masculinist definitions of war effort effectively marginalised the public recognition of women's contributions on the home front in Australia, the inclusion of St Martha, representing Home Service, was unusual. All forms of war service were, however, idealised in the standard Gothic Revival imagery found in ecclesiastical stained glass at the time. Realistic local and battle scenes in small, grey-coloured medallions inserted into several of the windows could not present an effective counterbalance to the much larger, idealised and brightly coloured depictions but are nevertheless important. On the whole, the stained glass windows in the Warriors' chapel were very much of their time in the manner chosen to depict war effort and in this they provide a striking contrast to the realism displayed in World War II memorials such as the cathedral's Zusters panels elsewhere described.