Christ Church St Laurence

About

Christ Church St Laurence is an Anglican church located at 814 George Street, near Central railway station and Haymarket, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is the principal centre of Anglo-Catholic worship in the city and Diocese of Sydney, where the Anglicanism is predominantly Evangelical in character. Anglo-Catholicism is manifested at Christ Church St Laurence by an emphasis on the sacraments, ritual, music and social action, all of which have been prominent features of Anglo-Catholicism since the 19th century. The parish dates from 1838 and the church building from 1845. It was the first Anglican church in the city to be consecrated by a bishop and is the second-oldest of the city's Anglican church buildings still in use. The first architect was Henry Robertson, who was soon succeeded by Edmund Blacket, a major figure in Australian architectural history and a parishioner of Christ Church St Laurence, to whom the church owes many of its notable features. The church was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. The choir of Christ Church St Laurence has a high reputation among Anglican parish choirs. It performs a repertoire ranging from Gregorian...

In 1838, fifty years after the foundation of New South Wales, Sydney possessed only two permanent Anglican churches, St Philip's Church Hill (1810; present building 1856) to the north, and St James', King Street (1822), near the centre. The Bishop of Australia, William Grant Broughton, saw the need for another church for the settlement at the city's southern boundary, then becoming a poorer industrialised quarter. This part of Sydney was in the "civil" or "cadastral" Parish of St Lawrence, an administrative division later used only to identify the location of properties for land transactions, but at that time also the ecclesiastical parish. The origins of the name of the parish were unknown, even in 1845, when the incumbent William Horatio Walsh wrote: "The Governor, (which, I know not), or Surveyor-General, who originally laid out the parochial limits, will supply any further information as to the origin of the nomenclature of the parish. The only St Lawrence I know of was... a Deacon, who was burnt at Rome in the third century." At the bishop's expense, a temporary church was set up in the Albion Brewery on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Albion Street. This temporary "Saint Lawrence Church" operated from 1838 to 1845.

In the first years, two priests were appointed as ministers of the Parish of St Lawrence, Thomas Steele (who was also responsible for the Parish of Cook's River) in 1838 and Edmund Ashton Dicken (who had arrived in the colony in December 1838, with a fairly obvious alcohol problem) for the first three months of 1839. William Horatio Walsh, a newly arrived deacon, was appointed in April 1839. Bishop Broughton ordained him in September 1839 and Walsh held the position of incumbent of the parish until 1867. Walsh is considered the first rector of Christ Church St Laurence.

The incumbent's responsibilities extended beyond the Parish of St Lawrence to the surrounding suburbs, each of which eventually became independent parishes: Redfern and Waterloo ( St Paul's, 1855), Surry Hills ( St Michael's, 1852), and the Glebe (St John's, Bishopthorpe, 1856).

Bishop Broughton laid the foundation stone of the present Christ Church on 1 January 1840. The site, at the apex of Pitt and George Streets, was set amidst institutions from the convict era. Across Pitt Street (now the site of Central railway station ) were the Carters' Barracks (where convicts still underwent punishment on treadmills), the police superintendent's residence and the Benevolent Asylum (1821, operated by the Benevolent Society of New South Wales ). Beyond the eastern boundaries of these institutions lay the Devonshire Street Cemetery (1820). To the south of the church were the toll gates and toll house designed in "gothick" style by convict architect Francis Greenway.

Economic recession halted construction of Christ Church between 1841 and 1843, when Edmund Thomas Blacket took over as architect. Bishop Broughton consecrated the church on 10 September 1845 with the title of Christ Church. In common usage it became known as Christ Church, Saint Lawrence (see above). The parish adopted Saint Laurence of Rome (with that spelling) as patron saint in 1884, giving rise to the unusual double dedication which has survived.

The first rector, W. H. Walsh, like Bishop Broughton, was associated with the High Church group in England which was led by Joshua Watson and which also included Edward Coleridge. Walsh was also associated with High Church organisations – the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which initially funded Walsh's stipend, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Walsh also corresponded regularly with the Society for Promoting Church Music and the Ecclesiological Society which he addressed in London in 1851.

Walsh was the foremost proponent in Sydney of the early writings of the Oxford Movement (or "Tractarians"). He was on at least one occasion referred to as "the chief Puseyite" (a usually pejorative term derived from the name of E. B. Pusey, a leader of the Oxford Movement).

The result was a gothic church interior, with an ordered liturgy – Sung Matins and Evensong supported by a robed choir, and frequent Communion services with an offertory of sacramental alms and a surpliced preacher. Bishop Broughton wrote of the worship at Christ Church:

"I have heard objections stated to some of the arrangements in the celebration of divine service, as savouring of novelty and innovation; but I am bound to say that there is no contrariety in any part of the practice to the most approved usages of the Church of England, with which I have been familiar from my earliest years; and everything is marked by such a degree of order and solemnity, that I could wish the observances of this church to be taken, if it were possible, as a model for the imitation of every church in my diocese."

This High Church position was maintained under Walsh's successors, George Vidal and Charles Garnsey. Ritual advances towards Anglo-Catholicism were suppressed by the Evangelical diocesan, Bishop Frederic Barker (Bishop of Sydney, 1854-1882). The most significant dispute with Christ Church occurred in 1868 when Barker ordered the removal of an image of the cross above the altar from the newly installed tiled reredos.

Following Bishop Barker's death, the parish, under Charles Garnsey, began to adopt Anglo-Catholic practices, which had appeared in England in the 1860s and gathered strength (while also generating opposition) in the 1870s. In 1884–5, the parish introduced a cross and candles on the altar, a credence table, festal processions with cross and banners, daily services of Holy Communion, eucharistic vestments and choral Communion services. A correspondent to the London Church Times in late 1884 said of Christ Church "It is, indeed, an oasis in a desert."

However, some aspects of Anglo-Catholic practice were not introduced until relatively late, with the "high celebration" involving three sacred ministers (priest, deacon and subdeacon) introduced in 1913, The English Hymnal in 1916 and incense in 1921.

In 1910, Archbishop John Wright imposed the requirement that all clergy, upon appointment, undertake not to wear the eucharistic vestment (the chasuble) in any church in the diocese. Although he himself was not a conservative evangelical, and was leader of liberal evangelicals in England before his coming, he believed that the eucharistic vestments were not lawful in the Church of England. The parish complied under protest in order to secure appointment of a new rector. The chasuble was worn for the last time inside Christ Church on 19 April 1911. Since that date, priests have worn a cope instead of a chasuble when celebrating the Eucharist at Christ Church. In 1911 the Revd Charles William Coles was offered the incumbency, but he declined, due to the archbishop's restrictions. (Coles would go on to be vicar of the English Anglo-Catholic "shrine church" of St Agatha's, Landport in Portsmouth for 40 years.)

A very visible part of Christ Church's commitment to Anglo-Catholicism was the outdoor "procession of witness" held as part of the annual dedication festival from 1926 until 1967. Sometimes led by as many as three thurifers, the processions featured parish organisations and guilds, clergy from around the Anglican Communion (in copes), the occasional mitred bishop (mitres being a rarity in Sydney), clergy from Orthodox churches, and representatives from sympathetic Sydney parishes and St Gabriel's, a girls' school run by the Community of the Sisters of the Church in the nearby suburb of Waverley.

The building and interior of Christ Church are mostly the work of three architects, covering the period 1840–1927.

Henry Robertson (1802-1881) designed Christ Church in a transitional style incorporating Old Colonial Gothick Picturesque and Victorian Free Gothic. The builders were Taylor and Robb, who used Sydney sandstone, possibly from Pyrmont quarries. Walsh criticised Robertson's work, in the light of later principles of Gothic Revival style.

Edmund Thomas Blacket (1817-1883) started work on Christ Church when construction revived in 1843. He completed the tower and steeple and the timber ceiling, and redesigned the windows. Interior design features by Blacket include the font, pulpit, carved pew-ends, and panelling at the west end (originally part of a choir gallery). In 1873 a memorial to John Coleridge Patteson (1827-1871), the martyred Bishop of Melanesia, designed by Blacket, was installed in the church. It incorporates an effigy executed by Henry Apperley (1824-1887). Patteson had visited Christ Church on several occasions. Blacket was a parishioner of Christ Church from 1848, serving as churchwarden for 22 years (1851-1873). Blacket's sons were responsible for remodelling the sanctuary and chancel in 1884–5 to reflect the parish's adoption of Anglo-Catholic liturgy.

John Burcham Clamp (1869-1931), a former pupil of the parish school (Christ Church School), was parish architect from 1899 and was responsible for the restoration of the interior of Christ Church after a fire in August 1905. His work includes the reredos (1905), a font cover (1904), the St Laurence Chapel (1912) and screening under the organ (1914). Clamp also designed a chancel screen, installed in 1922 but removed in 1942. The screen, like the chapel and Clamp's organ-case, had a crown of thorns motif carved in its woodwork. After a land exchange with the New South Wales government when Central railway station was built, Clamp designed a new rectory and vestries (1904) and a new school building, now the parish hall (1905). These brick and stone buildings use a mix of Federation styles: Elizabethan, Arts and Crafts, and Free Style.