St Mary's Church

About

St Mary's Anglican Church is a heritage-listed Anglican church in Peel Terrace, Busselton, Western Australia. It is possibly the oldest stone church in the state. Opened in 1845, and consecrated in 1848, it has been the subject of a number of additions, and has also been repaired or conserved on several occasions.

The Vasse district is located about 200 km (120 mi) south of Perth, the capital city of the State. Its first European residents were a group of families, including the Bussells and the Molloys, who moved there from Augusta, further to the south, in the 1830s.

The members of the Bussell family who settled in the district were headed by five brothers: John, Charles, Lenox, Vernon, and Alfred. Their father, William Marchant Bussell, who had died in 1820, had been curate at St Mary's Church in Portsea, England. John Bussell had been hoping to follow his father into the clergy, but had left England before he could be ordained.

The principal townsite of the Vasse district was established on the shores of Geographe Bay, and by 1835 had been officially named Busselton. By 1841, the increasing population of the area was felt to warrant the construction of a church.

Initial financing for a church construction project was provided almost exclusively by friends and relatives of the Bussell family in England, and especially cousins Elizabeth Capel Carter and Frances Bowker. However, there were also local subscriptions.

Both John Bussell and Capel Carter had wanted religion to be an important part of the Augusta settlement. Capel Carter had established a fund, "for the erection of a church and parsonage at Augusta...". The Bussell family settlers later advised her that the church should be built instead at Busselton.

Ultimately, the fund raised a total of £ 280, twenty of which were donated by Queen Adelaide, consort of King William IV, via her godmother, Lady Elizabeth Capel, who was also one of the Court's ladies-in-waiting.

By October 1843, a sufficient amount had been raised to cover the erection of walls and a roof. It was therefore resolved to proceed with construction.

John Bussell, John Molloy and Henry Chapman were appointed as trustees. Bussell and John Wollaston are thought to have designed the building, to a modified early Norman architectural style, based on that of the chapel at Winchester College. F. Brabazon Forsayth prepared plans and estimates. On 4 March 1844, Frances Bussell laid the foundation stone, which reads:

"To the honour and praise of Almighty GOD, The foundation stone of this Sanctuary, to be erected with funds collected by friends of the Bussell family, (of Cattle Chosen, in this district), for the use of the members of the Church of England, was laid by Frances Louisa, relict of the William Marchant Bussell, on the 4th day of March, 1844." Various local settlers participated in the construction work, including by quarrying stone, and cutting and carting timber. All of the frames on which the arches were built were made by John Bussell, using timber he had donated after pit-sawing it himself, with the assistance of a sawyer named Balschin. The district carpenter, George Blechynden, donated several months of his own labour. The total construction costs were £ 300.

On 11 April 1845, Wollaston opened the church, which was named St Mary's after the church of that name in Portsea, England, where William Marchant Bussell had once been curate. On the same day, Wollaston performed the church's first baptism. At that time, the interior was still incomplete, and in particular had a temporary floor of beaten earth.

In February 1846, The Illustrated London News published an article about the church, which it described as follows:

- "... a plain but substantial stone edifice, with circular headed windows and doorways; between the former and at the cornices are buttresses reaching to the line of springing. The Nave or body of the Church is forty feet long, and twenty feet wide; the Chancel fourteen feet long by twelve feet wide; the walls are sixteen feet to the line of roof; the exterior presenting a height of eighteen feet from the ground to the parapets, which extend all round."

Later that year, Wollaston wrote that "appropriate seats of a uniform pattern" had been made of jarrah wood, and that a stone font had been finished and would soon be installed at the west end of the nave, near the door. He had asked "friends at home" [i.e. in England] to "expend in [glazed] windows"; in the meantime, calico was being used in place of glass. Oxford contemporaries of John Bussell's later donated a set of windows sourced from a church in that town. By 1848, the church was generally said to be completed. It was consecrated by the first Bishop of Adelaide, Augustus Short, on 2 November 1848.

The church is claimed to be, or to be "possibly", the oldest stone church in Western Australia. A similar claim is made about St John's Anglican Church, Albany, which was built between 1841 and 1844, and then consecrated, also by Short, on 25 October 1848.

The history of the graveyard adjacent to the church extends back even further than that of the church itself. Burials at the church site include those of Georgiana Molloy in 1843 and Frances Bussell in 1845; the former was buried underneath what is now the church site, and the latter was interred in a vault beneath the chancel step. Many of the other early European settlers of Busselton were buried in the graveyard.

Since the church was consecrated, it has been much modified, repaired and renovated. A harmonium was installed in 1859. A bell tower was constructed in 1902. Four years later, on 14 October 1906, a new vestry, donated by Sir Winthrop Hackett, was consecrated as a replacement for an earlier vestry. A jarrah pulpit dedicated to the memory of John Molloy was installed in 1909. A brass honour roll commemorating members of the church who had died during World War I was dedicated on 6 December 1920. A porch in memory of John Bussell was dedicated on 14 September 1924.

In 1958, major repairs and renovations were carried out. The then rector, J.J. Tredwell, observed that the pit-sawn floor boards, which had been fixed in place 110 years earlier, had been "... found to be perfectly sound and were re-laid...", and that the original hand-hewn roofing timbers had also been "... found to be in perfect condition...". Even the walls had required little work, other than "... the patching of deteriorated plaster...".

During the 1970s, the bell tower was renovated, and many of the original windows were replaced with new stained glass items donated by descendants of early settler families. In 1972, aluminium tiles were laid in place of the original shingles. In the 1980s, the church was extensively renovated, at a total cost of $ 24,000. The renovations included the re-surfacing of interior walls, and the renewal of exterior walls. In April 1984, at a service on Palm Sunday, a memorial garden was blessed. It includes a wall of Donnybrook stone for memorial plaques, which had become necessary because of an increase in cremations.

By 1989, the church's aluminium tiles were leaking; that year, they were replaced with 10,400 new sheoak shingles costing $10,000. More recently, a number of headstones in the graveyard were replaced. Additionally, the church's interior walls were refinished at around the turn of the century in gyprock and plaster, to approximately window height.