St. Phillip’s Episcopalian Church,…

Rare colonial engraving St. Phillip’s Church at 1 York Street, Sydney.

The original church was built using convict labour by orders of the colony’s first chaplain, the Reverend Richard Johnson, in June 1793. The wattle and daub construction church was burnt down by convicts in 1798.[3] A second, stone, church operated on the current site of Lang Park, Church Hill, from 1810 to 1856. It was made from poor materials and gained a reputation as “the ugliest church in Christendom”. This second church had a 150-feet high, round clock tower.[4] The original parish was named St Phillip’s Church[5] in honour of the first Colonial Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, RN.[6] but from around 1840 the spelling “St Philip’s” predominated, and was mandated in 1848 with commencement of the new building.[7] The current building on York Street is the second church building on Church Hill (the wattle and daub church was built on the corner of Bligh and Hunter Streets), and was designed by Edmund Blacket in the Victorian Gothic style with English Perpendicular detail. It was built 1848-56. The church tower was styled after Magdalen Tower at Oxford, United Kingdom, and was opened in 1856. The bells were cast by Charles and George Mears at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in East London in 1858.

From the original edition of The Illustrated Sydney News.

References:
Gibbs & Shallard. Illustrated Sydney News. ISSN 2203-5397.

Collections:
State Library New South Wales: F8/39-40
State Library Victoria: PCINF SLVIC=1853-1872
National Library Australia: Bib ID 440095