St Mary’s Church

85 Darling Street, 1843 (Chancel: Edmund Blacket 1843. The rest of the church: Weaver and Kemp 1858.)

The original, smaller St Mary’s Church was designed by Sydney’s great exponent of the Gothic Revival style, Edmund Blacket. All that remains of Blacket’s design is the chancel, which retains the atmosphere of a mediaeval English village church, with stone-flagged floor, hammer-beam roof and Decorated Gothic tracery.

Blacket’s church soon proved too small for the growing congregation, so in 1858 most of it was demolished and enlarged, using (so the story goes) cheap, inferior sandstone, with the unfortunate results that you see today. The stone has weathered badly, the decorative pinnacles have been lost, and the spire was demolished in the 1940s for fear that it might otherwise collapse. Metal caps have been fitted on the walls and some of the buttresses to protect the stone from further damage.

Architecturally the building lacks unity: although Weaver and Kemp retained Gothic elements in their design of the rebuilt church, the large, later nave, with its simple lancet windows, is out of proportion to the small, finely crafted chancel, and from inside the church the join between the old and new buildings is clearly visible in the stonework of the north wall.

The church is usually closed except for Sunday services (see the church website for details). The font, chancel chair and reading desk are by Blacket.