The first
Presbyterian service in St Kilda was in May 1855 in an iron building with
wooden forms and earthen floors at the corner of High Street and Alma
Road. The original church used for services was wooden and owned by the
Independent (Congregational) Church. The Reverend Arthur Paul conducted
the first service there on 23 September 1855. The worshippers were Free
Presbyterians, a sect that had broken with the Church of Scotland in
protest at the perceived encroachment of the state on the church. Most of
the congregation chose to join the Free Church Synod in 1857, which was
the precursor to the Presbyterian Church of Victoria in 1859.[1]
However, some members left, choosing to continue as Free Presbyterians.
(Their story is told later.)
With the
departure of the Reverend Paul through this split, Charles Moir became the
new minister in 1858. He oversaw the erection of the church on land on the
corner of Alma Road and Barkly Street bought for £1000 from Mr Langevill.
The Governor of Victoria, Sir Henry Barkly, laid the foundation stone for
the church, which was designed by Alfred Smith. The builders, Bayne and
Company, completed it within six months. Designed to seat 380 people, it
was opened on 5 June 1860. It was brick and cement with stone dressings
and in the Perpendicular style with a square tower and no spire.[2]Most of the debt was paid by 1863, helped considerably by a bazaar
in the Melbourne Town Hall, which lasted four days and raised £857. A
gallery was added six years later. The site was just over 27 metres on
Alma Road
and almost 40 metres on Barkly Street, which limited expansion, but the
congregation was loathe to give up the prominent and central hilltop
location. In 1882 the congregation bought the site opposite in Alma Road
and built a Sunday school, opened in 1883, which was used as a church
while the original was demolished and a new one built. The Sunday school
retained the gallery from the first church. It was demolished in 1991.
In
1878 the Reverend Samuel Robinson was appointed and he oversaw the design
and completion of the new church. Wilson and Beswicke were the architects
for both the church and Sunday school, which cost £17,657. Ralph Wilson
designed the Methodist church on the corner of Princes and Fitzroy Streets
and lived diagonally opposite the Presbyterian church. Charles Beswicke
had toured Britain and the Continent in 1886 armed with a camera and
returned to Australia with photographs of what he considered the greatest
examples of architecture. He was responsible for the town halls in
Brighton, Malvern, Hawthorn and Essendon and Wesleyan churches in
Camberwell and Dandenong.[3]
Thomas Corley was the builder. The Governor of Victoria, Sir Henry
Brougham Loch, laid the foundation stone on 27 January 1885 and the church
opened on 30 May 1886 with three sermons that day and a ‘Grand Sacred
Concert’ during the week. Conditions were somewhat austere, with only some
of the carpet laid and the purchase of seat cushions postponed. There was
now room for 750 people with fifty in the choir gallery. The lofty spire
was ‘a landmark to the mariner’ used by sea captains sailing up Port
Phillip Bay.[4]
On a prominent position, the highest point in St Kilda, the church
attracted wealthy people with legal, merchant and pastoral backgrounds.
The pulpit is
central on a raised platform with a cast-iron grille. The pulpit, pews and
other fittings are of kauri, pine and cedar. Perry described the ‘strange
mixture of Gothic architecture and cast-iron’ in the interior, adding:
‘The slim column standing on its own supporting a heavily decorated
capital is unknown to traditional Gothic architecture’.[5]
There are coloured glass windows — behind the pulpit the painted glass was
donated by ladies of the church — and some stained-glass memorial windows.
A new organ was installed in 1890 and the choir moved from the gallery to
near the organ at the front of the church. The pulpit carving and honour
roll are the work of John K. Blogg (c.1851-1936), an industrial chemist,
who turned to carving when he became deaf. He produced over 200 honour
rolls and panels for pulpits.
The Reverend
Robinson’s health suffered during the difficult Depression years and he
died in 1899. His successor was the Reverend David Ross. He served for
thirty years and was followed by the Reverends H. C. Clark, 1925-41, for
whom the carillon is a memorial, William Alec Fraser, 1942-44, Esmond New,
1946-51 and William Young, 1951-55.
By 1950 the
stonework was decaying and dangerous. It was removed because the cost of
replacing it was beyond the congregation’s means. The wealthy had long
abandoned the area and the numbers attending the church were in decline.
About 1957 the louvres over the opening in the tower were replaced by a
speaker and a record was played to imitate the peal of bells.
In 1977 the
congregation opted to continue as a Presbyterian church rather than join
the Uniting Church, which is an amalgamation of some Presbyterian,
Methodist and Congregational churches. Instead, faced with declining
numbers, it joined with nearby Presbyterian churches in Caulfield and
Elwood. After a brief closure, it reopened under the ministry of the
Reverend Bob Thomas, who was inducted as the church’s full time minister
on 24 November 1994. Today the church serves the community in the vicinity
of Barkly Hill with a small but growing congregation.[6]
Manse
A manse was
built in 1869 on a government grant of land between Acland Street and the
Esplanade near the Luna Park area. It was sold for £9306 and Stanthorpe,
next to the church at 42 Barkly Street, St Kilda, was bought for £3500 in
1919. Stanthorpe was built in about 1875 as a private residence for
merchant Alexander Sutherland.
It is a two-storey rendered brick Classical style
mansion dominated by a central portico and cast-iron verandah. For some
years, the manse was at 102 Hotham Street before Stanthorpe was converted
into a manse and church officer’s flat in 1956. After infrequent use by
the church, it was sold to a developer in 1999. It was renovated and is
now being used as commercial offices.
School
A
Presbyterian Common School associated with this church was opened in 1872.
[1] For the
background to the Presbyterian groups and their differences see:
Lewis, Victorian Churches,p. 9.
[2] Based on
Dr Robinson, 75th Anniversary, 1930. Perry gives the number as
300 in Ian Perry, ‘St Kilda Presbyterian Church’, undergraduate
thesis, Architecture, University of Melbourne, n.d. The Robinson
booklet shows a photograph of the original church. Various sources
give the cost ranging from £4-6000. See: Perry, ‘St Kilda Presbyterian
Church’, p. 2. Also: Australian Heritage Commission, Register of
the National Estate Database, ‘Presbyterian Church, St Kilda,
Vic’, database number:009868, file number: 2/11/046/0034.
Class:Historic, indicative place.
[3] Perry,
‘St Kilda Presbyterian Church’, pp. 7-8.