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St Thomas' Church of England |
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Place ID |
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600336 |
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Status |
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Permanent Entry |
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Address |
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67 High Street |
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Town/Suburb |
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TOOWONG |
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LGA |
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BRISBANE CITY COUNCIL |
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Theme |
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Worshipping |
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Theme |
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Remembering significant phases in the development of settlements, towns and cities |
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Significance |
| St Thomas' Church is important in demonstrating
both the pattern of growth of Toowong from an elite residential
settlement in the 1860s to closer settlement following the introduction
of the railway in the mid 1870s. As home to one of the earliest
established Church of England parishes in Queensland, St Thomas’
Church illustrates the development of the Church in the state. St
Thomas’ Church has remarkable aesthetic value with strong landmark
qualities; it is a well composed building picturesquely situated
on a prominent site. The building is a fine example of nineteenth
century church architecture, showing a strong influence of an Early
English Gothic style, which informed most ecclesiastical buildings
of the second half of the nineteenth century. Elements of St Thomas’
which show this Gothic influence include the steeply pitched and
dominant roofscape; the picturesque setting of the building; bi-chrome
brickwork; lancet and pointed arched openings; gabled porches; cruciform
plan; heavy internal roof trusses and stained and coloured glass.
The building has many well crafted items of considerable aesthetic
value including internal joinery, particularly the altar, pulpit,
lectern and internal panelling; stained and coloured glass windows
of William Bustard; font; various internal and external memorials
and landscaping. The established plantings surrounding the church
contribute to its picturesqueness and contain remnants of nineteenth
and twentieth century garden design. The church has a special association
with the St Thomas’ parish as their principal place of worship for
about 120 years. The building has associations with prominent Brisbane
architect, FDG Stanley and with other early parishioners, many of
whom were important in the early hsitory of the Church of England
in Queensland. |
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History |
| St Thomas' Church of England, Toowong was constructed
in 1877 as the second purpose built Anglican church in Toowong,
replacing a 1865 timber building on another site. The church, which
was designed by parishioner and prominent Brisbane architect, FDG
Stanley, has had two major additions, the first in 1886 when the
nave was extended and the second in 1947 when transepts and a chancel
were added. Toowong was described in 1862 by a local resident, Richard
Langler Drew, when he nailed a sign to a tree in the district proclaiming
the village of Toowong, although the name of the district had been
decided much earlier after the call of local birdlife. Soon after
Drew’s proclamation many large houses were erected in the area and
Toowong prospered as a small elite settlement removed from the noise
and dust associated with the town centre. It was not long before
discussions were held about the establishment of a Church of England
congregation which was to be an extension of the All Saints’ Parish
on Wickham Terrace. When Queensland became a separate state in 1859,
Brisbane became the seat of an Anglican Diocese and the first Bishop,
Edward Wyndham Tufnell was appointed. One year later, state aid
to the Church of England officially ceased. Unlike Britain, where
the Church of England was the established church which received
state aid, the Church of England in Australia was to survive in
the same manner as the other churches then operating in the country.
This decision caused much uneasiness during the early history of
the church as the hierarchy was unaccustomed to the processes involved
with self funding, most significantly the fundraising aspect. Therefore
it is significant that following a meeting on 6 May 1865, Church
of England residents of Toowong pledged to assist in the raising
of about £150, necessary to construct a building for use as a Church
of England. Among those at this first meeting was architect, William
Henry Ellerker who was to design the first St Thomas’ Church. Also
at the meeting was Richard Drew who donated Allotment 13 where the
church was to be built in Curlew street overlooking a cutting on
Burns Road. On June 1865 another meeting was held and this time
it was chaired by Reverend Thomas Jones of All Saints’ Church in
Wickham Terrace; a manifestation of the diocese’s support of the
Toowong residents’ scheme. The congregation at Toowong was to be
part of the All Saints’ Parish, and at this meeting details for
the construction of the church were finalised and it was decided
that the church could also be used as a temporary school as there
was yet to be a state school established in the area. By 1866 the
first St Thomas’ was complete; a small timber framed and clad building
with a gabled shingled roof featuring tripartite lancet window groups.
The building cost £185.12.6 and was designed by Ellerker, the parishioner
and architect, formerly of Melbourne who practised in Brisbane from
1860 until 1866. To defray the cost of the church a system of letting
pews was instigated, securing a regular income but exposing the
church to allegations of elitism. By 1867 a newspaper reported that
the church, with a capacity of fifty people, was inadequate for
the growing congregation. It was clear that steps toward procuring
enlargements or the construction of a new church were necessary.
In 1870 St Thomas’ became a parish, independent of All Saints’.
The congregation then decided that both enlargements to the building
and procuring the services of a minister were necessary. To fulfil
the latter requirement Robert Creyke was appointed, but it would
take some years before steps toward a larger building were taken.
During the early 1870s many memorial items were donated to the church
including a stone font commemorating Miss Georgina Hely, still in
use today in the parish; an altar, an organ and a sedilia (or altar
seat). When Robert Creyke resigned his post in 1875, Benjamin Glennie,
a prominent and prolific Queensland Church of England minister was
appointed. In the mid 1870s, Toowong was rapidly growing particularly
after the rail line was introduced in 1875. While large houses were
still constructed in the area, many newly planned streets started
to fill with smaller family houses on tighter allotments. By 1878
a State School was opened in Aston Street. In November 1875, at
a meeting of the St Thomas’ Parish a decision was made to enlist
the help of Church of England residents in the area for fundraising
and donations toward acquiring a central site for a new permanent
masonry church. The construction of a bi-chrome brick church followed
the laying of a foundation stone on 17 February 1877. The land on
which the church was built, part of Allotment 27, was initially
bought by Henry Buckley in December 1853 and then acquired in July
1865 by Robert Cribb, a successful Brisbane merchant. A Certificate
of Title was granted to Benjamin Cribb for Allotment 27 in March
1872 and, after changing hands within the Cribb family once more,
was acquired by trustees for the Church of England on 15 December
1876. The trustees nominated were William Leworthy Good Drew, Walter
Horatio Wilson and William Henry Miskin. The land remained vested
in trustees for the parish until acquired by the Corporation of
the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane in 1968. Again, the new church
was designed by an active parishioner, Francis Drummond Greville
Stanley who was the Colonial Architect at the time. Stanley was
responsible for the design of many large churches throughout Queensland
including large Anglican churches in Fortitude Valley and Maryborough;
St Patrick’s Church on Calton Hill, Gympie; St Paul’s Presbyterian
Church, Spring Hill; as well as smaller examples like St David’s
Church of England in Allora. The church Stanley designed for the
St Thomas’ parish, of which he was a longstanding and involved parishioner,
followed many of the traditions of Early English Gothic parish churches,
most significantly in its picturesque setting. The site was chosen
for its centrality and prominence and the church was designed as
a landmark on this prominent site. Many of the other features of
the building contribute to its strong Gothic aesthetic including
its dominant steeply pitched gabled roof, gabled porches, bi-chrome
brickwork and lancet window openings, many of which were filled
with stained and coloured glass in the twentieth century. The foundation
stone of St Thomas’ Church was laid by Bishop Hale on 17 February
1877. The contractor for the project was Henry Pears and the building
was constructed for about £850. An official opening ceremony in
the form of a service was held on 13 October 1877. The first extensions
to the church was executed in 1886 when the original six bay nave
was extended by one bay to form a seven bay nave. This work was
designed by the original architect of the building, FDG Stanley
and is apparent in the slight variation in colour of the brickwork
of the seventh bay, at the northern, chancel end of the church.
At this time the chancel was a temporary timber framed structure,
to be replaced in masonry when funding was available. In 1887 FDG
Stanley designed a Sunday School for the Parish which is thought
to have been constructed to the north of the building on land adjacent
to the church. Later a rectory was constructed between the church
and the Sunday School. A second storey was added to the rectory
in about 1900. The celebration of the 75th anniversary of St Thomas’
Parish was to incorporate an extension to the church building, incorporating
a tower and a permanent masonry chancel at the northern end. Prominent
Melbourne ecclesiastical architect, Louis Williams was commissioned
to prepare a design for the building. It is not known whether he
visited the site, but the perspective sketch he prepared for St
Thomas’ is a radical departure from the design of the original building.
The additions proposed by Williams displayed a more Romanesque than
Gothic influence, with a large parapeted tower partially concealing
a pyramidal roof, and a chancel with parapeted stepped facades and
grouped openings with, what seems to be , round arched heads. This
construction of these additions was to cost £3400 and was to coincide
with the construction of a large Roman Catholic church nearby. However,
although many memorial gates, plaques and stained glass windows
were added at this time, the proposed additions did not proceed.
By 1947 another scheme was commissioned, this time by Brisbane architect,
AH Conrad, from the partnership of Conrad and Gargett. His design
was more in keeping with the original design of the church and,
like the Williams’ scheme, incorporated a tower and chancel at the
northern end. Although the tower did not proceed, the new chancel
was constructed at a cost of £3365 by Ashlar constructions. Like
the original building this addition was constructed from brick,
but on concrete foundations and with a concrete plinth. In the early
1960s a new low set brick rectory was constructed adjacent to the
church, and this and the nineteenth century Sunday School and Parish
Hall survive to the north of the church, although a fire in May
1970 gutted the School. |
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Description |
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St Thomas Church of England, Toowong is situated
on a prominent triangular site at the corner of High and Jephson
Streets, Toowong. The site comprises a brick church surrounded
by established plantings and trees and containing early retaining
walls, fences, gates and stairs. The southern, entrance end of
the church addresses the corner of the two streets, where three
substantial gate pillars with an iron palisade gate provide a
principal entrance to the grounds of the church. Two sets of concrete
stairs containing memorial gate posts and memorial plaques give
access from the church grounds to the streets flanking the site.
The church is a bi-chrome brick building with a seven bay nave,
chancel and a very steeply pitched gabled roof clad with diamond
patterned fibrous cement shingles and terracotta ridge capping.
A small decorative timber framed fleche at the southern, entrance,
end of the church surmounts the apex of the gabled roof, and has
a steeply pitched pyramidal roof with an iron cruciform finial.
Generally the church is constructed from a dark brown brick and
has cream brick detailing, in the form of window surrounds, arched
window heads, quoining and string coursing. The church sits on
a two course sandstone plinth, the lower course comprises rockfaced
blocks and the blocks in the upper course are sparrow picked and
margined. The plinth at the northern, most recently constructed,
end of the church is constructed from smooth rendered concrete.
The southern, entrance façade has an almost triangular façade
due to the overhanging eaves of the steeply pitched roof and squat
side walls. This elevation is dominated by a centrally located
tripartite window comprising three lancets filled with stained
glass and with stuccoed sills and heads and all embraced by a
cream brick pointed arch. Flanking the principal window are smaller
lancets, with similarly detailed heads and sills. The bays of
the nave are defined on the eastern and western external façades
with angle buttressing, which also lines the southern façade.
The buttressing features a tapered head of rendered concrete,
from which the timber eaves brackets spring. Diagonal buttressing
braces the chancel of the church. Centrally located within each
bay is an operable lancet window, filled alternately with figured
and grisaille stained and coloured glass panels. At the southern
end of both side elevations are steeply gabled porches, which
are the principal entrances. These are flanked by buttressing
which support the timber framing of the roof structure. The gabled
ends are open, with a small triangular timber panel near the apex.
The porches provide access to double pointed arched timber doors
featuring ornate and overscaled iron strapwork hinges. The northern
end of the church comprises a chancel and two transepts. The chancel
is a square planned, gable roofed structure abutting the body
of the church to which it is similarly detailed although subordinate
in height to the principal building. Flanking the chancel are
smaller, square planned abutments with hipped roofs, which are
in the form of transepts but are, in fact, small rooms, a vestry
and a store. Internally the church is arranged around a central
rectangular nave dominated by dark stained timber boarded ceiling,
on the underside of a steeply pitched roof. Supporting the roof
and defining the nave bays internally are a number of dark stained
timber, king post roof trusses. At the northern end of the nave
is a chancel, separated from the body of the church by a pointed
chancel arch. Internally the walls of the body of the church are
rendered and scoured to resemble ashlar stone work. Though externally
the church seems to have transepts, these projections, in fact,
house a vestry to the west and a store room to the east with entrance
to the rooms through timber doors flanking the chancel arch. The
chancel is boarded to about 2100mm with timber panelling, featuring
carvings of pointed arches with foiled heads. This panelling steps
higher on the rear, northern, wall. On this wall and above the
stepped panelling is a tripartite group of stained and coloured
glass featuring images from the Adoration of the Magi and housed
in a pointed arched recess. A number of stone, marble or brass
plaque memorials line the internal walls of the church and commemorate
various figures in the history of the parish of St Thomas, including
RL and A Drew and Sarah Frances Zitella Clark. Many of these memorials
were carved by Toowong stonemason, W Busby and bear his signature.
[William Busby lived and had his business
in Slyvan Road Toowong. The best known monument he did would be
the Caskey Monument in 1902. William did a number of headstones
in Toowong cemetery. I believe he also did a war memorial but
so far I have not been able to find it. William is buried in Toowong
Cemetery with his wife. He arrived from Oxford in 1882 and was
working as a stonemason in Toowong until the early 1930s.] Helen
Smith, g g grand-daughter.
As well most of the stained and coloured glass,
windows thought to be executed by William Bustard are memorials
to parishioners. The tripartite stained glass window in the sanctuary
depicts a scene of the Adoration of the Magi.
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Information about places in the Queensland Heritage Register is maintained
by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Queensland Heritage
Act 1992. Information available here is only part of the full Register
entry and should not be taken as an official entry. Absence does not
mean a particular place is not in the Register.
Date: 22nd May 2002
If you wish to add information to this,
please email sue@smartype.com.au
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