queenslandchurches

Step inside Brisbane’s oldest Anglican Church to study the oldest stained glass windows in Queensland and follow the 14 stations of the cross created by Daphne Mayo. The present All Saints’ Church was designed by Richard George Suter and dedicated by Bishop Tufnell in 1869. All Saints’ Church is a very early example of the Gothic Revival style in ecclesiastic architecture in Brisbane. Distinctive design features include simple lancet windows, buttressed walls, and a hammer-beam roof. There is an important collection of stained-glass windows throughout the church, most of which depict saints. The east end windows are believed to be the oldest stained-glass windows in Queensland to be made in Australia. The bas-relief Stations of the Cross were made by Daphne Mayo and installed in 1935. In the St Francis and Clare outdoor altar at the east end of the building is a bronze and wood sculpture entitled ‘Christ Accepting the Cross’, by Andre Meszaros, erected to celebrate the centenary of All Saints in 1962. An earlier version of the church was designed by noted architect Benjamin Backhouse and built in 1862. Later additions to the church included an adjacent rectory in 1880, a hall/school building in 1884, the pulpit crucifix in 1926, the organ loft in 1957 and the crypt in 2016. The organ was made in London by TC Lewis and was originally installed in St John’s Pro-Cathedral in Queen’s Park in 1873. It was then transferred to St Luke’s Church, Charlotte Street, before it was refurbished and moved to All Saints in 1957. Source: brisbaneopenhouse.com.au/building/all-saints-anglican-chu...

The place has historic significance for its associations with Cairns' first Anglican church. The first St John’s Church of England was built in 1884 on the site of the current Cairns City Library in Abbott Street. The timber church building was destroyed by a cyclone in 1920. The current St John's Church was built to replace it between 1926 and 1927. The place has local aesthetic significance as a building designed in the Romanesque style by the notable Cairns architect Richard Hill. The place has had local significance as a place of worship since 1927. A compact Romanesque style church entered via the porch at the Minnie Street, Lake Street corner with a high nave running east - west and on the exterior a cloister style verandah running east west along the Minnie Street façade with round headed arcading on short columns. Windows high up on the nave are also round-headed paired windows with vent louvers rather than glazing. At the cloister verandah, the doors are timber-framed and fully glazed. At the east end of the nave in the gable, the apex is a round (quatrefoil) window above a series of long thin round-headed windows allowing light into the tall nave space and other rooms. Source: www.cairns.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/162709/... complete with a timbered ceiling above hammerhead support beams. The body of the building is concrete with engaged pilasters which pick up the roof beam supports on the church interior. The roof cladding is Marseilles terracotta tiles. On the interior the reredos (timber screen behind the altar) is dedicated to the dead of the two World Wars. On the north side of the body of the church but external to it, is vestry space and

Before the construction of St Joseph’s Church, the Rathdowney Memorial Hall or Rathdowney School of Arts were used as Mass Centres for the spiritual needs of the people in the Rathdowney area. The Architect drew up the plans and construction began on the 11th of July 1929 and just 12 weeks later the building was completed. In its report, the Beaudesert Times described the building thusly: “The church is constructed of Queensland hardwood timbers in the walls and floors, with Queensland pine in the roof. The building comprises an entrance porch 11ft by 8ft, church 40ft by 23ft, sanctuary 15ft by 16ft, sacristy 9ft by 16ft. The walls are sheeted externally with hardwood chamfer boards and internally with pine lining boards. The ceiling of the sanctuary is lined with fibro-cement sheeting and covers battens and that of the church by pine lining boards. The sanctuary is divided from the church by an elliptical arch and the windows of the sanctuary are glazed with lead-light containing designs symbolic of the Crucifixion, the Holy Eucharist, and St Joseph. The glazing of the church windows is in the light rose-tinted glass. Externally, the walls are painted cream-white with brown facings and the sashes of the windows and barge boards of the gables in light stone tints. Internally, the walls are painted with a dado in brown tints and walls in French grey, and the ceilings in cream white. The roofs are finished with gables and half-timbering and ventilator dormers. The altar is a very handsome one of silky oak and the two pedestals for statues are also of silky oak.” (Beaudesert Times, September 29, 1929) St Joseph’s Church was blessed and opened on the 29th of September 1929, by Archbishop Duhig, ably assisted by the Parish Priest, Father Hennessy, and by his curate Father Tom O’Callaghan. Source: www.stmarysbeaudesert.com/our-churches/st-josephs-rathdow...