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Welcome to Churches of Tasmania

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I love history and photography and also have an interest in architecture. When I started this blog in 2017 I had the goal of photographing every historical church in Tasmania. This was initially driven by the proposed mass sell-off of Anglican churches. I was concerned that these buildings would be modified and no longer be accessible once in private hands. As the years have passed this goal has changed to writing short histories of each and every church built in Tasmania, of which there are about 1600.   My earliest posts are rather amateurish but my research and writing has improved somewhat over the years.  In time my hope is to revise and update every article to a publishable standard. I have received an overwhelming amount of material from followers of the blog and I will incorporate this into the articles in the revision phase. Eventually I hope to publish the best of the articles. At present the blog attracts about 1000 views per day and I hope that this will continue to grow. 
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No. 1271 - Dover - Congregational Church Sunday School Hall (1904)

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This article is one of a series about buildings associated with Tasmania’s historical churches and religious orders.These buildings include Sunday schools, parish halls, convents, schools and residences of the clergy. Ancillary buildings are often overlooked and rarely feature in published histories. My aim is to create a basic record of these buildings, including buildings which no longer exist. Dover is a small town on the Huon Highway approximately 80 kilometres south of Hobart. It was first settled in the 1850s. The original name for Dover was Port Esperance after one of the ships of the French Admiral Bruni D'Entrecasteaux. Dover’s Congregational church opened in 1877. It was originally a Bethel or nondenominational church. In 1904 a Sunday school hall was built behind the church. The hall’s foundation stone was ceremonially laid by Mrs W. Davis in March 1904. The following report from Mercury describes the opening of the hall in June 1904: “The new Congregational Sunday schoo
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No. 1270 - Hobart - Collins Street Primitive Methodist Chapel (1861-1902)

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In 1861 the Primitive Methodists acquired the former Knox Chapel on Collins Street for a place of worship. The building was erected in 1836 as an Independent or Congregational church and Sunday school. [ see No. 1000 ]. In 1857 the building was sold to Reverend John Downes and reopened as the Knox Chapel. [ see No. 1093 ] In 1861 Downes left Tasmania to take up a position at a church at Learmonth in Victoria. The departure of Downes resulted in the closure of Knox Free Chapel which was then taken over by the Primitive Methodists. The Primitive Methodist movement began in 1808 and was led by Methodist lay preacher Hugh Bourne, who had been expelled from the British Methodist movement. Bourne and his followers became known as Primitive Methodists, meaning ‘first’ or ‘original’. Bourne's followers were also disparagingly called ‘Ranters’, a reference to their crude and often noisy preaching. Their outdoor camp meetings generally attracted the working classes who sometimes did not feel
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No. 1269 - Gould's Country - Union Church (1874)

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Gould’s Country a rural area off the Tasman Highway and is approximately 15 kilometres west of St.Helens. Although it is now virtually a ghost town, it once had a population of about 400 with a post office, school, three churches, council chambers, bank, hotel and a public hall. The town went into decline once tin mining in the district ceased. The district is named after Charles Gould, who was appointed the first Geological Surveyor in Tasmania (1859–69). The foundation of the Union Church is linked to Benjamin Smith who arrived in Gould’s County in 1870. Smith was a devout Methodist and was instrumental in establishing a church. In 1871 when Bishop Charles Bromby passed through the district he observed: “In Gould’s Country I found a young but enterprising body of settlers, who had carried with them to their seclusion a love of religious ordinances. As no ordained clergyman lives within fifty miles of them, it was gratifying to find that one settler reads the prayers of the Church to
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No. 1268 - Dilston - Undenominational Church (1885)

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Dilston is settlement on the East Tamar Highway about 15 kilometres north of Launceston. In earlier times it was an important stop on the highway between George Town and Launceston. The name Dilston originates from Dilston Lodge, a property established by Captain George Coulson in the 1830s. Coulson also established the Friend’s Arms hotel which overlooked Freshwater Point on opposite side of the Tamar River. Dilston’s only church originated in the home of Mr Alfred Ray who started a Sunday school. This paved the way for the construction of a church in late 1884 and which opened on Friday 23 January in the following year. A correspondent for the Launceston Examiner described how the church was established: “A very interesting episode in the history of Dilston, East Tamar, has to be recorded for last Friday. For some time past a good work has been going on here in a quiet, unostentatious way… A number of children have been growing up without any means of obtaining either secular or reli
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No. 1267 - Ross - Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School (c.1854)

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This article is one of a series about buildings associated with Tasmania’s historical churches and religious orders.These buildings include Sunday schools, parish halls, convents, schools and residences of the clergy. Ancillary buildings are often overlooked and rarely feature in published histories. My aim is to create a basic record of these buildings, including buildings which no longer exist. Ross is a historical town off the Midlands Highway approximately 120 kilometres north of Hobart. It was named by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1821 after the Seat of his friend H.M. Buchanan of Loch Lomond in Scotland. Of the five churches built at Ross, three remain. Little is known about the origins of the Wesleyan Sunday School which is believed to have been built in 1854. The original building still exists and is located on the corner of High Street and Bond street. In 1839 a Wesleyan Methodist chapel opened on a site next to the Sunday school. The chapel was demolished in 1932 and stone
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No. 1266 - Sandy Bay Uniting Church (1904)

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Sandy Bay is a southern suburb of Hobart. The northern half of Sandy Bay was known as Queenborough between the years 1859 and 1878. The first Methodist church at Sandy Bay was a Primitive Methodist Mission Hall which opened in Princes Street in 1895. The 1902 Union between the Primitive Methodists and the Wesleyan Methodists soon created a need for a larger place of worship. Following the Union, proceeds from the sale of the Collins Street Primitive Methodist chapel was used to build a new church at Sandy Bay. In early 1904 construction began on a new church at a site on Princes Street which was only a short distance from the old Mission Hall. The traditional ceremonial laying of the foundation or memorial stones was unusual in that seven stones were set, which was a record number for a Tasmanian church. The Mercury reported: “There was a large attendance yesterday afternoon when the memorial stones were laid, among those present being Hon. T. Gant, M.L.C., Mr. A. E. Eckford, chairman
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