Churches of Tasmania

Goodwood is a suburb of Greater Hobart and part of the City of Glenorchy. Most houses in Goodwood were built in the 1950s as public housing. The suburb is also home to light industry and docks. The former Anglican church of St Christopher’s, the patron saint of travellers, appropriately lies on edge of the busy Brooker Highway that bisects Goodwood and Glenorchy. The church is now derelict and covered with graffiti. It has degenerated to the point where it hardly resembles a church and could easily be mistaken for a toilet block! A view of Google Street maps chronicles its decline over the last decade. Its spire has now gone, which a few years back would have at least been a clue to its former function as a place of worship. In 1954 the Army Chapel at Brighton Camp was moved to Goodwood to serve as a temporary Anglican church. This was demolished in 1974 to make way for St Christopher’s. The triangular-shaped building was designed by Reverend R. M. Potter and was constructed of conc

In 1922 the Ashley Boys’ Home was established outside Deloraine on a government owned farm. The Ashley Home originated as a Boys' Training School at New Town. In 1926, following the recommendation of the 1925 Committee of Inquiry into the State Farm and School for Boys, the government changed the name to the Ashley Boys' Home. The Committee hoped that this would reduce the stigma attached to boys who were at the Home. In 1950 a fire gutted the main building on the site (see photograph below). In the 1960’s a chapel was constructed out of an old toilet block with the help of the boys. The chapel was ‘dedicated’ as St Christopher’s by Donald Blackburn, a retired Anglican minister of St Mark’s parish and former Bishop of Gippsland, and Father Sherry of Holy Redeemer parish in Deloraine. An interesting feature of the chapel was a cross and two candlesticks carved by soldiers at Gallipoli. These items were donated by Bishop Blackwood. Between 1912 and 1920 Blackwood served a chap

T he first Congregational services at Pontville were led by Reverend Joseph Beazley and held in the local courthouse. In 1854 a small stone church was built which stood on the riverbank opposite the present church and near to the remnants of the original Congregational cemetery. In early 1874 the foundations of this church collapsed and the church’s trustees decided to build a new church on a site on the opposite bank of the Jordan River. While construction was underway, religious services were temporarily held in the district police office. Construction of the new church began in early 1875 and the foundation stone-laying ceremony took place on 29th March of that year. The Launceston Examiner expressed the hope that the proposed Pontville church would be of a similar quality as the new Congregational Church at Richmond: “This is as it should be. It is a disgrace to any Christian body to erect unsightly churches when beauty, which is a spring of perpetual satisfaction and pleasur

The Southern Presbyterian Church is a small denomination that is exclusive to Tasmania with approximately 130 members. There are only two congregations; one at East Launceston and the other at Glenorchy. The church was formed in 1986 after it broke away from the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which was founded in Launceston in 1961.  The church in East Launceston was built in 1969 for the Apostolic Church of Australia. It later relocated to Invermay. Worship in the Southern Presbyterian Church is characterised by preaching, prayer and the unaccompanied singing of Psalms. The Southern Presbyterian Church's beliefs and practises are loosely aligned with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Australia, the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Photograph: Duncan Grant 2018 Photograph: Duncan Grant 2018 Photograph: Duncan Grant 2018 Sources: http://www.spc.org.au/who-we-are.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So

When the foundation stone of St Matthew’s, (or the Scots Church, as it was originally called), was laid in 1839, The Colonial Times described the site at O’ Brien’s Bridge as a “retired and secluded locality”. Since then, O’Brien’s Bridge has grown into the city of Glenorchy and St Matthew’s location could not be more incongruous as it borders on a busy bus terminus in the midst of a shopping strip. From the beginning their was strong opposition from the Anglican hierarchy to the establishment of a Presbyterian church at O’ Brien’s Bridge. In the early part of the nineteenth century the government treated the Church of England as the colony's ‘official’ established religion. This changed somewhat with the passage of the 1837 ‘Church Act’, which enabled the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Church, access to a structured and consistent system of government funding. Some in the Anglican Church resented this development. In 1839 the Colonial Times re

The Mowbray Uniting church cuts a lonely figure placed on the edge of a large parking lot adjoining a supermarket. I imagine that many of the shoppers passing by do not realise that the building is a church; the only clues being a single gothic window bisected by a cement slab and an unobtrusive sign announcing it as a parish centre. The church was built over 60 years ago on land that had been purchased in 1928. The Great Depression and the Second World War delayed its construction for over 20 years. It was built to house a Sunday school and hall with the intention of building a full church on the site at a future date. The foundation stone was laid on Sunday 22 June 1952 using the same trowel and gavel which was used at the laying of the foundation stone of the Invermay Methodist church in 1891. The building comprised of a main hall with a capacity to seat 130 people and a kindergarten schoolroom. The building has another interesting and substantial historical connection with the L

The church in the photograph is better known as All Saint’s Anglican church. Its history was covered in an earlier blog entry. [see HERE] This short history will look at the period before 1919, prior to its purchase by the Anglicans off the Methodists. The original Wesleyan Methodist church was built at Dairy Plains in 1861. This building was badly damaged in a violent storm in April 1896. The Daily Telegraph provides a detailed account of the disaster: “A great storm passed over Dairy Plains on Friday morning at about 3 o’clock, alarming the inhabitants. Its greatest strength appears to have been concentrated in the vicinity of the Wesleyan church at that place, which was a small wooden building, and stood on an allotment of about half an acre, fronting on the Dairy Plains-road. The storm came down the valley from the direction of the Needles, and struck the church with terrific force, lifting it off its foundations, then overturning and tearing it into sections, which lie scatter