No. 974 - Claremont Uniting Church

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Claremont is a suburb of the City of Glenorchy within the Greater Hobart region. It is named after Claremont House built in the 1830s by Henry Bilton. Claremont was once the site of an army training camp established during the Great War. At this time the area had only a few scattered houses and a railway station in a largely rural setting. From the 1950s public housing was built at Claremont which resulted in significant population growth.

Claremont Uniting Church is located on Wyndam Road. It replaced a Methodist Church which was built on Abbotsfield Road 1914. The development of the Brooker Highway in the 1950s resulted in the construction of a new church in 1963 in collaboration with Claremont’s Congregational and Presbyterian churches.

The foundation stone for the new cement block church was laid on 21 December 1963 by Rex Townley MHA and Reverend Michael Johnson. The old weatherboard Methodist church was removed to Winnaleah in Tasmania’s north east. In 1967 Claremont’s former Congregational church, which stood on the Main Road, was relocated to a site behind the new church, for use as a hall. The hall now has a cement block veneer enclosing the original timber church.

When I photographed the church it was partly obscured by scaffolding due to the house alongside having been set alight. I will rephotograph the building at some future date.








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