No. 1288 - Sandy Bay - Church of the Holy Spirit

Sandy Bay is a southern suburb of Hobart. The northern half of Sandy Bay was known as Queenborough between the years 1859 and 1878.

This articles focus is on the second Catholic church built at Upper Sandy Bay. This replaced a “temporary church” built in 1934 which had doubled as a community hall. Known as Pentecost Hall, it incorporated the Church of the Holy Ghost. In the 1950s and 1960s the church was rebuilt and enlarged.

The following information about the new church is taken from W.T. Southerwood’s “Planting a Faith in Hobart”, published in 1970:

“Father FitzGerald transformed the old Pentecost hall. The £3000 renovations included a permanent sanctuary, leadlight windows of cathedral glass, and the adaption of cloakrooms as a sacristy. These additions increased accommodation from 250 to 380….Alan Gelston was commissioned to paint the stations of the cross”.

And by the 1960s:

“Father FitzGerald’s lasting achievement in brick and mortar was the complete reconstruction of Holy Ghost Church which is now one of the most liturgically up-to-date churches in Australia. Features of the new $20 000 building are the black marble altar and the bronze Marek crucifix. The blessed sacrament is reserved in a side chapel. Father FitzGerald also built the new presbytery with its cloistered link to the church…[which] opened in 1967…”.

Further improvements to the church were undertaken in the 1990s. In recent years the church’s name has been changed from Church of the Holy Ghost to the Church of the Holy Spirit. An article on the first church and Pentecost Hall can be accessed here: No. 1272.








The new presbytery 



Source:

Southerwood, W. T. Planting a faith : Hobart's Catholic story in word and picture / [by] W. T. Southerwood [Hobart] 1970

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