Churches of Tasmania

Before the official proclamation of the town of Devonport in 1890, two seperate townships developed on either side of the Mersey River; Torquay on the east and Formby on the west. Of the two towns Torquay was initially the most developed. East of Torquay farmers settled along the coast from North Down to Port Sorrel and in 1851 the discovery of coal at Tarleton initiated a period of growth for the town. Provision was made for an Anglican Church at Torquay in 1853, two years after the township was surveyed. Six acres of land was reserved for a church, rectory, school and burial ground. The earliest report of an Anglican service at Torquay is recorded in The Colonial Times which mentions Bishop Nixon preaching there in November 1854. In the early 1860s a Music Hall was leased for “church and [Sunday] school purposes”. Early efforts to build a church were met with delays. In March 1861. The Cornwall Chronicle reported: “The erection of a Place of Worship for Members of the church of Engla...

St John’s Mission was established in 1893 in response to a growing number of families living in extreme poverty. The arrival of the Salvation Army in Launceston in the early 1880s and its relentless proselytising amongst the town’s poor challenged the established churches to respond to both the spiritual and material needs of the poor; especially those who had abandoned the practice of religion. During the incumbency of the rector of St John’s Church, Reverend Cannon R. C. Nugent Kelly, an Anglican mission was opened in a former public house, the ‘Queen’s Head’. The building, which no longer exists, was located in the vicinity of the Coles Supermarket car-park on Wellington Street. The driving force behind the establishment of the ‘Queens Head Mission’ was Charlotte Shoobridge, better known as “Sister Charlotte”. In 1894 Sister Charlotte was ordained a ‘deaconess’ of the Church of England, the first ‘deaconess’ in Tasmania. In 1892 Sister Charlotte moved to Launceston to take on the c...

Kellevie is a small settlement about 10 kilometres north of Copping. It is situated at the junction of Kellevie and the Bream Creek Roads linking the Arthur and the Tasman Highways. The district was known as the Ragged Tier and Kellevie was previously known as Upper Carlton. The history of Kellevie’s settlement is outlined in an article published in the Hobart Mercury in 1929: “How and when Kellevie first received its name the writer does not know, but its development seems to have been contemporaneous with the other two districts of the Ragged Tier, Bream Creek, and Copping, which began in earnest in the eighties, when the hard work of pioneering a wilderness of giant blue gums (some nine feet in diameter and of immense height), wild pear, musk, lightwood, dogwood, and other forest trees, with almost impenetrable undergrowth was beginning to reap its just reward. In connection with the accomplishment of this great enterprise the names of Freeman, Brown, Tunbridge, Corbett, Woolley, Ki...

Rocky Cape is a rural settlement on the Bass Highway located about 30 kilometres north-west of Wynyard. The name Rocky Cape is taken from a prominent coastal feature described by Matthew Flinders in 1798. St Aidan’s Anglican church was built and dedicated in 1908. It was located near the junction of Montumana Road and the Bass Highway. The church burnt down in the late 1980s and was not rebuilt. I have yet to locate a photograph of the church and I have used a photograph of the Rocky Cape public hall to illustrate this article. The hall was used for church functions for many years. The ceremonial laying of the foundation stone of St Aidan’s took place on Friday 22 May 1908. The event was described in a report published by Launceston’s Daily Telegraph: “Last Friday afternoon, the laying of the foundation stone of the new Anglican church was performed by Archdeacon Whitington….in the presence of a large assembly, the weather being most propitious for the occasion. The ceremony was carrie...

The Helping Hand Mission was an evangelical church active in Hobart for a period of a little over 40 years. It was founded in 1894 by Mr Sydney Cummins, a prominent Hobart businessman and lay-preacher. Cummins was one of the first members of the Salvation Army in Hobart and a leading figure in the temperance movement. The Mission's evangelical style of worship combined with its message of temperance and Christian action was directed at the poor and those on the margins of society. In the Mission’s first year meetings were held at a number of venues including the People’s Hall; the YMCA rooms; the Temperance Hall; the Mechanics Institute and the King Street (now Pitt street) Undenominational Church. In November 1895 the Helping Hand Mission united with the Central Hobart Mission to form the “Evangelistic Helping Hand Mission”. In August 1896 the Mission leased a warehouse on Watchorn Street (then known as Central Street) which was converted into a Mission Hall. The Hobart Mercury...

Jane Franklin Hall was an independent non-denominational residential college of the University of Tasmania. It is situated on Elboden Street, South Hobart. It was founded by the Tasmanian Council of Churches in 1950 as a residential college for women before becoming co-educational in 1973. The College adopted the name of Jane Lady Franklin who was an enthusiastic patron of the arts and education. Her husband was the famous but ill-fated arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, who was the sixth Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land. The College was a non-denominational Christian institution supported by chaplains of various churches. Religious services were held on a verandah before a chapel was built in 1960. The chapel, an unpainted wooden Scandinavian style building, was designed by Dr. Edith Emery. Jane Franklin Hall no longer has any association with the Christian tradition. The Chapel was removed to Baden in 1970. I have been unable to find a photograph of the chapel before it...

This ‘blog entry’ is one of a series of articles about places of worship that are barely represented in the historical record. Often no images of these buildings have survived. My hope is that these brief articles may result in further information and photographs coming to light enabling a more complete history of Tasmanian churches. Ringarooma is a small rural town in northeast Tasmania. It was once known as Krushka, after Christopher Krushka, a German migrant and local landowner who, with his brother Charles, had prospered from tin mining in the nearby Derby district. Ringarooma’s first Catholic church, St Martin’s of Tours, was in use for only 8 years before it was destroyed in a fire in October 1890. St Martin’s was opened on Sunday 17 December 1882. A report in the Launceston Examiner provides some information about the church and its origins: “The Roman Catholic Church at Ringarooma, dedicated to St Martin, was used…for the first time, mass having been periodically celebrated in...

This article is one in a series about public buildings in country areas that were used as places of worship. In these communities churches may have been planned but were never built due to lack of finance or changing circumstances. In most settlements, before a church was built, worship was typically held in homes, schoolrooms, barns, halls and other buildings. Conversely, in some communities, churches were sometimes the first public building erected and were used as schools and community halls. The focus of this series will primarily be on the public halls and schools that were used as churches. These buildings, and the religious communities which used them, are often overlooked in published histories of churches. Baden is farming community close to Tunnack and approximately 20 kilometres southeast of Oatlands. The area was originally was known as Rumney's Hut, after William Rumney, one of the first free settler in the area. For many years the only building which existed here was ...

Springfield is an area in West Moonah centred around Springfield Avenue. Housing in the area was developed after World War Two. It was known as Springfield, the local name for the terminus of electric trams that ran along Moonah Main Road. Springfield Methodist church began as a Sunday school which was conducted in a home in Keats Avenue. The first church service was held in the same house on 6 November 1955. In the following year a church built on Homer Avenue. The building was one of number of former army huts located at the 'Cornelian Bay Housing Settlement' used to accommodate homeless families. The Springfield Methodist church was officially opened in April 1956. In 1961 a brick hall was built in front of the church. Services were held in the new hall while the church was renovated. Regular services were held at Springfield up until the church’s closure in April 1974. Most of the congregation subsequently joined the Glenorchy Uniting Church. The church and hall still exi...

This article is one of a series about buildings associated with Tasmania’s historical churches.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 simple record of these buildings, including of those that no longer exist. The Presentation Convent on Bourke Street was built in 1900 to replace an old convent school situated at the rear of Church of the Apostles. The first convent, which opened in 1873, was one of eleven schools established by the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, better known as the Presentation Sisters. A short history of the first convent can be found here: [ No. 1245 ] The foundation stone for the new convent was ceremonially laid on Sunday 1 July 1900. The Launceston Examiner described the event as follows: “The time has arrived for the erection of much larger quarters for the nuns in residen...

Lisle is a former mining town situated east of Lilydale in a secluded valley on the northeastern slopes of Mount Arthur. The discovery of gold in 1878 resulted in a mining boom which attracted about 2500 people into the area. On 12 March 1879, Governor Weld visited the area and named the township Lisle, in memory of his wife's family name (DeLisle). The unofficial name of the settlement was Bessell's Creek, after Charles Bessell, who discovered alluvial gold deposits at Tobacco Creek. The first three years of settlement saw the construction of four hotels, shops, a post office, police station and a Wesleyan Church. The mining boom was short-lived and by the end of 1884 the population had plummeted to about 80. In August 1879 a visitor described the Lisle diggings and the emerging town: “Passing on from these claims, which are about one mile and a half on the west side of the township, I came to several newly erected paling houses; most of them seem to have been hastily put up w...