Francis Greenway and Old Saint Mary's : 1

Artist's impression of the Greenway design for old Saint Mary's church
shewing the sanctuary end of the building.

It is not widely known, and yet not completely forgotten that the architect of the first Saint Mary's Cathedral was the renowned convict-era architect, Francis Greenway.  This man, as much remembered for the handsome buildings he designed as for the difficulty of his personality, came to Australia as a felon, convicted of fraud.  Notwithstanding, the Governor, Lachlan Macquarie almost immediately put Greenway to work designing and supervising the construction of civic and ecclesiastical buildings for the township of Sydney.

Francis Greenway
Image : State Library of NSW

In circumstances that are not known, Francis Greenway was employed to prepare a design for Saint Mary's Catholic church, Hyde Park, the foundation of which had been laid by Governor Macquarie and Father Therry in October 1821.

Mr. Greenway did prepare a design for the old church and, by some miracle, the design had survived to this day, preserved in the State Library of New South Wales. 

A design was drawn-up for a small, well-detailed church but it did not entirely find favour with the customer, Father Therry, who had much grander ideas.  Mr Greenway resigned from his involvement with the Catholic church project in 1823 and the building which slowly emerged over the next ten years bore little resemblance to his charming design in the "Regency" Gothick style.

In our next post, we will examine Francis Greenway's design in detail.

Click on the images for an enlarged view.

NOTES

The illustration accompanying this post, although it accurately represent Francis Greenway's design, is partly conjectural since the surviving plan does not indicate how long the chapel was intended to be.  It is presented here as having a nave of four bays.

Digital art by the Saint Bede Studio.

AMDG