Historic Images of Sydney's Catholic Cathedrals : 20

Image : State Library of NSW

We continue our series of historic images commemorating the bi-centenary of Saint Mary's Cathedral (1821-2021) with this crayon sketch made around 1915.  Thank you for your interest in the work of the Archbishop Polding Guild in publishing these historic images.  Please share the posts with others who might also be interested and take a look at the many other history posts on this blog.

The image in this post differs from most of the previous ones because it illustrates the present Cathedral from another angle, in Hyde Park, looking North-east.  

When this sketch was drawn, the remaining walls of old Saint Mary's had been carefully dismantled in preparation for the construction of the nave and southern towers.  But this image reveals what the temporary wall looked like which was constructed on the south side of the Crossing Tower in the 1880s.  It is shewn on the right side of the drawing.  The wall - always a temporary arrangement - was not of dressed stone like the fine walls of the Cathedral, but of an undressed stone, with an uneven surface.  The temporary wall was pierced with a window and a door, even though they are not shewn in this sketch.  As work on the enlargement of the Cathedral proceeded in the 1920s, the temporary wall was demolished and the new work was unified with what had been constructed in the 1880s and 1890s.

In our previous articles, we posted photographs illustrating the stages of the construction of the present Saint Mary's Cathedral, to be found at the following links :

1871              1882             1883             1886

1887              1890             1892             1895

1896               1901             1902            1905

1907               1910            1914             1915  

Click on the image for an enlarged view.

AMDG

NOTES

The photographs in this series are taken from a variety of sources, some in online Archival collections, some from books, some original images in the editor's collection.  They are presented here in a "modernised" digital form, and with as much detail of the structure of the Cathedrals enhanced in order to make them more accessible to a new generation of Australian Catholics.  The original image on which this digital rendering is based is held by the State Library of NSW.  Thanks are due to Special Collections of the State Library for undertaking a search to locate this and other rare images.  Please do not reproduce these unique images without permission.