A Forger's Progress

by Alasdair McGregor

  As for the root of Henry Kitchen’s downfall, St Matthew’s proceeded relatively smoothly, if a little slowly, by government labour through to its completion in 1822, supervised by the aforementioned bricklayer, John Jones. For his troubles, Jones was granted 500 acres by Macquarie, an action on the governor’s part that must have sent Kitchen reeling; he was quick to inform Bigge of this gesture – he had received nothing while one of the agents of his torment had profited handsomely.18

  To Greenway, such an outcome would have added ornament to his devilish handiwork. And of course, the benefits of offering incentives to workers rather than ‘the system of terror involved in flogging men into their duty’ was always used by him as a justification for government labour over private contract.19 Apart from the grant of land to Jones, two or three other men were given their tickets of leave as a reward, but whether the church would have been completed any quicker under Greenway’s rules rather than those of a contractor remained a moot point. It certainly took longer than the 18 months Macquarie had originally envisaged.

  In September 1820, the governor inspected progress but noted that ‘from all appearances there is at least three months work still to be done’.20 A year later, Joseph Harpur reported that ‘some sheet lead was blown off the dome of the new church … by a violent gust of wind; a large sheet was lodged on the scaffolding, and another fell to the ground torn into holes, the lead having been nailed down only and not soldered’.21

  And so the work plodded on. An impatient Macquarie wanted the church to start receiving the faithful and the penitent, but that stickler for ecclesiastical protocol, the Reverend Samuel Marsden, had other ideas. In late January 1822, Marsden wrote to Bigge in England: ‘Gov. M wished me to consecrate the Church at Windsor, before there was a pulpit or desk, or the pews … but I declined until I get the Grant of the Glebe …’22 Samuel Marsden finally consecrated St Matthew’s Church on 18 December of that year. Scarcely an individual was observed’, wrote Harpur, ‘but what appeared deeply attentive during the whole service, and the church was nearly filled before the consecration commenced’.

  Less than two years later, Greenway’s successor as civil architect, Standish Lawrence Harris, inspected the new church and was largely unimpressed by what he saw. The mortar – that perennially troublesome material – was of a ‘permanency [that] cannot be depended on’, and internally the cornices and plastering were ‘already showing cracks and sound hollow, and will shortly give way’. The cedar pews were of fine timber, but ‘miserably executed’ and Greenway’s distinctive ornamental urns on the four corners of the tower came in for particular criticism. They had ‘been put up at a great expense, and are very ill adapted for a place of worship, being much more suitable for a theatre or fancy dwelling’.23

  Another early critic of St Matthew’s was even more scathing in their opinion. Lady Jane Franklin, indefatigable traveller, independent feminine spirit, and wife of Arctic explorer and lieutenant governor of Van Diemen’s Land Sir John Franklin, passed through Windsor in 1839. She was travelling overland from Port Phillip to Sydney, the first woman to do so. On Wednesday 19 June, Lady Franklin wrote, ‘The church is a large, ugly, red brick building, 6 windows & door in side tower at West & with white cupola lantern, a frightful thing, above it – they talk of wanting globe & cross, but nothing can mend it’.24

  Such visions of red-brick ugliness were not universally shared, and the church on the commanding knoll at Windsor, with its presence looming over the broad valley beyond, came in time to be regarded as arguably Greenway’s greatest building. Morton Herman thought ‘the fine sturdy proportions, the delightful mellow rosiness of the brickwork, and the soft texture of the wood shingle roof [made] a picture of architecture that is scarcely equalled in Australia’.25 For fellow architectural historian JM Freeland, St Matthew’s and Greenway’s other great church, St James’, are ‘clean uncomplicated buildings, lightly but firmly designed to meet the needs of uncompromisingly Protestant congregations’.26 And for Hardy Wilson, Greenway seemed to have captured the fire that had made those red bricks, and ‘caught the sunlight of the Hawkesbury Valley on his west glowing wall’.27 With just a pepper-pot lantern and four urns to ease its external severity, St Matthew’s is definitely Georgian yet transcendently timeless. ‘This building’, writes Herman, ‘convinces one that he had that touch of genius that would allow [Greenway] to work in any medium, in any age’. A building unified and strengthened through repetition of fine proportions and rhythms – from walls, to recesses, to windows, to that last spare detail – it has a timeless serenity that remains mute to the bitter days of St Matthew’s birth.

  Elsewhere, bitterness again brought forth a worthy work of architecture, another church whose beginnings were far from blessed. Amid animus and sorrow, St Luke’s would rise like some minor miracle from the fertile ground of Sydney’s hinterland.

  On the morning of Wednesday 7 November 1810, a small party set out at sunrise to travel the ten or so miles south from Parramatta; on horseback for two hours, they then rowed for a further couple of hours up the gentle reaches of the Georges River. But rather than simply a pleasant day’s outing in a bucolic setting, Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie – accompanied by the governor’s aide-de-camp, Captain Henry Antill; surveyor James Meehan; and surgeon William Redfern – had an important task to perform. The Macquaries were there to inspect and approve the site of a new town, and that morning was the first of their five-week tour of the distant farming districts on the Cumberland Plain.

  When the tour proper got underway in the following days, Lachlan and Elizabeth travelled with a bevy of officials, locals, servants, horses, carriages, wagons, camping gear and baggage. Macquarie’s caravanserai was like that of some benevolent potentate – a latter-day Medici prince, perhaps – out to survey his realm and bestow his beneficence on his people.

  Farms had developed on the gently undulating arc of the Cumberland Plain in the decade or so before Macquarie’s arrival in the colony – along the fertile alluvial banks of the Georges and Nepean rivers to Sydney’s south-west, just as they had in earlier years along the Hawkesbury in the north. In Macquarie’s world, urban settlements would assuredly follow: each with a school, gaol, church, soldiers’ barracks and an inn; and each providing refuge in time of flood for farmers and their convict labourers. Shortly before announcing his string of Hawkesbury settlements in the north, the governor proclaimed a township on the banks of the Georges River. His diary recorded the events of that significant November morning:

  We landed near Mr. Laycock’s House, and having surveyed the Ground and found it in every respect eligible and fit for the purpose, I determined to erect a Township on it, and named it Liverpool in honor [sic] of the Earl of that Title – now the Secretary of State for the Colonies. – The Acting Surveyor Mr. Meehan was at the same [time] directed to mark out the Ground for the Town, with a Square in the Center [sic] thereof, for the purpose of having a Church hereafter erected within it.28

  And that was that for several years. A parsonage was built on the Liverpool town site in 1816, and a church was included in Macquarie’s New Year’s Day list of 1817. Shortly thereafter, Macquarie reported selectively on his building program to Bathurst. The Macquarie Tower was well advanced, and the uncontroversial need of a female factory and barrack at Parramatta, a courthouse for Sydney, and three churches was mentioned: ‘A Church at Sydney, another at Windsor, and a third at Liverpool (both these last Towns becoming very populous) are very much wanted, and these I shall Contract for Immediately, paying the Expence [sic] of Erecting them out of Colonial Funds’.29 It was this despatch that also noted Greenway’s appointment as acting civil architect.

  Tenders were called for the Liverpool church in May and again in July 1817, with a contract eventually let in January 1818 to Nathaniel Lucas, one whom Macquarie described as a ‘House Carpenter’.30 Lucas had been the contractor for the parsonage at Liverpool (begun in 1815), and Greenway had approved of Lucas’s work on comp
letion in late 1816. Greenway may also have designed additions to the Liverpool parsonage sometime thereafter.

  In early January, Lucas received a first payment for the new church of £330, drawn on the Police Fund. As was always his wont, Macquarie then attended to the requisite ceremonial duties. On Tuesday 8 April, he wrote rather touchingly in his diary:

  This morning early Mrs. Macquarie & myself and our dear Boy, in the Carriage; and Mr. Secry. Campbell and Major Antill on Horseback, proceeded from Parramatta to Liverpool, where we Breakfasted, and afterwards proceeded accompanied by Mr. & Mrs. [Thomas] Moore, & the Revd. Mr. & Mrs. [John] Youl – and also a number of the Principal Inhabitants of the Town to the Scite [sic] of the intended New Church of Liverpool – and having arrived there I went through the ceremony of laying the Corner Foundation Stone of the Church, naming it at the same time ‘Saint Luke’s Church’ –; the Contractor (Mr. Nathl. Lucas) and all the Workmen being present, and to whom I gave 3 Gallons of Spirits to Drink as a Donation from Government.

  My dear Son Lachlan assisted me in a very active manly manner, to lay the Foundation Stone of St. Luke’s Church.31

  Thomas Moore was a shipbuilder, sailor, grazier and philanthropist, and now one of the prominent landholders in the district. In 1809 Moore had received a large grant of land on the banks of the Georges River, and his substantial home at Moorebank now made him the first citizen of Liverpool. Absent from Macquarie’s list of attendees at the ceremony was Greenway, though in a later letter to the governor he purported to have been there, ‘having according to the request of your Excellency attended at Liverpool for the purpose of laying the Foundation Stone of the Church’.32

  Whether Greenway actually attended the ceremony or not, his real concern – and often his obsession – was the quality of materials to hand. ‘I saw a few stones delivered on the ground worked in a very slovenly manner’, he wrote: ‘I showed Gordon the mason how they should be worked and tryed [sic] several stones. A part of one of them appeared excellent, to which I declared … if a proper quarry was opened I had no doubt there would be found the finest stone yet found in the colony …’33 Greenway undertook to call at the quarry on his next visit to Liverpool, but ‘there found instead of a proper quarry a few loose stones injured by time broken out upon the surface of the Earth’. In protest, he wrote to Lucas, and later sent a copy to Macquarie. Greenway warned the builder that ‘I shall expect a proper quarry to be opened, and good, sound white stone obtained; do not therefore attempt to work that stone, as it will most assuredly be condemned’.34

  Three weeks went by before Lucas turned up in Sydney – drunk. Greenway told Macquarie that Lucas ‘pretended he had heard nothing of my disapprobation … I saw great duplicity in his conduct & desired him to come to me when he was sober’. Greenway later sent a ‘young man’ to find Lucas. He was tracked down at the home of Samuel Bradley, supervisor of carpenters, in a ‘dreadful state of intoxication & instead of coming to me, insulted the man’.35 Lucas then went missing.

  On 9 May 1818, the Sydney Gazette took up the story:

  On Tuesday last the dead body of Mr Nathaniel Lucas, for many years known in this colony and at Norfolk Island as a respectable builder, was found, left by the tide, at twenty yards distance from Moore Bridge, Liverpool; which unhappy catastrophe appears to have proceeded from his own act, owing to a mental derangement.

  Given their quarrelsome encounters, Greenway was anxious to scotch the rumours that he might have hounded the unfortunate Lucas to his death. ‘I have been this moment informed’, Greenway continued nervously to Macquarie, ‘[that] an execution was served upon him about four hours before the rash act’. Lucas had obviously been in financial difficulty. ‘I feel very unhappy in consequence of the unjust imputation thrown upon my character. Yet my conscience acquits me of having intended any offence to Mr Lucas & I have done my duty with promptitude.’ Macquarie, it seems, had informed Greenway of the scuttlebutt being spread. He felt very much in the governor’s debt and ended his letter rather obsequiously: ‘I know not how to express my thankfulness for your Excellency’s kind attention to me in telling me of it but will bear it in grateful remembrance’.

  On 25 August, a new contract for St Luke’s was let to none other than James Smith, with whom Greenway had ‘disagreed’ over the price for St John’s parsonage, Parramatta. The architect had further outsmarted Smith at Parramatta, where the hapless builder had hopes of contracting for a new female factory. Disputes flared over bills of quantity and estimates, and Smith, desperate for the job, supposedly offered a bribe. So, as if the suicide of the first builder were not misfortune enough, hopes for a smooth progression under Smith’s control would always prove illusory.

  It appears that Smith, along with Henry Kitchen, had been among the original tenderers for St Luke’s, and, according to Smith’s own assertions, he had also been the lowest bidder. In a lengthy exposition of his grievances in The Australian, Smith explained how Captain John Gill as acting engineer had deemed each of the original bids too high and consequently re-called for tenders. Nathaniel Lucas was the sole bidder in the second round. Lucas then contracted with the government for the ‘greatly reduced sum of £1570’, not much more than half of his original tendered price.36

  Smith linked a ‘misunderstanding’ between Lucas and Greenway over ‘fixing part of the stone base’ with the ‘suicide of the contractor’ shortly after. As an aggrieved unsuccessful tenderer, Smith may have been the source of the rumours against Greenway. After taking over as builder, Smith claimed to have then had ‘repeated applications’ made to him by government, through Thomas Moore acting as the district’s magistrate. These were for ‘additional improvements to be made to the church during the time of its erection’. When the original work plus these extras were complete, Smith made an ‘official application’ to Greenway for an inspection. But try as he might, Smith’s attempts at a site meeting with the architect came to nothing.

  Choosing a time when the builder was distant from Liverpool, Greenway made his survey and furnished a ‘most incorrect report’ to Gill’s successor, Major George Druitt. When Smith finally received a copy, he was shocked: ‘I discovered the architect’s determination to injure me professionally, and ruin my family, by protracting the receipt of the balance due me’. Smith petitioned the governor for the matter to be settled by arbitration. Macquarie’s consent was given, and Thomas Moore and the bricklayer William Stone were appointed as government representatives. That rather hostile pair, Henry Kitchen and Daniel Dering Mathew, were to represent Smith. After ‘considerable difficulty and delay’, a meeting was arranged between the arbitrators and Greenway, but no resolution was forthcoming; the architect was at his most stubborn. And so the farcical situation dragged on, with the arbitration quartet deferring to its own umpire, Andrew Johnston of Portland Head, a respected colonist and court official with some knowledge of building. Johnston met all parties and made a determination of £491 7s 9d owing on the original contract and the extras. (For his part, Greenway calculated the sum due to Smith at just £107.)

  Smith, who then assumed that payment from the Police Fund would be a mere formality, maintained that Greenway had written to Macquarie ‘declaring that the arbitrators, in conjunction with the umpire, had formed a design to impose on government in the sum so awarded me’. Macquarie declined to approve payment and the matter then proceeded to the Supreme Court, where Smith was forced ‘to law as plaintiff in person’ – in other words, he could not afford legal representation.

  Worn down by the ordeal, the beleaguered builder, ‘as a final consideration of all matters touching the unfortunate church at Liverpool’, duly accepted an offer of £300. Smith had no option, being left in ‘dire necessity, hoping thereby to save my property from the dreaded operation of sale, through the Provost Marshal’s Office’. But his creditors pressed ever closer. Smith was forced to sell up, recovering £1440 for property he claimed was worth more than double that figure; a ‘cultivated farm’ of se
veral hundred acres was included among Smith’s assets. And on Smith’s tale of woe proceeded, to its inevitable and bitter summary: ‘The conduct of Mr. Greenway has occasioned a drawback on my young and rising family, that will require, I fear, a long and protracted time yet to come, before I shall recover myself from the severe losses I have been … compelled to sustain’.

  In late January 1819, Smith had informed Macquarie that the church would be roofed in and shingled within a month, but by the following November he had quit the job with the interiors of St Luke’s far from complete. Tragedy and misfortune blighted St Luke’s to the end; a convict hanged himself in the half-built tower, while three convicts sheltering from an electrical storm were struck by lightning and killed.

  Shortly before Smith’s departure, St Luke’s first rector, the Reverend Robert Cartwright (recently transferred from Windsor), held a service in the new church, despite a lack of plaster or furniture. A further year passed. Macquarie was growing ever more impatient with yet another building limping to completion.

  On the morning of 3 December 1820, Macquarie set out from Parramatta for Liverpool in pouring rain. He rode in his carriage accompanied by young Lachlan and Thomas Moore and his wife, but without Elizabeth, ‘her not being stout enough to venture out in such bad weather’.37 At St Luke’s they heard Divine Service presided over by Cartwright and were marooned for a further day by rising floodwaters as the siting of the governor’s new town was put to a serious test.

  As with St Matthew’s, the premature use of St Luke’s drew the ire of the Reverend Samuel Marsden. In January 1822, Marsden wrote to Bigge in England:

  The Rev. R Cartwright, without due consideration, entered that church with[out] Pulpit, Desk or Pews, when I was sent to New Zealand, but he has repented much, ever since for doing so … Mr. Cartwright has been obliged to carry his chairs out of his own house to the church for the accommodation of his people to this very day …38