A Forger's Progress

by Alasdair McGregor

  In 1824, Lewis Solomon, an emancipated carpenter living at Liverpool, was contracted to complete the interiors of St Luke’s. Some six years had elapsed since the project was commenced. As for the church’s consecration, it seems that such ecclesiastical formalities, critical as they may have been to Marsden, were forgotten until 1956 and the celebration of the centenary of Moore Theological College. Macquarie’s friend Thomas Moore became a major donor to the Anglican Church, leaving his house and grounds at Moorebank for the establishment of the college that naturally bore his name.

  St Luke’s was built as a simple Protestant preaching house – cheaper, smaller and simpler than Greenway’s other churches. The original nave included a gallery (since demolished) reached by stairs in the tower. The pulpit was placed on the central axis of the building. In the 1850s, an ugly chancel and vestry were added, butchering the clarity and simplicity of Greenway’s eastern elevation. The chancel addition relegated the pulpit to one side and placed the emphasis back on the sacramental nature of worship and away from preaching. Ecclesiastical architect John Burcham Clamp, former short-term partner of Walter Burley Griffin, added a respectful side porch in the 1920s.

  While not as finessed as much of Greenway’s other architecture, there is an honest simplicity to St Luke’s that would have suited its humble agrarian setting. While the tower lacks the grace of St Matthew’s or the later St James’, the building’s fine brickwork, in subtly contrasting shades of salmon through rusty orange to deeper reds, adds vitality to the rhythm of the architect’s distinctive arches and elegantly proportioned façades.

  At Windsor and Liverpool, the fertile ground of Greenway’s creativity brought forth two fine churches, one of them among the finest of all his buildings. But amid walls of stone and brick rose the architect’s own unstable walls of jealousy and spite. In the end one contractor lay dead and two in ruin; to arise at all in such brutal circumstances is miracle enough for any building.

  FEEDING BODY AND SOUL: ST ANDREW’S AND THE MARKET HOUSE, 1819–22

  High on Macquarie’s New Year’s list of 1817 was a second church for Sydney, yet more than two and a half years passed before a foundation stone was laid. During that long hiatus, the governor’s ambitions appear to have soared skywards, and by the time his silver ceremonial trowel was unsheathed on the last day of August 1819, he had in mind a lofty Gothic edifice to honour, appropriately enough, the tutelary saint of his native Scotland. Macquarie’s Church of Saint Andrew would be everything that Bligh’s squat, ungainly, rough stone St Philip’s was not. And in the ‘Metropolitan Church’, as Greenway called it, Macquarie could not have had a more willing creative collaborator than his architect. Here was the grandest opportunity yet for Greenway’s town planning and architectural aspirations to reach their loftiest heights.

  According to Ellis, the site was ‘the erstwhile cow-yard of a humble herder who had dared the waters of Cockle Bay when too full of rum’.1 It fronted George Street on the corner of Bathurst and lay adjacent the original burial ground, which 50 years later would make way for the Sydney Town Hall.

  Greenway later recalled laying two designs before Macquarie, ‘one in the Roman style of architecture, the other in what is vulgarly called the Gothic Cathedral style … which latter was fixed upon by the Governor’.2 An elevation of the proposed church accompanied Macquarie’s despatch to Bathurst in March 1819 and, naturally, work commenced before any approval was received from London. As the site was prepared, and foundations dug, what Macquarie could not have anticipated was the imminent arrival of Commissioner Bigge.

  Greenway’s church was to have a steeple ‘similar in proportion to Salisbury Cathedral’. Lofty aspirations indeed, with Salisbury’s spire topping 400 feet, the highest in all of Britain! Yet St Andrew’s was but a portion of the architect’s grand vision. He saw the church surrounded by a great square, the focus of the emerging city:

  The church [was] to stand in the centre of a large Circus, similar to the plan laid down by Sir Christopher Wren, of St Paul’s Church London. At the four principal points four streets were intended to be made, one to Parramatta, one through York-street, through the soldiers barracks, to the entrance of the intended fort, one mile in length; one street would have gone to Cockle Bay. A quay was to be made at the end of it, opposite to that street; another was to be communicated with Hyde Park … and about this grand quadrangle so laid out, all the public buildings were to have been raised in the classical style, upon a level base, making as a whole as grand a square as any in Europe.3

  Predictably, the newly arrived commissioner did not warm to Greenway’s ‘grand square’, or the church at its centre. In writing to Bathurst in August 1820, Bigge conceded the need of a new place of worship; the existing church, though only completed in 1810 was ‘in a state of decay that threatened danger to those who frequented it’.4

  But ‘upon an examination of the plan … that Governor Macquarie had recommended to your Lordship’, the commissioner’s disquiet was immediate. Yet another of Greenway’s perennially optimistic estimates reckoned on five years to completion – far too long for the commissioner, who wanted a more modest church completed in just 18 months.

  Greenway squirmed as he saw his vision questioned and sensed his great church about to crumble. The forces of ignorance were, as so often, agin him, with attacks from the ‘officious who knew nothing of design’, or those holding ‘phrenetical [sic] and illiberal views … bringing forth as models, methodist [sic] chapels … and other equally silly observations’. But he, Francis Howard Greenway, ‘had been bred a churchman’ and was about building a Metropolitan Church ‘according to the true principles of the Church of England’. Bigge’s better judgment had been overtaken by those possessed of little imagination:

  The observations made by the Commissioner, and others … were, that … I should make … a city superior in architectural beauty to London … and the Commissioner giving ear to the insinuations of persons either actuated by interest or envy, soon changed his mind and sentiments and thought … that my buildings must necessarily be very expensive, because they appeared grand …5

  Given the commissioner’s disapproval, the project stalled. But once Bigge was out of the way in Van Diemen’s Land from February 1820 on, work resumed in earnest on the St Andrew’s site. Macquarie’s poor regard for the commissioner’s directives is obvious, but within a month, Bigge had learned of the resumption of work and wrote to the governor, warning him to desist.

  Bigge observed that some work had recommenced before his departure for Hobart, but assumed it ‘limited to the filling up of the foundations that had been dug’ and that such activity signalled ‘the entire abandonment’ of the project, pending the ‘pleasure of Lord Bathurst’. The commissioner’s displeasure cuts through the stilted civility of the day. He had kept silent at the time ‘with a view to avoid all subjects of unnecessary altercation’, but now considered it his duty ‘to represent to Your Excellency that whatever difference of opinion may be entertained … representing the character, Taste, dimensions & site of this structure, it appears to me to be so entirely unfitted for the wants of the population of Sydney’.6

  Bigge muttered darkly about the ‘accumulation in the Town of Sydney’ of the convict labourers necessary for such a large project as the ‘greatest evil that now presses upon its population’. Better to keep the labour force divided into smaller groups and away from the temptations of the town – repentant shepherds and contrite farm workers were more Bigge’s brand of useful convict. The commissioner ended his letter with a threat: ‘I cannot see any attempt made to carry [the church] beyond the line of the foundation … without resorting to an Interposition of the authority with which I am vested’. But Macquarie was not one to be pushed around. It took until 24 May, nearly two months after Bigge’s letter, and barely a week before the commissioner’s return to Sydney, for him to order a halt.

  On Wednesday 4 June, the Dawes Point Battery thundered a 13-gun salute. The Hon
ourable Mr Commissioner JT Bigge Esq. was back in town. A letter from Macquarie was waiting for him, advising of the project’s cessation. Bigge was quick to reply, expressing satisfaction in the governor’s ‘ready compliance with the remonstrance & protest’. He held out the ‘expectation however remote & contingent’ that Macquarie may at last be giving priority to those buildings the commissioner thought it his ‘duty to enumerate’.7

  Bigge again conceded that ‘two Churches are absolutely necessary’ but stated candidly that Greenway’s proposal was ‘absurd’. If a less expensive structure were adopted, then the ‘principal objection would cease’, yet the commissioner remained fearful of an unruly convict workforce:

  I cannot admit the expediency of encouraging in any manner the increase in population in the Town of Sydney or of attracting to it any larger portion of Inhabitants than now is contained in it. I am quite clear … that the accumulation of Convicts in a Town is the worst possible mode of providing for them …

  With Macquarie and Greenway’s St Andrew’s Church defunct, the site lay dormant for a further 17 years. Then in May 1837, Governor Richard Bourke laid the foundation stone for a far less grand church set back from the alignment of George Street as it exists today, and to the west of where Greenway’s building had begun. The obscure architect James Hume designed the new church, but the project was taken over in the early 1840s by the renowned Edmund Blacket, who completed what ultimately became St Andrew’s Cathedral. It was not even a shadow of Salisbury, but St Andrew’s was nonetheless an assured and stylish expression of Gothic-revival architecture.

  What Greenway might have thought of Blacket’s building can only be imagined, but on two occasions in the last months of his life, he reflected in the pages of The Australian on what might have been – part fantasy, part justification, and yes, perhaps more than a little ‘absurd’. In November 1836, on hearing of the project’s resurrection, he put on record a description of his ‘Metropolitan Church’ for all to judge.

  Greenway described how he had intended training 60 or more youths as masons, carpenters and joiners, plasterers and bricklayers, and ‘half a dozen lads in the higher branches of architecture, modelling, and a study of the fine arts’.8 They would in time ‘prove of much more value to the Colonists than the mere value of the building’. There was no danger to the moral virtue of the convict artisan in Greenway’s town. But alas, the ‘ill-timed interference of J.T. Bigge, Esq.’ had put paid to such aspirations. Ever the dreamer, Greenway felt that, despite the passage of so many years, it was not too late to make a start on his church. He would ‘raise a building in a pure chaste style … that it may prove a credit to the Mother Country, and exalt the respectability of the Colonists’.

  Finally, at the time the foundation stone for Hume’s church was laid by Governor Bourke, Greenway sketched his dreams of an entire ecclesiastical precinct ‘about six hundred feet long and three hundred feet broad … and planted out in the modern way of landscape gardening, as many of the squares are now in London, enclosed by an elegant rail fence’. This spacious plaza would encompass the ‘Cathedral in the Gothic Style, the Bishop’s Residence, a Library, Divinity School, Museum, with Offices, &c., in a corresponding style of architecture similar to Colleges in Oxford or Cambridge’. On rambled Greenway, his prose screaming for a full stop or two, describing the ‘cloistered quadrangle’ and the placement of this ‘superb pile of building[s] standing in the centre of a large oblong square of regular and well-built houses according to the intention of Governor Macquarie’.

  But as ever, the forces of ignorance and envy had destroyed the civilising efforts of ‘His Excellency’ and his architect:

  Those liberal views of His Excellency … were shamefully disappointed by the narrow ideas of a few prejudiced individuals who could form no idea of the design, and who appear with their opinions to have so operated upon the understanding of the commissioner as to cause him to change his mind, who instead of giving his promised support … put a stop to this building and the public works in general, under the notion that they were unnecessary and too grand for this infant Colony …9

  Perhaps Greenway’s cathedral spires grew taller and his town plan ever grander as his end drew near. They would, of course, only ever be cathedrals in the sky.

  From the sacred to the profane: if creating a grand setting for the feeding of Sydney’s souls proved a dispiriting and fruitless endeavour for Macquarie and Greenway, even the provision of proper facilities for bringing food to the corporeal body proved unnecessarily difficult.

  By September 1820 Commissioner Bigge was bypassing Macquarie and issuing instructions directly to Greenway. What he deemed to be essential buildings, and in what order they were to be started or finished, were now entirely at his direction. Bigge wrote to Greenway, he said, ‘in conformity to the request of Governor Macquarie’, outlining his priorities for public buildings. Fifth on his list was a ‘Market house at Sydney’, for which Bigge foresaw:

  [A] Centre Building for the Residence of the Clerk of the Market, Scale Room, and room for a Constable, with an arcade extending on each side 25 feet in width supported by wooden Pillars, for the Protection of Vegetables, Fruit, Butter and Eggs, and samples of Grain – surrounded with a Paling [fence] and with 3 Entrances …10

  Inevitably, the commissioner’s concept of a marketplace was soon at odds with Greenway’s, and possibly with Macquarie’s as well.

  The earliest days of the colony had been fraught with shortages of basic commodities and shadowed by starvation. Partly to encourage communal self-reliance, Arthur Phillip had relaxed restrictions on the sale of surplus produce, and in 1790 an informal market had sprung up at Sydney Cove. But it was not until some 16 years later, in 1806, that Governor Bligh created Sydney’s first organised marketplace at The Rocks. In 1810, as part of his early flurry of planning and regulatory action, Macquarie ordered the relocation of Bligh’s market to a more appropriate site. In late September Macquarie issued a decree aimed at preventing price manipulation and other shady practices,11 while the Sydney Gazette reported that:

  His Excellency … having fixed upon and allotted a centrical [sic] and commodious Place in the Town of Sydney for holding the public Market in, [and] naming the said Place ‘Market Square’ … commands and directs that the Market shall be accordingly removed to the new place … on Thursday next, the 25th Instant …12

  Macquarie called for accommodation for the clerk of the market and his assistant, a ‘Store for the Reception of all kinds of Grain, Goods, Merchandize … and Stalls for the Convenience of such Persons as may bring any Articles for Sale there’, as well as pens for livestock.

  Close to the St Andrew’s site, Macquarie’s market was bounded by George, York, Druitt and Market streets. And with most of the colony’s produce arriving by sea, it was convenient to Cockle Bay, where a new wharf was built. The market was also close to yet another example of the viceroy’s improving hand – the road west, and its connection to the farming districts around Parramatta and the Hawkesbury settlements beyond.

  To Macquarie, the relocated market made sound planning and economic sense, and in his usual way, Greenway concurred. Yet when it came time to consider replacements for the first temporary structures erected on the new market site, the architect imagined much more than a saleyard and utilitarian buildings for the exchange of agricultural produce.

  Harking back to the embellished version of his Carmarthen Market House sent to impress Macquarie on his first arrival in Sydney, Greenway envisaged a building that would serve as a trading hub for the whole colony. With its upper storey set aside for public meetings, the building would be a centre of civic pride for the growing and prosperous commercial centre of New South Wales. Perhaps Greenway even dreamt of something akin to the great town halls of Europe’s trading powers, the Dutch or the Flemish, with their civic pride firmly grasped in the hand of commerce and progress.

  On 28 September 1820, the same day Bigge sent instructions to Greenway,
Macquarie noted that the ‘New Buildings, and alterations, proposed to be made in the Market Place were planned and settled upon this morning; the Commiss.r [sic] being present and approving of the same’.13 Two months later, Macquarie again noted in a memorandum that ‘The Market House being commenced upon … is to go on as fast as possible’.14

  Whatever Greenway dreamt of, it, like so much else, did not accord with the blinkered vision of the commissioner. In his unhappy dealings with Major John Ovens, George Druitt’s successor as engineer, Greenway complained in 1822 that parts of his plan were ‘utterly rejected’ by Bigge, who thought dismissively that ‘common iron sheds on pillars of wood’ would suffice ‘for a colony like this’.15

  Taking as usual to the pages of The Australian, the architect continued to mourn yet another missed opportunity. There, he described his scheme for a marketplace and town hall with ‘shops and offices, opening toward the street … [and] every convenience considered and laid down for any future improvement internally’. The commissioner, however, ‘thought the country was not in a state to allow of a town hall, &c. &c. &c.’ Greenway continued, barely masking his contempt for Bigge when noting that ‘in consequence the building … was desired to be finished with a dome, which I was desired to design, to give it some appearance of respectability’. But this ‘respectability’ was no concession to the architect’s taste by Bigge; a silk purse could never be made from an architectural sow’s ear, and without the town hall ‘the dome designed by me was very different from the one carried into effect’. In short, Greenway thought the dome as built ‘only fit to decorate the Temple of Cloacina’ – Venus Cloacina being the Roman goddess of the sewer.

  Under Governor Bourke, the temporary sheds were finally demolished in the 1830s and the then government architect, Mortimer Lewis, altered Greenway’s market place to provide accommodation for the Central Police Station. Four new market buildings more akin to Bigge’s ‘common iron sheds’ were also built. With the town expanding, the noisome livestock trade was moved further south along George Street, and the corn and hay markets relocated the short distance to the district whose name endures as a reminder of the bustling trade that once took place there.