A Forger's Progress

by Alasdair McGregor

  The Sydney City Council took over the markets in the 1840s and eventually demolished Macquarie’s complex in the 1890s to make way for the Romanesque pomp of the Queen Victoria Markets, designed by the Sydney city architect George McRae. And although built in an architectural idiom far removed from Greenway’s spare Georgian classicism, the Queen Victoria Building, and the high-Victorian wedding-cake ornament of Sydney Town Hall across George Street, at last fulfilled the original architect’s civic aspirations. No longer topped by a meagre dome that even its architect thought fit only for an outhouse, the multiple coppersheathed domes of the second complex on Macquarie’s market site seemed almost to be inflated by the overweening confidence of the Victorian era.

  FRAGMENTS OF A PLAN: ST JAMES’ AND THE SUPREME COURT, 1819–27

  Immediately following Commissioner Bigge’s swearing in at Government House on 7 October 1819, Judge Advocate John Wylde, the commissioner himself, and a ‘great many other Gentlemen’ strolled the short distance up the hill with Macquarie to the ‘Scite [sic] of the New Court House in Hyde Park, for the purpose of laying the Foundation Stone thereof ’.1 Greenway later claimed that by this time he already had the ear of the recently arrived commissioner and fully explained his ‘sentiments on the subject of Architecture’. Greenway ‘made so strong an impression [that] without hesitation, [the commissioner] fixed upon a day to lay the foundation stone of the court-house’.2 No doubt, like Macquarie, Greenway felt comforted at that moment that here was a man sympathetic to all his dreams.

  After the ceremony, the gentlemen then crossed Macquarie Street to the nearby convict barracks and made a tour of inspection. According to the governor, the ‘Commissioner expressed himself highly gratified’ by what he saw. Greenway’s swelling chest must have strained the buttons of his waistcoat as the august party toured his handiwork, the little man all the while explaining his ‘sentiments’ on architecture.

  Perhaps he tried to explain how the new courthouse – together with the convict barracks – was carefully sited as part of a larger formal town plan. Unappreciated by Mr Bigge, and lost perhaps on others in the party, such a Georgian town plan survives today as fragments of what might have been had the viceroy and his architect been allowed unfettered licence. Greenway recalled that:

  The design of the [courthouse] … was intended … to correspond in appearance, as to [the] elevation toward the Park, with the barrack, and to be connected together at the end of Macquarie-street by a screen of the Doric order, which would correspond with a Doric Colonnade Araeostyle communicating with all the necessary offices and conveniences of the main building, the court-house, which stood in the centre of the Ionic order, with a portico toward the street, forty feet high, on six Ionic pillars, similar to the temple of Minerva.3

  Bigge may have approved of the barracks, but the courthouse was soon to be stamped with the commissioner’s authority, and not Macquarie’s. And despite Greenway’s insistence that ‘all parties’ expressed their ‘high approbation’ at the time of the ceremony, the niceties of town planning, or the use of porticos 40 feet high ‘similar to the temple of Minerva’, were of no concern to the commissioner. Before he left for Hobart the following February, Bigge ‘strongly recommended’ to Macquarie that as a consequence of his disapproval of the grand church in George Street, the courthouse then under construction be converted into Sydney’s second church.4

  Greenway, however, remembered a quite different version of events. He recalled that having stopped the ‘Metropolitan Church’, Bigge had a foundation dug for a new church ‘by his request next to the court-house in the Park’. With the trenches complete, the masons went about their work, building the church upon a ‘plain principle, as advised by his Reverend Friend’ – undoubtedly Samuel Marsden. But then Bigge ‘again changed his mind, and caused the court-house … to be turned into St James’s Church, expecting to hear a sermon preached in it before he quitted the colony’.5 Ellis speculated as to the secrets of Bigge’s ‘oscillating mind’: ‘Had the Governor and his architect known the real reason for Bigge’s haste to have the church finished … they might have been in a stronger position to argue – or again, having regard to the state of Government morality in London, they might not’.6

  Upon his return to England, Bigge’s relative-cum-secretary, Thomas Hobbes Scott, advised the Colonial Office, reporting on schools and the need of chaplains in New South Wales. On the urging of Bigge, Scott took holy orders in 1821. From wine merchant to priest, his concerns had assuredly gone from port wine to the port of heaven. Then in 1824, with a sweep of the ecclesiastical wand or, as Ellis put it, ‘without further sacerdotal apprenticeship’, Scott was created inaugural archdeacon of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land in the all-encompassing diocese of Calcutta. As a prelude to the anointing of an antipodean bishop, the rapidly rising Scott was to hold the highest ecclesiastical appointment in the colony.

  Doing his relative’s bidding as amanuensis had done Scott no harm at all; his rank would place him beside the lieutenant governor and he was to be paid a stipend of £2000, the same as that received by Macquarie during his ‘arduous reign’.7 Perhaps nothing much has changed in the influence-riven world of New South Wales public affairs in nearly two centuries …

  Back in Sydney, the ‘combative and uncompromising’ Scott became unpopular with certain factions of colonial society.8 In a case that had all of Sydney talking, Scott became embroiled in a bitter dispute over the rental of a family pew in St James’ with Edward Smith Hall, first secretary of the Bank of New South Wales and owner and editor of The Monitor. Hall slandered Scott in The Monitor and constables were called to maintain the tranquillity of the church. Scott had the Hall family pew locked, then boarded over. The dispute ended in court with Hall charged and convicted of criminal libel, the first such judgment against a public official in the colony. A later action saw Hall successfully sue Scott for damages. The disaffected archdeacon quit the colony in 1829.

  In June 1820, and in arguably more civil times, Scott and Bigge returned from Hobart. Two months later, Bigge reported to Lord Bathurst that the courthouse transformed to a church could be ready for worship within 18 months. Bigge also informed Bathurst that Macquarie had been instructed to ‘avoid everything that might create difficulty or Delay in its completion’.9 Such timing would also see St James’ conveniently ready for the future Archdeacon Scott’s first sermon in the colony.

  In his Report … into the State of the Colony of New South Wales, completed back in England in 1822, Bigge returned to the persistent theme of wayward convicts and their nefarious deeds. The commissioner did not want prisoners straying through the town to some distant church. He wanted to ‘concentrate operations as much as possible in one spot, and to bring them as near as possible to the convict barrack. It was partly with this view that I recommended Governor Macquarrie [sic] to convert the court-house in Hyde Park into a church’.10

  Greenway continued the tale of architectural musical chairs, recalling that ‘when the Commissioner visited the Southern settlements, Governor Macquarie then laid the foundation for the Georgian School, where the church had been begun by the Commissioner’. The ‘Georgian School’, or ‘General Public Charity School for Male and Female Children’ to give it its full title, was to ‘afford Religious and Useful Instruction to the Children of the poor’.11 Macquarie noted in his diary for Wednesday 22 March 1820 that together with the usual gathering of gentlemen at the foundation-stone ceremony were eight-year-old Lachlan and ‘all the children of the different Public Schools at Sydney amounting to 259’. The children sang an excerpt from the 78th psalm and young Lachlan placed a holey dollar and ‘some other smaller Silver Coins’ under the foundation stone, just as his father had at other such ceremonies.

  By late September 1820, Macquarie was recording in a memorandum: ‘New School-House ready for commencing the Brickwork’.12 But the short-lived school would soon be no more – at least on this tenuous site adjacent to St James’ Church. Whi
le in Van Diemen’s Land, Mr Bigge had had time to think. Inevitably, Macquarie noted on 23 November that it had been ‘Resolved at the recommendation of the Commissnr to convert the Charity School-House into a Court-House – and gave Mr. Greenway directions accordingly’.13 For ‘recommended’ read ‘ordered’. Understandably, Greenway was far from happy: ‘I remonstrated with the parties as far as I could with delicacy, upon the folly of these changes … and objected to such large buildings being crowded together … The error however was unfortunately persisted in …’14

  According to Greenway, his architectural ensemble had fallen victim to the ‘whimsical and capricious notions of a set of men totally unacquainted with architecture, or its consequences to this society …’ Thwarted at every turn he ends this particular outpouring of pent-up resentment in The Australian by quoting from Hamlet:

  Let Hercules himself, do what he may,

  The cat will mew, the dog will have his day.15

  The righteous hero (read Greenway for Hercules) may be thought of as no better than a dog, but will duly have his revenge.

  By June 1820, the tower basement of the church was complete. With a courthouse converted to a church, and plans for a church overtaken by those for a school, which in turn was supplanted by a courthouse, the displaced Georgian School was duly spun off in search of a site nearby. Such meddling must have bewildered Macquarie and Greenway. For the time being the governor maintained restraint, but one can imagine how much of Greenway’s remonstrance was delivered with ‘delicacy’. It seems hard to understand what advantage Bigge hoped to gain from such arbitrary tinkering, other than paving the way for Scott and his increasing fondness for the faith.

  Come September, Bigge outlined the next steps in his tortuous building program. Firstly, the assistant surgeon’s barrack of the hospital in Macquarie Street was to be converted into temporary courts. Upon the completion of the building now deemed a court-house next to St James’ Church, the various functions of the judiciary were to move from the surgeon’s barrack and find a permanent home there, on the corner of King and Elizabeth streets. That left the ‘Charity School’, third on Bigge’s list. At his direction, it was to be built ‘between the Convict Barrack and the New Garden, or in any other vacant space adjoining the Park, and if not there on the Hill above the Military Barrack’. Mr Bigge’s grasp of town planning, or lack of it, was on show for all to see.

  In his report, Bigge conjectured that ‘a new church [St James’] is probably by this time secured’. In his opinion, though, the church ‘would have been obtained sooner if Mr. Greenway … had not succeeded in persuading Governor Macquarrie [sic] to allow the addition of two semicircular projections in the centre of this building’. These were anathema to Bigge’s severely unadorned tastes in architecture. He conceded that one:

  might have formed an useful addition … for a vestry; but the other was constructed with so little attention to the nature of the ground and to the width of the street, that the principal object, which was that of making a large ornamental entrance, was of necessity abandoned. It was not, however, till a late period that this took place, and a large square portico was substituted, by which the character of the building will be preserved, and less encroachment will be made upon the street.

  Back in June 1820, and recently returned from Van Diemen’s Land, Bigge had written to Macquarie. Painting himself as ever the conciliator, the commissioner first voiced his deliberations on Greenway’s ‘semicircular projections’:

  To convince your Excellency … that I have not risked the total failure of any measure of immediate importance by a too pertinacious adherence to my own views I will beg leave to instance the concession I made in the plan of the new Church … Rather than risk the entire abandonment of a Plan so eminently useful … I consented to the addition of two ornamental entrances which I already perceive will greatly defeat my principal objects, & till I can explain myself will necessarily involve me in a Share of the ridicule & censure to which this addition must give rise.16

  Greenway’s generous semicircular porticos were deemed mere excrescences, and lest the good commissioner be subjected to ‘ridicule & censure’, Macquarie was persuaded to abandon work in November, noting in a memorandum that he had ‘Ordered two entrances … to be made to St James’s Church, with two Square Porticos’.17

  Watching the progress of St James’ keenly was Greenway’s nemesis, Henry Kitchen. To Kitchen’s eye, the building was too close to other structures and it also encroached on pedestrian traffic – observations with which Greenway, for once, would have wholeheartedly concurred. Probably not realising that the unfortunate crowding of buildings was a consequence of the commissioner’s own decisions, Kitchen’s eagerly proffered opinion was that the church was ‘jammed in by the new Court House’.

  For once, though, Kitchen did make one or two charitable remarks. The handsome brickwork, with its subtle contrast between generous semicircular window heads and darker coloured walls earned his admiration. ‘The execution of the work on this building is far superior to any in the colony’, Kitchen noted, and the ‘outside Bricks are extremely good – A proof of what this part of the colony is capable’.18

  But it was the structure itself rather than the church’s siting where Kitchen’s alarm rang a discordant note like a cracked church bell. He cited an ‘extraordinary deviation from all Architectural rules’, whereby the tower and steeple were in danger of toppling! Kitchen was convinced that the elliptical stone arches under the tower were badly built. In expressing his alarm to Bigge, the rival architect was convinced that the faults in the arches would lead ‘not merely to the inevitable fall of this building itself, but the consequent ruin of the building adjacent to it’.19

  In a bid to reassure the commissioner, Greenway responded by plying Bigge with a veritable treatise on the construction of arches, swamping him in technical detail. In so doing, the architect shifted some of the blame to the masons’ overseer, Ralph Oakes. In Greenway’s opinion, Oakes acted in ‘direct opposition to my wishes’, but despite certain defects ‘wilfully done, I do not apprehend any danger as the stone will last’. The St James’ steeple did not collapse, although as Ellis notes ‘the stability of St James’s continued to exercise the minds of Sydney architects for a generation’.20

  The building rose through 1821 and was roofed over without significant delay, although the timber framing of the spire did not commence until September 1822. The final task was to sheath the ‘candle snuffer’ spire in sheet copper, each chevron-shaped copper sheet stamped with the convict broad arrow to discourage theft. A copper cross atop an orb completed the steeple. On the eastfacing gable a sandstone commemorative plaque displays the inscription: ‘ST. JAMES’s CHURCH.ERECTED A.D1820. L. MACQUARIE ESQR GOVERNOR’.

  The Sydney Gazette for 11 January 1822 reported that ‘On Sunday last Divine Service was, for the first time, performed in the New Church of St. James’. The interiors of the building were still far from complete, but the assistant chaplain, William Cowper, decided to go ahead with the service. ‘We are informed’, the Gazette enthused:

  this neat, strong, and elegant building, erected for the worship of the living God, when fitted up with pews, &c. and furnished with a gallery, will accommodate above 2000 souls. The congregation of last Sunday was composed of the crown prisoners, several hundreds of whom had previously been without any means of public worship … and it is most gratifying to our feelings to be assured, that a more orderly, respectful, and attentive audience was never seen in New South Wales. – Such occasional intelligence as this, we flatter ourselves, will render Australia increasingly beloved and respected by her ever kindly considerate Parent – GREAT BRITAIN!

  Cowper’s action of staging the service in the bare shell of a church and, worse still, an unconsecrated church, drew the ire of his superior, the Reverend Samuel Marsden. Sir Thomas Brisbane had only taken over from Macquarie the month before, and Marsden saw Cowper’s action and Macquarie’s prior approval as ‘
carrying a very high hand over the Church’. Brisbane had issued an order in December countermanding Macquarie’s previous instruction, but Cowper chose to disregard it. According to Marsden, his junior chaplain (whose son was baptised William Macquarie with Lachlan and Elizabeth as his godparents) ‘had lent himself to the late Governor at all times’. For Marsden, the expected consequences of Bigge’s report could not come too soon. He even suggested that the commissioner might return to New South Wales ‘with the Supreme Power, as you would know where to exercise it at once’.21

  St James’ was finally consecrated, with a completed interior, on 11 February 1824. Marsden officiated, and the church’s first christening occurred the same day. More than five decades later, in 1882, Greenway’s fourth son, Charles Capel Greenway (1818– 1905), would come and preach at St James’. He was by then a senior churchman and the recently appointed first archdeacon of Grafton.

  How much of the original interior was built to Greenway’s design is unclear, given he was not involved in the final stages of the project. An 1831 watercolour by builder William Bradridge shows an austere setting with a flat, unadorned ceiling and rows of box pews. Later additions included mezzanine galleries and a flat-roofed vestry, together with two small porches at the eastern end of the building. The vestry was designed not by Greenway but by John Verge. In the opinion of Broadbent and Hughes, Verge’s addition, with its engaged sandstone pilasters and contrasting window heads of salmon brick, shows ‘an added elegance and refinement’.22 Yet his design is so sympathetic to Greenway’s intent that it appears indistinguishable from the original.