ST JOHN’S CHURCH

ADELAIDE     ANGLICAN

PAUL SCOTT

HISTORY

 

Years Built: 1841; 1887

Address: 379 Halifax Street, Adelaide SA 5000

St. John’s is an Anglican church at the south-east corner of the City of Adelaide dating from 1841. The first building was demolished in 1886 and its replacement opened in 1887.

In 1840 the first Anglican church building, Trinity Church, was erected on North Terrace, Adelaide, but soon demands arose for a second place of worship to cater for members in and around Unley and the foothills, and to that end Osmond Gilles donated to the Church Building Society of South Australia half an acre of his section 581 on Halifax Street near the corner of East Terrace and South Terrace. The location could not have been much further from Trinity Church without leaving the city square, and between the two was little more than rough scrub and tracks that became a quagmire in winter. For many years after its establishment it was known colloquially as ‘St John's in the Wilderness’.

On 19 October 1839 the foundation stone was laid by Governor Gawler. The foundations had been laid using £540 that had been collected in Adelaide, then for over a year little progress was made due to a shortage of funds. Generous friends in England raised some more and the church, which seated around 300, was erected for around £2,100. The first service was held on 24 October 1841, conducted by the Reverend James Farrell and the Colonial Chaplain Charles Beaumont Howard. The parsonage was a Manning prefabricated cottage brought out by Gilles as his first residence, dubbed ‘Hexagon Cottage’, which sported a brass door-knocker.

Farrell inherited the title of Colonial Chaplain, meaning he had to take over Trinity Church and in December 1843 closed the doors of St John’s for services, weddings and baptisms excepted, until a replacement could be found. That man was the Reverend William Woodstock, who came out on the barque Emu with the Rev. James Pollitt (both reputed Puseyites), and took his first service at St John’s on 17 May 1846.

In 1848 an organ, built by Samuel Marshall, was installed.

In May 1849 Woodcock transferred to the newly completed Christ Church, North Adelaide and Matthew Hale, Archdeacon of Adelaide, took over St John’s. Hale was followed by a succession of priests, none of whom succeeded in generating much interest, and only one (the Reverend Denzil Ibbetson) stayed for any length of time. The church was lit by gas in 1869.

The second church

The Rev. F. Slaney Poole was elected in June 1874 and inducted on 4 September. The parish hall was built by John Wark in 1880 to a design of Daniel Garlick; St John’s Grammar School opened there and, with additional classrooms, operated until 1942. Poole was also responsible for building the parsonage in 1884 and replacing the original church building, which had been declared unsafe by the City Surveyor. The adjoining block 582 was purchased and the old building demolished in November 1886. The foundation stone of the new building was laid by Bishop Kennion on 14 May 1887 and the structure erected by Walter Rogers to a design by R. G. Holwell at a cost of £3,000. Kennion consecrated the completed church on 6 October 1887 and the first services were held on 9 October 1887. A mission church, St Mary Magdalene’s, was built on nearby Moore Street (between Angas and Carrington streets) using material recovered from the old building and opened in 1887.

Canon Poole resigned in 1895, and Canon W. S. Hopcraft, from Port Augusta, was appointed in his place. He found the church’s finances in a precarious state, with an annual income barely £500, and the church debt of nearly £2,000. During his thirteen years of rectorship he managed to double the church’s income and reduce the church debt by nearly £1,000, while spending nearly £2,000 on improvements, notably an organ by Josiah Dodd, which cost £800. It was renovated in 1996 by George Stephens and is highly regarded by enthusiasts.

Society of the Sacred Mission

In 1978, the then Rector, the Rev Don Wallace, was approached by the Australian Provincial of the Society of the Sacred Mission with the proposal that the Society take over the parish on Wallace’s retirement. The Society had a theological college and priory house in Crafers, St Michael’s House, but it moved the students to St John’s in the years before 1983, when St Michael’s House was destroyed by the Ash Wednesday bushfires.