our_history

Description

Saint Thomas' comprises a complex of church buildings: the 1859 timber Gothic church, 1900 brick church, a brick hall that appears to date from the 1940/50s, and a Victorian house at the rear (at 38-40 Pyke Street).

The early timber church is located behind the present church (relocated to this position?). The building retains a number of interesting features - narrow Gothic windows with timber label moulds, bead-edged weatherboards, and pressed metal wall linings internally.

The 1900 church has a distinctly domestic character and scale, with Edwardian (or Federation) design elements such as the gabled-roof forms, ridge tiles, decorative bargeboards and half timbering to the gable, face brick work with rendered dressings around windows and on buttresses. The window detailing is unusual, avoiding the more common Gothic; instead paired round-head arched windows are set below a squared label mould. A recent building has been constructed immediately west of the 1900 church, and is attached to the facade of the church (which is now entered through this new building). The design of the new building is in no way sympathetic to the character of the 1900 church. Another recent change is the construction of a small 'shelter' between the church and Synnot Street. While it uses Edwardian detailing, it also partly obscures the church.

The brick church hall is a simple, gable-roofed building with a tiled roof. The main facade has a simple symmetry, with three nine-paned windows and a cross symbol near the peak of the gable. A recent heating flue interrupts this symmetry. A link has been constructed between the hall and the 1859 church. A plaque records that the hall was dedicated on 2/6/1956.

'The house at the rear appears to date from the 1880/90s, but has been externally altered, with external wall and roof cladding and loss of its original verandah impacting on its appearance. The overall form, windows and front entry, and chimneys are Victorian.

History

The Melbourne architects, Inskip and Butler, who specialised in the design of Arts and Crafts buildings, designed this red brick church, constructed in 1900. This firm designed St. Alban's at Armadale, completed in 1898, described in a recent study of Victorian churches as "perhaps the first really up-to-date church in the colony for thirty years", and the first in the Arts and Crafts style.

St. Thomas' at Werribee replaced an earlier timber Anglican Church, which has been retained at the rear of the site. This is said to have been built in 1859. Thomas Chirnside donated 100 pounds towards the erection of this first church.

The Chirnside family of Werribee Park was associated also with the present church. On 24 October 1900 John Percy Chirnside, Thomas' nephew, laid the foundation stone of the new brick church. The designing architects, Inskip and Butler, had other associations with the Chirnsides. In the same year, John Percy's father, Andrew Spencer Chirnside, commissioned them to design his Newminster Park residence near Camperdown. It is regarded as a fine example of the use of the Arts and Crafts style.

Walter Richmond Butler, who became "the darling of the Melbourne and Western District Establishment," employed the Arts and Crafts idiom for both his ecclesiastical and domestic buildings. Born in Pensford, England, Butler came under the influence of the British architects and craftsmen who helped to establish the Arts and Crafts movement last century. This movement, founded on the writings of William Morris, became influential in Victoria into the 1920s. It "emphasised craftsmanship and the honest expression of materials and construction". [8) Butler, H. H. Kemp and Robert Haddon were among its earliest practitioners in Victoria. Dr. Miles Lewis in a recent study of Victoria's churches includes a number of examples of what he describes as "Arts and Crafts eclectic", a 20th century style in which the Arts and Crafts movement was "shorn of its traditional medieval associations".

Butler arrived in Melbourne in 1888 and commenced practice the following year in partnership with Beverley Usher. In 1895 Butler became Diocesan Architect to the Church of England. He formed a partnership with the architect, George Charles Inskip, in 1896, a partnership that lasted until 1906. The firm was responsible for a number of notable works, mainly in the Arts and Crafts style. They designed brick churches at Armadale, Daylesford, East Melbourne, Maffra, Merrigum and Werribee in Victoria, and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Not all these churches were in the Arts and Crafts style. The Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Annunciation at 186-196 Victoria Parade, East Melbourne, for example, was designed in 1900-1902 in a style described at the time as "Byzantine of the Orthodox Character". It is "the oldest purpose-built Greek Orthodox Church in Victoria".

Inskip and Butler's major Arts and Crafts church is St. Alban's at Armadale (1898). This is notable for "its striking facade incorporating a large five-light lancet window, flanking octagonal turrets and arch, with brickwork in diaper patterns". The church also has a "distinctive brick interior".

Further research and an architectural inspection of the interior of St. Thomas' at Werribee is needed to determine the significance of this building within Inskip and Butler's church work, particularly the brick churches designed by the firm in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

Statement of Significance

St. Thomas' has at least local, and possibly higher, architectural significance as an example of the early work of the firm of Inskip and Butler, which specialised in designing brick churches in the Arts and Crafts style. The present church is a major component in a complex that includes the 1900 brick church, an earlier 1859 timber church, a 1940s/50s hall, and an altered Victorian house. The complex has at least local significance as a church complex retaining a sequence of development stages, including an early church (possibly the earliest remaining in the municipality) and reflecting important local historical associations with the Chirnside family of Werribee Park.

___________________________________________________________________________________

top