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ARCHITECT AND BUILDING
St Canice’s Church, in Roslyn Street near to the
centre of King’s Cross, now serves a distinct parish, Elizabeth Bay, in
the Catholic archdiocese of Sydney. When built in 1888 it was as a second
church for the Sacred Heart Parish, Darlinghurst, and John Bede Barlow
(1860-1924) was the architect commissioned to design it. Although lacking
the tower that was originally intended to complete it1 the
building otherwise stands today as it was planned, not having undergone
major alterations since it was constructed. It offers a clear-cut and
telling sample, not merely of Barlow’s earliest ecclesiastical work but,
arguably also, of the Barlow style at its purest.
John Barlow is probably best remembered for his
promotion of the architectural profession in Australia.2 A protégé,
working associate and friend of John Horbury Hunt’s, he was predictably
drawn into the affairs of the Institute of Architects of New South Wales
at an early stage of his career—this being the body of which Hunt was
once accused (by Victorian rivals) of being ‘perpetual president’.3
Barlow did in fact succeed Hunt in that presidency in 1897, but the
forceful leadership he then went on to provide proved the man’s worth.
This at a point when such things as a national association of architects
and chairs of architecture in universities were beginning to be mooted and
the profession needed its publicists. Being something of a writer Barlow
emerged as one of those, becoming first editor of his institute’s
journal in 1904 as well as contributing frequently to other publications.
In addition to this, his input into the planning of the City of Sydney
from around 1900 onwards was notable and is well recognised these days.4
As all this might suggest, Barlow had ideas,
some of which challenged accepted ways. If, as Herman felt,5 his
buildings did not always fully embody their designer’s known rejection
of much Victorian ornamentation, a few certainly did and there are good
grounds for claiming that St Canice’s is one example of that. Because of
the site, much costly escavation was needed but the plan turned this to
good purpose by providing generous spaces underneath the church, which
were eventually used to house the beginnings of a parish school. However
to achieve as much, the church proper, a brick and stone structure, was
trimmed of excess—to great effect. Outside, the western (or south-western?)side
which fronts Roslyn Street offers a fine example of the ‘harmonious
blending of brick and stone’ and ‘more honest treatment of
materials’ which Barlow championed, the three porches there also bearing
out his (and Ruskin’s) point, that shadow can sometimes be a more
valuable adjunct than detail’ in a building. Inside are the large masses
of contrasting colour that this architect admired, achieved through his
use of the white brick, set over against the stained timber and stone. The
resulting softness, along with the overall simplicity of form, would seem
to explain why from the outset generations of worshippers have spoken
feelingly of the church’s beauty, using words like ‘chaste’ to
describe it. The design has also proved durable, catering for differings
demands, even the changed liturgies of recent times, most successfully.6
Compared with other Barlow churches in
Sydney—those, say, at Marrickville, Paddington or Rose Bay—St
Canice’s more than holds its own in terms of pure clarity of purpose.
And in its setting in present-day King’s Cross the building has to be
seen (to use one of Barlow’s own expressions) as ‘unregarded gold’
amid ‘the dross’.7
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CIRCLE
OF PATRONAGE
In
respect to the church’s construction, there were several unusual
features to the patronage the project enjoyed. On the clerical side, the
dedication of the building to Saint Can ice—the monk in whose honour the
medieval cathedral of Ossory in Kilkenny was named—must have been
decided on by 1886, and that move can only have been made for one of two
reasons. It may have been intended as a tribute to the new Catholic leader
who reached Sydney in 1884. For prior to his arrival, Archbishop (now
Cardinal) Patrick Moran was Bishop of Ossory and his devotion to figures
like Canice and other early Irish saints was well known. Or alternatively,
and more probably, the move was made because Moran himself proposed it. In
either case the naming amounted to another of the many signals being given
at the time that English influence had been routed through the
Irishman’s appointment and that Sydney’s (mainly Irish) Catholics had
at last found the ecclesiastical leadership they needed. An added message
was that the ways of the Church at home in Ireland were increasingly going
to prevail locally. Barlow’s design is even said to have had stylistic
references to the Kilkenny cathedral in it. The attribution became doubly
significant as time went by since Kilkenny influence grew to be very
powerful in clerical ranks in Sydney, both under Moran and his successor,
Archbishop Kelly. St Canice’s Church deserves to be seen, therefore, as
a monument to an important turning in style and authority which occurred
in Australian Catholic clerical affairs in the 1880s.
The
church’s beginnings also point to deeper and more interesting
developments in the life of the wider Australian Catholic community. Where
similar buildings normally resulted from planning at headquarters, St
Canice’s was more the outcome of some remarkable lay philanthropy. The
full story of that generosity, on the part of the Hughes family whose
residence, ‘Kincoppal’, was then within the bounds of the Darlinghurst
parish, has yet to be told authoritatively. It appears, however, that it
was John Hughes’ purchase of the land in Roslyn Street and offer of it
to the Sydney archdiocese, just prior to his death in 1885, that triggered
the erection of St Canice’s. Making the building even more secure was
the promise the widowed Mrs Hughes and her family then later gave to meet
about half its construction cost. Yet that too was but the beginning of
Hughes benefactions to St Canice’s over the longer term. In effect the
money given all but created and furnished a church, and ultimately brought
a distinct parish into existence. This would have been common enough in
earlier centuries overseas, where aristocratic families may also on
occasions have provided the land or endowments required to man that church
with its own clergyman. But in Catholic circles at least, it was something
rare in nineteenth-century Australia.
Aged
about 14, John Hughes, the eldest son, had come to Sydney from Roscommon
with his storekeeper parents, Thomas and Maria, and five other brothers
and sisters in January 1840. Patrick O’Farrell locates this group with a
dozen or so similarly placed Irish middling class families who arrived in
the 1840s. They were a first trickle of skilled migrants from Ireland that
was soon to become ‘an Irish flood’, he claims, most of them going on
to be ‘the core figures of the Irish Catholic presence in the public
life of New South Wales’.8 This
last was certainly true of John Hughes himself over four decades, and then
possibly even more so of the network of heirs and kinsmen (and women) who
made their own running subsequently: his sons of course, John and Thomas
(eventually Sir Thomas); a son-in-law John Lane Mullins; or among more
distant relatives, people like John Bede Barlow himself and his remarkable
wife Mary Kate Barlow.9
Typically
such figures would remain proud of their Irish background and be devout
members of the Catholic Church. But while likely to be Home Rulers, as
O’Farrell suggests, they were also highly respectful of the British
Empire, and admirers of England.10 Their affection for the
English Benedictine archbishops in Sydney would have been strong. Men
like
Barlow and Lane Mullins had been educated by the Benedictines at
Sydney’s Lyndhurst; and while John Hughes’ own sons were sent to the
Jesuits at Stonyhurst in England for their final schooling, moving on from
there to London University, he himself was a stout supporter of Archbishop
Vaughan’s schemes for providing quality Catholic education in Sydney
itself, and later became a legendary benefactor of the Sisters of the
Sacred Heart and their Sydney schools for girls. Such a background made
for difficulties with the lrishness of some local clergy, and the brand of
nationalism favoured by certain Irish Catholic laity, the measure of these
differences emerging very clearly during World War I (in which so many
young members of the Hughes clan both served and died, as can be seen from
those honoured in windows both in St Canice’s Church and St Mary’s
Cathedral), and especially the conscription debates.
It
might be argued that the stamp of such early patrons has left its mark on
St Canice’s—which, in any case, because of the very mixed area it
serves, has long tended to be a haven both for the aspiring and the
deprived, or those whose devotion might be tempered with a
more-than-normal degree of independence. In addition, the actual status of
the church itself over most of its existence so far may have contributed
to this same end. At the beginning it served as a chapel of ease for the
parish of Darlinghurst. By Archbishop Kelly’s time it was serviced from
St Mary’s Cathedral itself. And it was only when Sydney’s first
Australian archbishop, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Norman Gilroy, come on
the scene, in 1940, that a presbytery was built and resident priests were
provided for the church. Even then it did not become the centre of an
ordinary parish, being controlled by an administrator until very recent
times. The arrival of the Jesuit Fathers there in the 1 980s has
consolidated that note of difference.
Kevin
Walsh
April
1999
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