St Andrews Cathedral - George Street - Sydney

Beside Town Hall on George Street, St Andrew’s is the sandstone cathedral you walk past when the Saturday markets spill onto the square — the diocesan seat of Anglican Sydney and the oldest cathedral in Australia. Governor Lachlan Macquarie pushed an earlier cathedral scheme in the 1810s (Francis Greenway among those involved), but Commissioner Bigge’s inquiries and shifting priorities stopped that vision cold. A new foundation went down in 1837 under Bishop William Grant Broughton to designs by James Hume; work stalled again with only partial walls and foundations in place.

In 1842 Edmund Blacket presented his credentials to Broughton and took the project over. He redesigned the cathedral in Perpendicular Gothic, lengthened the nave and added the central tower, working largely in Sydney sandstone. The cathedral was ready for services and consecrated in 1868. The Chapter House opened in 1886, and St Andrew’s Cathedral School was founded in 1885 to supply choristers.

What you see today is Blacket’s cathedral — not Greenway’s unrealised Macquarie-era scheme. It remains the diocesan seat and a landmark of the Town Hall precinct, listed on the NSW State Heritage Register.

18 Years Later Governor Bourke Relaid Macquarie’s Stone With The Architect James Hume