St James' Church, King Street – Queens Square, Sydney – Greenway's Courthouse That Became a Church – 1819 to Today

Come up out of St James Station by the Queens Square exit and the first thing you see is a plain brick church with a copper spire, looking across at Hyde Park Barracks. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It's the oldest church still standing in the middle of Sydney, though, and it was designed by a convicted forger and built by convicts. Before that, it was supposed to be a courthouse. The station is even named after it.

St James' Church from Queens Square. Photo: Ymblanter, 2024, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Greenway and Macquarie

Governor Lachlan Macquarie wanted Sydney to look like a proper town, and his architect was Francis Greenway, a Bristol architect who had been transported for forgery. Greenway had already designed the Hyde Park Barracks for convicts, built from 1817 to 1819. He then designed a new building to stand opposite it, on the other side of what became Queens Square.

That building was meant to be a courthouse. Macquarie's real plan for a church was a huge cathedral on George Street, where St Andrew's is now. Then Commissioner John Thomas Bigge arrived from London to look into Macquarie's government and spending. Macquarie and Bigge laid the foundation stone together on 7 October 1819. By February 1820, less than four months after he arrived, Bigge was pushing hard for the courthouse to be turned into a church instead. The cathedral was shelved, a steeple was added to the west end of Greenway's design, and the school buildings next door were used as the court. Those school buildings later became part of the Supreme Court in King Street.

Why did Bigge change his mind? The Supreme Court of NSW's own history of the King Street court complex has a dry answer. It notes that three years later his brother-in-law and secretary, a wine merchant called Thomas Hobbes Scott, was made Archdeacon.

St James' Church, painted by Frederick Garling. Frederick Garling, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Built by convicts, 1820 to 1824

The State Heritage Register says the church was commissioned in 1819, designed by Greenway and built between 1820 and 1824 with convict labour. The walls are local brick, divided into bays by brick pilasters, with tall round-arched windows. There's a Doric portico on each side. Greenway lined the church up with his barracks across the square, and the two buildings share the same proportions, pilasters and gables. J. M. Freeland's history of Australian architecture counts it among Greenway's finest works.

The first service was held in the unfinished church on 6 January 1822, the feast of the Epiphany. The Sydney Gazette expected that the church would hold 2,000 people once it was fitted out. The senior chaplain, Samuel Marsden, consecrated it on 11 February 1824. Its first minister was Richard Hill, and St James' got its own parish in 1835.

The spire stands 46 metres high, and before the tall buildings went up it was used as a landmark by ships coming up the harbour. Varney Parkes replaced it in copper in 1894, using copper that had already been weathered so it wouldn't look too different. It was fully restored between 2008 and 2010. The spire was on the old paper ten-dollar note from 1966 to 1993, alongside other Greenway buildings.

St James' in 1836, from a lithograph by Robert Russell printed by John Gardner Austin. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The interior in 1831, with the three-decker pulpit and box pews. William Bradridge, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The convicts' gallery

In the early years the church was laid out for preaching. A three-decker pulpit stood in the middle of the east end, with box pews facing each other across the aisle. Pews were rented out, and the poor sat in the free seats. The heritage listing says the western gallery, which is still there, was built for the convicts from the barracks across the square.

John Verge added a vestry at the east end in 1832 in Greenway's style, and galleries were added along the north and east walls. Around 1900 the architect John Buckeridge rebuilt the interior for the rector William Carr Smith, an Anglo-Catholic. He added an apse for the altar, raised the chancel, and took out the box pews and the north and east galleries. Only the red cedar gallery at the west end survives. The coffered ceiling dates from 1882.

The interior today, looking towards the chancel. Photo: Sardaka, 2007, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Westminster Abbey of the South

The walls are covered in memorials. There are more than 300, and they're the reason St James' has been called "the Westminster Abbey of the South". The first was for Commodore Sir James Brisbane, who died in Sydney on his way to take command in South America. It was carved by Sir Francis Chantrey and put up in 1830. The tablet for the explorer Edmund Kennedy is the only memorial in the church that shows an Aboriginal man, Jackey Jackey, who was with Kennedy when he was killed. There are also memorials to the Macleays, and a window for Keith Mackellar, brother of the poet Dorothea Mackellar, who was killed in the Boer War at 20. Hardy Wilson designed the First World War memorial, dedicated on 14 June 1922. In 2014 the Governor, Marie Bashir, unveiled a plaque for Arthur Phillip, like one placed in Westminster Abbey that same year.

The memorial to the actress Nellie Stewart, one of more than 300 in the church. Photo: Roger Garland, 2014, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The crypt and the Children's Chapel

Under the church is a big brick crypt with vaulted ceilings. It has been used for all sorts of things over the years. Richard Hill's widow lived down there, it housed the parish schools, and in both world wars it was a shelter and hostel for servicemen. One source says more than 30,000 Allied servicemen were given a bed there during the Second World War. Since 1954 the Sister Freda Mission has served meals to the homeless from the crypt. The mission started with the Sisters of the Church in 1899.

The best-known room in the crypt is the Chapel of St Mary and the Angels, better known as the Children's Chapel. It opened in 1929 as a chapel for little children. All four walls and the ceiling are painted with murals designed by the writer and artist Ethel Anderson. They were painted by the Turramurra Wall Painters Union, a group of modernist painters she started in 1927. The murals were conserved in 1992–93. Geoffrey Danks restored the crypt itself in 1977–78.

The brick vaults of the crypt. Photo: Whiteghost.ink, 2010, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Music

St James' has had music since the 1820s. Its first organ, by John Gray of London, was played for the first time on 7 October 1827, and The Australian reported an overflowing congregation. James Pearson became choir leader the same year. Isaac Nathan, often called Australia's first composer, set up a musical society at the church in the 1840s. The Dictionary of Sydney's entry on him by Graeme Skinner covers that period.

In recent years the parish ordered a new organ from Dobson Pipe Organ Builders in Iowa. The workshop burned down on 15 June 2021 with the organ inside. Dobson started again, and the new Bicentennial Pipe Organ was dedicated at the church's patronal festival in July 2024, the ABC and the parish reported. There's also a ring of eight bells. The tenor was cast in 1795 by John Rudhall and came from St Paul's Church in Bristol. The other seven were cast by John Taylor of Loughborough in 2002 and dedicated on 27 July 2003. They're named after people linked to the church, including Francis Greenway, Lachlan Macquarie, Mary Reibey and Sister Freda. One is named Eora, after the traditional owners of the land.

The Mears bell, the old service bell cast at Whitechapel in 1820. Photo: Whiteghost.ink, 2011, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Hyde Park Barracks across the square

St James' and Hyde Park Barracks belong together. Greenway designed both, and he lined them up across the square. The church was built with convict labour, and its gallery was meant for the convicts. The heritage listing treats them, with the old Supreme Court and the Rum Hospital buildings, as one of the most important groups of colonial buildings in the country. The barracks is on the World Heritage List as part of the Australian Convict Sites. In the middle of the 20th century the church and its neighbours were threatened with demolition, and the eighth rector, Philip Micklem, was an early champion of saving Sydney's colonial buildings, the Australian Dictionary of Biography says.

Queens Square around 1930, with St James' on the left. Photographer unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Visiting

St James' was listed on the State Heritage Register on 3 September 2004, as item 01703. It still holds the annual service that opens the legal year, when the judges come over from the courts next door in their wigs. The church is open most days, and the crypt and Children's Chapel are worth asking about. Have a look at the convicts' gallery at the back, then cross the square and stand at the barracks gate. You'll see how carefully Greenway lined the two buildings up.

St James' Church, King Street, 2021. Photo: Kgbo, 2021, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Where this came from

• NSW State Heritage Register: St James' Anglican Church (SHR 01703), as reproduced in the Wikipedia article on St James' Church, Sydney.
• Kenneth Cable and Rosemary Annable, St James' 1824–1999, Churchwardens of St James', 1999; and A Short Story of Historic St James', 1963 (both cited, not read).
• The Sunday Times, 5 October 1919, p. 23, "Hundredth Anniversary of Famous Sydney Church" (Trove, cited).
• Supreme Court of NSW: King Street court complex history (cited).
• J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia – A History, 1968 (cited).
• The Australian, 10 October 1827, p. 3 (Trove, cited), on the first organ.
• ABC News, 23 December 2023, on the Dobson organ and the fire.
• K. J. Cable, "Micklem, Philip Arthur", Australian Dictionary of Biography (cited).
• Graeme Skinner, "Nathan, Isaac", Dictionary of Sydney (cited).