St Peter’s Anglican Church and Rectory stand on Windsor Street in Richmond, one of Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s five Macquarie Towns on the Hawkesbury. On his Hawkesbury tours of 1810–11 Macquarie chose an elevated bank above Pugh’s Lagoon for church, schoolhouse and burial ground; on 10 January 1811 the site was marked out with strong posts. An early schoolhouse-chapel served the town until a purpose-built church was required.
The present Colonial Georgian church was designed by Francis Clarke and built by James Atkinson between the later 1830s and 1841; Bishop William Grant Broughton consecrated it on 15 July 1841. The picturesque rectory, also by Clarke, was completed in 1847 (often compared with an English parsonage known to Broughton at Farnham). Edmund Blacket later altered the church (porch 1850; chancel mid-1850s) and remodelled the rectory in 1863. The group church, rectory, school hall, cemetery and stables — sits in a park-like setting overlooking the lowlands and is listed on the NSW State Heritage Register.
Photographs here show the Richmond church and rectory group in the Hawkesbury landscape. (This is not St Luke’s, Richmond, Tasmania.)
