St Thomas’ Anglican Church, North Sydney (historic St Leonards)

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The Anglican parish church of the old township of St Leonards — today’s North Sydney — is St Thomas’ Church on McLaren / Church Streets, not a separate surviving building named “St Leonard’s Church.” Land was set aside as the north shore settled in the 1820s–40s. The first St Thomas’ church, generally attributed to Conrad Martens, was begun in the early 1840s, opened in 1846, and associated with Bishop Broughton’s early pastoral work on the north side of the harbour. Martens’s carved font is still reported in use.

Population growth required a larger building. Edmund Blacket designed a new Gothic Revival church; the foundation stone for the nave and tower stage was laid in 1881, and the completed church was dedicated in 1884 (works continuing under Cyril Blacket after Edmund’s death in 1883). Built of locally quarried stone, St Thomas’ is among the longest Anglican parish churches in New South Wales. The proposed tower was never fully realised as originally intended.

Photographs here appear to show that North Shore parish church and its nineteenth-century fabric. Prefer the correct dedication St Thomas’ in titles and captions; “St Leonards” properly names the historic township/district.