St Matthew’s Church, Windsor – Francis Greenway

St Matthew’s Anglican Church, Moses Street, Windsor, is one of Francis Greenway’s finest surviving works and among the oldest Anglican churches in Australia still in use. Governor Lachlan Macquarie ordered a church for the Hawkesbury township he renamed Windsor in 1810. Greenway’s Georgian brick church rose between 1817 and 1822; the Reverend Samuel Marsden consecrated it on 8 December 1822. Macquarie famously had to re-lay the foundation stone after the first ceremonial coin was stolen overnight.

Convict labour built the church under colonial direction; William Cox is associated with related precinct works. The adjoining rectory and stables (completed in the mid-1820s) complete a landmark group above the Hawkesbury floodplain — Heritage NSW lists the church, rectory, stables and cemetery together. The south porch, shown on early plans, was added later (1857). The graveyard includes burials connected with early colonial Hawkesbury families and, by local tradition, some First Fleet associations.

Greenway’s spare Georgian massing — tower, nave and clear brickwork — remains remarkably intact and is often cited as among the most beautiful early colonial buildings in the country. The slug “winsorchirch” is only a URL fossil; the on-page title correctly names St Matthew’s and Greenway.

St Matthew’s Church, Windsor — historic view of the Georgian brick church.

Macquarie-era account of the foundation-stone ceremony and Greenway’s church design.

Church foundation-stone account, recorded in an early historical source.

Consecration of St Matthew’s Church by the Reverend Samuel Marsden, 8 December 1822.

Storm damage and later history of the Windsor church precinct.

Historical notes on Windsor, St Matthew’s Church and its early community.

Fitzroy Bridge Windsor

Fitzroy Bridge carries the road across South Creek between McGraths Hill and Windsor in the Hawkesbury. European settlers needed a reliable crossing here from the earliest years of the Hawkesbury farms. Andrew Thompson built a floating bridge about 1802 and collected tolls; John Howe’s log bridge (Howe’s Bridge) followed about 1813. A wooden arch bridge named for Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy replaced earlier structures in the mid-nineteenth century (commonly dated 1848 in local histories).

An iron Fitzroy Bridge was erected in 1879–1881 (ironwork by D. & W. Robertson; construction associated with G. H. Royce) and opened to traffic in early March 1881. The present reinforced-concrete high-level bridge dates from the mid-1970s (opened 1974/1975 in Hawkesbury accounts). Beside the crossing stands the 1835 Toll House — one of only two intact toll houses remaining in New South Wales — rebuilt after the disastrous 1864 flood and restored externally in the 1990s.

Historic photographs in this post likely show an earlier Fitzroy span (timber or iron), not the modern concrete bridge. Caption images by era if dates are known; otherwise say “historic view” rather than implying the current structure.

Fitzroy Bridge crosses South Creek at Windsor in the Hawkesbury district of New South Wales. The bridge was built in the nineteenth century for the Windsor Road Trust, improving a vital route between Windsor and surrounding settlements. Its history reflects the engineering and transport needs of the early colonial road network.