architect, reportedly designed St Thomas’s Church of England, Mulgoa, NSW, begun 1836. Since Chadley left for the West Indies before the church was completed and before the tower had been begun, it is possible that the design actually represents the first fruits of Bishop W.G. Broughton’ s acquisition of English plans to help him erect Anglican churches in the colony with the assistance of Governor Bourke’s pound for pound Church Act subsidy (for buildings costing at least £600) introduced in 1836. If so, Chadley would merely have redrawn one of Broughton’s pattern-book designs to fit the site, as James Hume frequently did (though similarly cited as the building’s designer). In 1851 Canon W.H. Walsh described Mulgoa church’s interior furnishings in detail and praised them as 'a step onward’ towards proper Victorian ecclesiological correctness, but he firmly attributed this improvement to the first incumbent, the High Churchman the Rev. Thomas Makinson, who was later notorious for seceeding to Rome. Makinson certainly designed and carved the chancel furniture, but since he was appointed after the church had been consecrated he could have had nothing to do with the building’s design – except, perhaps, for the tower.
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- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
