The Deacon's Treasure

From the Editors

T

he cover of this 75th edition of The Deacon’s Treasure features a 1957 photograph of four death defying steeplejacks, plainly oblivious of any modern concept of OH&S, as they do repair work on our spire.

Don’t try this at home readers! But it is tempting to see these brave souls as a symbol of the 177 years that the parish of Christ Church St Laurence has been an integral part of the wrong end of town.

In the middle of the 19th century, CCSL, with its steeple and cross standing on what had become known as Christ Church Hill, would have been the first thing travellers saw as they entered the city. In this issue we are celebrating the 170th anniversary of the consecration of our historic building.

Over the years since that consecration, CCSL has become an internationally known centre of a tradition of worship that combines music, liturgy and word to a high level of beauty. A sermon by Canon George Vidal, rector from 1867 to 1878, puts it thus: All things within the sanctuary should be eloquent of Him whom we meet here to praise, in order that every sense should be enlisted in the great work and help to upraise the soul.* Even more importantly, CCSL has always shown total inclusiveness to all who seek to worship here, and outreach by members of the Guild of St Laurence brought education and relief to the impoverished throughout the parish. The articles in this St Laurencetide issue touch on many of these aspects of our parish life.

The openness of CCSL to all comers from the outset is revealed in Evelyn Wyatt’s article, which shows how important the sometimes despised ‘lower orders’ of colonial society were in the early life of CCSL. Joseph Waugh provides some enlightening history from the time of CCSL’s first incumbent Canon Horatio Walsh, whose ‘High Church’ convictions did not always sit easily in his parent diocese.

John Pollard describes the service of consecration that this issue celebrates, describing the many physical changes since that time. His article also touches on the early accusations of ‘popery’ thrown our way.

Ann Bergman’s article on Sister Angela, founder of the Franciscan community at Stroud, is a compelling portrait of a most inspiring and unconventional woman who was led to her vocation after being struck through the heart by a sermon heard at CCSL. Also in this issue we have asked a cross section of parishioners to give a personal account of the impact of CCSL on their lives. We have called these contributions My CCSL, and feel that their words reflect something of the people who have found a spiritual home in this church.

In the cover picture one can see the motto Bound to Rise clearly displayed on the tower of the then Marcus Clark department store. It might be said that CCSL ‘can’t get much higher’, but today’s parishioners would certainly feel that all aspects of CCSL should continue to aim as high as possible. * Quoted in: A History of Christ Church St Laurence Sydney. Laura Mary Ellen, p. 43.

No. 75 • St Laurencetide 2015

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From the Rector Fr Daniel Dries

I

n September 2015 Christ Church St Laurence will celebrate the 170th Festival of Dedication. Anniversaries are a very important part of the life of a parish that values its rich heritage. CCSL has a tradition of celebrating milestones and significant events with due pomp and pageantry. However, these very public events and liturgies are only a small part of the essence of CCSL. Woven into the rich tapestry that makes up our parish history are countless stories, many of which are destined to remain untold. It is rare to enter the building without encountering someone in prayer or meditation. Every visitor to the church, and every parishioner, brings unique life experience and needs. In this edition of The Deacon’s Treasure a few parishioners and friends have shared what CCSL means to them in their journey of faith.

Over the past 170 years, vast numbers have been drawn to CCSL for an endless variety of reasons. Long before I was inducted as Rector I was also drawn to CCSL as an infrequent visitor. Looking back, I would have to acknowledge that the sumptuous liturgy and fine music were a strong attraction.

However, over the past two and a half years, CCSL has come to mean so much more. In describing ‘My CCSL’ fine liturgy and music continue to rate highly, although the diversity, openness and inclusivity dominate my sense of what CCSL really means. ‘My CCSL’ is a parish that cannot be easily pigeonholed.

Through its twenty five services every week the church building welcomes Christians from almost every imaginable tradition, as well as people of other faith traditions entirely. ‘My CCSL’ is a place where all people are able to explore the reality of God, as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. This breadth of faith does not sit very well in organised religion. Generally speaking, people of faith gravitate to others who express similar theology and tradition. The number of Protestant denominations worldwide is proof that Christians like to gather with others who are largely similar in their beliefs.

Anglicanism is almost certainly the most unwieldy and unsettled Christian denomination because it has always attempted to hold together Christians of varying theological expressions. Despite this, we continue to label Anglicans as ‘high’ or ‘low’; ‘evangelical’, ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’. The diversity and extremes of our denomination have been reinforced by successive Archbishops of Canterbury who, at least in recent generations, have almost alternated between the Evangelical and Catholic traditions. The current Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Revd and Rt Hon Justin Welby, was labelled an Evangelical at the time of his election as the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The succinct biography The Road to Canterbury: Archbishop Justin Welby by Andrew Atherstone1 paints a picture of an Archbishop of Canterbury who cannot be easily labelled. Although Archbishop Welby was converted and grounded in the evangelical tradition, his journey to Canterbury has been influenced by a rich sacramental tradition, as well as by a range of denominations and a broad approach to ecumenism. Such a Christian represents a very fine choice as leader of the world’s 85 million Anglicans. Although our natural

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The Deacon’s Treasure

From the Rector

human tendency is to find reassurance in uniformity, Archbishop Justin Welby seems open to a range of theological views and practices within one denomination. As I reflect on what it is that I most value about CCSL, it is this same diversity and acceptance of difference with grace and generosity.

Anglicans have difficult times ahead. As our society struggles to redefine the nature of marriage, the wider church will be unable to remain immune from tension and hurt on both sides of the arguments. I hope and pray that our denomination is able to continue in love and grace in these challenging times. I am greatly encouraged that we have an Archbishop of Canterbury who seems capable of living with difference, without pretending that this is an easy way to exist. Speaking of the consecration of women as bishops, the then Bishop Justin Welby wrote the following in a pastoral letter to his diocese: To put it in crude terms, because God has brought us together we are stuck with each other and we had better learn to do it in the way that God wants us to. That means in practice that we need to learn diversity without enmity, to love not only those with whom we agree but especially those with whom we do not agree.2 During the last 170 years parishioners of CCSL have learnt to live with difference and diversity.

Learning to do this with love and grace has helped to create a place where all may come to experience God. We have to acknowledge that the liturgical traditions of CCSL are not for everyone, but the parish does exist for any who are seeking to know Christ and to be transformed by his love.

1 Atherstone,

Andrew. 2013. “The Road to Canterbury: Archbishop Justin Welby.� London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd.

2 Ibid

My CCSL:

As a young person I lived for some time in Brisbane and Port

Moresby, and had therefore been attending Catholic Anglican churches. Returning to Sydney in 1959 I wanted to find somewhere similarly High Church. The moment I walked into CCSL I felt as though I had come home. The whole place just wrapped me up.

After my marriage we settled in Sydney and attended CCSL. When our two boys arrived I tried attending local churches. Two churches told me small children were only welcome at family services once a month. Many young children had started to come to CCSL where they were made welcome at all services. I teamed up with other parishioners, forming a Sunday school of sorts. No one was qualified to take classes but the children had fellowship and were acknowledged as part of the church and the parents met Nola Lawrence regularly taking turns to host dinner parties.

It was not until recent years I started a family history search only to find I had ancestors who had arrived as convicts, worked as stonemasons, and on release, were among the builders of CCSL. Their children were among the first children baptised here, so no wonder I felt welcomed and loved when I first entered the church.

CCSL is my spiritual home and I thank God every day that I found this place of acceptance and welcome to all comers. The variety of people has changed over the years but always the street people and misfits are taken in and fed and loved. I think I have met nearly every nationality in the world at CCSL, and I have certainly been hugged by some very smelly people.

No. 75 • St Laurencetide 2015

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Canon Walsh and the Hackney Phalanx Joseph Waugh

C This article draws on Joseph’s recently launched publication A Time To Speak : The sermons, addresses and speeches of William Horatio Walsh, incumbent of Christ Church St Laurence, Sydney, 1838 – 1867, available as an e-book on www.amazon.com.au.

Joshua Watson

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anon William Horatio Walsh (1812-1882), the incumbent of Christ Church St Laurence 1839-1867, is frequently identified as a Tractarian. However, the title “Tractarian” has been applied, perhaps not entirely accurately, by parish historians keen to show a link between the early parish and the Oxford Movement and its eventual development into Anglo-Catholicism. Walsh would certainly have agreed with many of the Tracts for the Times published in Oxford in 1833-1841 by the group headed by Keble, Newman and Pusey. Yet one of the keys to understanding Walsh and his churchmanship lies in his connection with a much older church party. The High Church party drew on the tradition of the Caroline divines of the 17th century, supported the link between church and state (and so was identified politically as Tory) and adhered to the Book of Common Prayer.

Historically it stood in opposition to the Puritans and, by the end of the 18th century, the newly emerging Evangelical movement.

Walsh’s diocesan in Sydney, Bishop Broughton, once wrote of Walsh as “the last legacy ... of the good Archdeacon of St Albans”. This identifies Walsh and Broughton as part of a complex web of interrelationships surrounding an influential group of English High Churchmen in the first half of the 19th century.

The Hackney Phalanx The Archdeacon of St Albans at the time of Walsh’s ordination to the diaconate in London was the Ven. John James Watson (1767-1839) one of the leaders of the High Church group known as the “Hackney Phalanx” or the “Clapton Sect” (a punning reference to the Evangelical grouping known as the “Clapham Sect”, Upper and Lower Clapton being districts in the London Borough of Hackney).

Another leader of the Phalanx was the Rev Henry Handley Norris (17711850), the rector of South Hackney. He is thought to have been Lord Liverpool’s confidential adviser on ecclesiastical patronage. He corresponded with Bishop Broughton for many years.

John Watson’s brother, Joshua Watson (1771-1855), was a prosperous London wine merchant who retired from business to become one of the most influential laymen of his day as the chief lay adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury Charles Manners Sutton (1755-1828). Joshua, together with Norris and other Phalanx members, formed the National Society in 1811, declaring its purpose to be “to instruct and educate the poor in suitable learning, works of industry, and the principles of the Christian religion according to the Established Church”. The Society was enormously successful. By 1824, there were 3054 schools associated with the National Society training some 400,000 children. At the same time, want of church accommodation across England (especially in the emerging industrial cities) led to

The Deacon’s Treasure

Canon Walsh and the Hackney Phalanx

the formation of the Church Building Commission in 1818. Joshua became one of the most active of its commissioners over a period of thirty three years during which the Commission funded or part funded 600 new churches. He was also connected with the great church societies of the day, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) of which he was treasurer. In later life he became a member of the provisional committee for St Augustine's Missionary College at Canterbury and "contributed liberally both to the Funds and to the Library”. St Augustine’s was established in 1848 with the aim of training clergy for service in the British colonies. Joshua was also a friend and correspondent of Bishop Broughton and Bishop George Augustus Selwyn of New Zealand.

The Rev Edward Coleridge (1800-1883) was another high churchman who had connections with this group (although he was never identified as a Phalanx member), and also enjoyed close friendships with Broughton and Selwyn. He was a tutor/master at Eton College and a founder of St Augustine’s Missionary College. He was a nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and uncle of John Coleridge Patteson, the martyr Bishop of Melanesia whose effigy lies in CCSL.

The seal of the Society for The Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

The High Church party and the Tractarians The High Church party’s relationship with the Tractarians was often uneasy.

For those familiar with Barchester Towers, think of the Hardings and Grantlys of the “High and Dry Church” and their initial uneasy relationship with the Anglo-Catholic Rev Mr Arabin. The High Church agreed with many (but not all) of the Tracts. For example, there was much controversy over the infamous Tract 90 that suggested the possibility of a Roman Catholic interpretation of the Church of England’s 39 Articles, as well as over Newman’s conversion to Rome in 1845.

Walsh’s sermon on the duty and privilege of Holy Communion which he delivered in 1842 was cited in Sydney for many years as proof of his Tractarian leanings. However, his churchmanship never gave expression, like some Tractarians, in Anglo-Catholicism and he stood firm when two Sydney clergy converted to Rome in 1848: For myself I ask nothing even from the most prejudiced: but for the Church of England, her Liturgy, and doctrines; her ministry of the word and sacraments; her truth and order; I claim from all her dutiful sons and daughters the reverence and confidence, the love and support, which in a time of trial and distress like this, she deserves and requires.

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Canon Walsh and the Hackney Phalanx

m, now and then Apart from Broughton’s acknowledgment of the connection with John Watson, there is much other evidence of Walsh’s connections with the High Church enterprises. In the first place, the SPG funded Walsh’s journey to Australia and his early ministry in Sydney.

High Church worship Walsh brought to Sydney a High Church approach to worship that was often, in the Sydney context, misrepresented as Tractarian. His liturgical “innovations” were no more than preaching in the surplice, conducting choral services with a robed choir, and taking up a collection at the offertory in conformity with the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. When Bishop Broughton wrote of the consecration of CCSL in 1845 he affirmed that Walsh was doing nothing radical: I have heard objections stated to some of the arrangements in the celebration of divine service, as savouring of novelty and innovation; but I am bound to say that there is no contrariety in any part of the practice to the most approved usages of the Church of England, with which I have been familiar from my earliest years; and everything is marked by such a degree of order and solemnity, that I could wish the observances of this church to be taken, if it were possible, as a model for the imitation of every church in my diocese.

Education debates One of Walsh’s first opportunities to show support in NSW for the High Church position came in the debates over state support for education.

The St Lawrence parish schools that Walsh took charge of received substantial government support. However, Sir Richard Bourke (Governor, 18311837) had proposed the Irish National System as a model for state-funded education in NSW. This would establish schools for children of all denominations where approved extracts from scripture would be read but the teachers would not give religious instruction. Visiting ministers from each denomination would give religious instruction to their adherents on one day per week. This model shared characteristics of the scheme of education in England supported by the British and Foreign School Society - a completely non sectarian association which excluded the Church Catechism from its schools. The National Society directly opposed such a scheme in England, just as the High Church Tory Bishop Broughton opposed Bourke’s proposal in Sydney. Walsh had no trouble siding with his bishop.

Walsh’s earliest involvement in educational debates can be seen in a petition he presented to the Legislative Council in 1839: the Schools ... have given the greatest satisfaction to your Petitioners, as inculcating a course of useful and religious instruction in accordance with the tenets of the Church of England; it being their persuasion that such a system of education generally introduced ... affords the most hopeful prospect of communicating a general impression

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The Deacon’s Treasure

Canon Walsh and the Hackney Phalanx

of religious truth, with a practical observance of its duties, and stemming the torrent of vice and impiety which must overwhelm every community in which the inculcation of early piety is not attended to.

The first elected Legislative Council revived Bourke’s proposals in 1843-1844.

It was in the context of opposition to these proposals, in 1844, that Walsh delivered a wide-ranging speech defending church interests against the “infidel and democratic party” as well as “the wily emissaries of the separatist”. Walsh claimed that a secular state-directed education system would raise up a public disposed to criticize the established social order: The State would give every one the intelligence to be general fault-finders, to write letters in newspapers, to despise dominions, to speak evil of dignities.

In Walsh's view, the liberal principle governing the reforms threatened a collapse of both religious and political order: In religion, every man his own pope; in politics, every man his own king.

Walsh returned to England for the first time in 1850-1851, principally to recuperate his health. This visit provided an opportunity to represent the NSW Church and pursue his High Church interests.

St Augustine’s Missionary College, Canterbury Walsh visited St Augustine’s Missionary College, Canterbury on 31 August 1851, and spoke at the farewell of the first graduate of the institution, Charles Joseph Gillett (1824-1891), who was destined for ministry in Sydney.

Mr Gillett was prevented by weather and illness from leaving England and he never arrived in Australia. However, other clergy did proceed to NSW from St Augustine’s. Many went to the country, putting Walsh in the centre of a colonial High Church network, as Jane Barker, the wife of Frederic Barker the Evangelical Bishop of Sydney (1855-1882), observed: [Walsh] is the Bishop of the [High Church] party and has great influence with them. ... The High Church clergy from the country stay with him when they come to Sydney, and once or twice when we have thought it right to invite them here the answer has been “I am going to my friend Mr Walsh”.

No. 75 • St Laurencetide 2015

St Augustine’s Missionary College, Canterbury

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Canon Walsh and the Hackney Phalanx

Support for Sydney’s St Andrew’s Cathedral Finally, both Walsh and the High Church party did much to support the construction of St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney.

Coleridge, from as early as 1837, collected substantial funds in England for the Sydney cathedral. Joshua Watson, too, contributed large sums during the cathedral’s long construction. He, like Walsh, had an interest in decorating the interior as the following account from 1868, the year of the cathedral’s consecration, attests: Over the Holy Table is a sculpted panel in Caen stone (presented many years ago by the late Joshua Watson, DCL) representing our Lord and the two disciples at Emmaus. The east wall of the sacrarium will be further enriched with mural tiles now being prepared by Minton and Co under the direction of Canon Walsh, chiefly at the cost of a colonist residing in Europe.

While in London, in February 1851, Walsh attended a meeting of the SPCK. The SPCK committee had recommended a £500 grant to the Cathedral Fund.

After Walsh addressed the meeting, a series of further recommendations was put forward and £1,000 was eventually voted with a recommendation that the committee consider a further grant.

Bishop Selwyn

Bishop George Augustus Selwyn

PAGE 8

By the time Walsh returned again to England, in 1865, most of the members of the High Church group had died, leaving the relatively younger Bishop Selwyn (who was translated from New Zealand to Lichfield in 1868) to be Walsh’s chief patron for the next decade.

Walsh’s connection with Selwyn could date from as early as 1833-1834 when Selwyn was made a deacon and ordained priest (for the Diocese of Carlisle) at St George’s Hanover Square. Walsh was born at Hanover Square, baptised at St George’s in 1812 and married there in 1838. It is reasonable to suppose that Walsh kept up a connection with this church throughout his early life, and that he may have met Selwyn there in 1833 or 1834. When Bishop of New Zealand, Selwyn stayed at the first Christ Church Parsonage on a visit to Sydney in 1853. After his translation to Lichfield was announced in 1867, Selwyn obtained Walsh’s services to assist him as a corresponding secretary, the first Lambeth Conference having given Selwyn an important role in drawing together the worldwide Anglican Communion. Selwyn also appointed Walsh to livings in his diocese and a prebendal stall at Lichfield Cathedral.

In one of these livings Walsh had Selwyn’s son, the future Bishop of Melanesia, as a curate.

The Deacon’s Treasure

Canon Walsh and the Hackney Phalanx

Walsh’s legacy?

Walsh’s High Church outlook set the tone for CCSL for its first half century. His successor, George Vidal, was appointed with his approval as someone sympathetic to the parish. The next rector, Charles Garnsey, who only shifted to Anglo -Catholicism five years after his induction, had come under Walsh’s influence as a layman and young deacon and had wooed his first wife under Mrs Walsh’s watchful gaze.

One history of the Church of England observed that the High Church party in the first half of the 19th century: had failed to exercise anything like a far-reaching, powerful influence over the church and people. It had done much, undoubtedly. It had vastly improved the services of the church. Its members in many an instance had set a high and noble example. It had enormously increased the foreign mission work of the church. It had created an everbroadening network of education, which embraced a large proportion of the poorest of the population. It had somewhat multiplied the number of the churches, and had done much to spread pure and healthy literature. Still, it had not to any great extent found its way into the hearts of the people. No famous preachers had arisen amongst it. No really popular writers had appeared in the ranks of these true-hearted churchmen. Among the “Clapton sect”, admirable and devoted though the members were, no leader had appeared who was able, either by his writings or his words, to kindle enthusiasm or to stir the hearts of the great mass of lettered or unlettered persons who lived outside the comparatively narrow limits of their own somewhat limited circle.

Much the same could have been said of Walsh in Sydney. His obituary in the Australian Churchman records his contribution to the liturgical life of Sydney, a legacy that lasted for generations in parts of the diocese: Canon Walsh was one of the foremost to inaugurate a better state of things in this respect, proclaiming to his large and influential congregation the distinctive tenets of the Church of England: he led them to value order, reverence and brightness in all the surroundings of the service of God in the Sanctuary and to worship him “in the beauty of holiness”.

William Horatio Walsh

M H Port, Six Hundred New Churches: The Church Building Commission 1818-1856 (1961); W G Broughton , The Bishop of Australia’s Visitation Journal [1845]; and sources cited in J W Waugh, A Time To Speak : The sermons, addresses and speeches of William Horatio Walsh, incumbent of Christ Church St Laurence, Sydney, 1838 –1867 [2015]

No. 75 • St Laurencetide 2015

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My CCSL: Although I visited a couple of times as a university student, my first real close up engagement with CCSL came in July 2000 when my very first service as a bishop was conducting a confirmation there. I had been rector of St Barnabas Broadway which is just 900 metres down the road but a lot further away in churchmanship. To prepare, I met with the then rector Michael Bowie during the week to negotiate what I would and wouldn’t Bp Robert Forsyth do in the service. It may sound strange to regular CCSL members, but for a brand new Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Sydney that question was quite important. The rector and I came to a happy agreement, although later I heard that while I had complained more than my predecessor, I had agreed to do more than he had, which worried me a little. Over the coming years, I have become much more relaxed on that front, trying to be fully at home without theological compromise.

The generous and warm welcome I received on my first visit has been repeated time and time again at CCSL. In particular my growing personal friendships with Fr Adrian Stephens, then Fr Ron Silarsah (who still blames me for not letting him retire by getting him a job at Christ Church) and more recently Fr Daniel Dries and Fr John Sanderson have meant that I come to feel as welcome and as at home at CCSL as any other church in my region. I have found other personal friends among the congregation as well.

Looking back I see that I have had two main goals in my ministry to Christ Church.

The first was to help the church and its people feel more at home and respected in the Diocese of Sydney, where they are, after all, as much entitled to be called “Sydney Anglicans” as the rest of us.

The second was even more important, to encourage the church to be continually as rich in faith and love of the Lord Jesus Christ as it undoubtedly is rich in music and ceremony. I have come to very much appreciate that richness and when explaining Christ Church to others I sometimes characterise it as “opera church.”

That is no criticism. Opera Australia uses the motto “Life Amplified.” For me CCSL is kind of “Church Amplified.”

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The Deacon’s Treasure

From Christ Church to Stroud — the Rev’d Sister Angela (1926-2002)

Ann Bergman

V

ariously described as ‘a creature of holy disorder’ (Dr Patricia Brennan), and ‘a woman of outstanding artistic and charismatic character’, (Br Brian SSF), Sr Angela Solling, Anglican nun, priest and sculptor, founded the Monastery of the Blessed Virgin at Stroud in the Diocese of Newcastle NSW in 1980. She was by all accounts a most unconventional nun.

The occasion of our 170th anniversary at Christ Church St Laurence seems an appropriate time to remember Sr Angela’s legacy and to recount a little of our links, as parishioners of Christ Church St Laurence, with the establishment of this remarkable religious enterprise.

Her story deeply impressed me when I joined women from the Newcastle Diocese on retreat at The Monastery. As a relative newcomer to the Sydney Diocese, Ann Bergman I had no knowledge of the history of St Clare’s Monastery (as it was popularly known), let alone its links with Christ Church St Laurence. It was after Mass in the Monastery’s uniquely designed Chapel with its hand-polished, rammed mud floor and eccentrically beautiful stainedglass windows, that I happened to read a fading article pinned to the entrance. To my astonishment, it recounted the life-changing encounter of a young woman from Maitland, recently returned from the Slade Art School in London, with the Franciscan friar, Fr Charles Preston, at Christ Church St Laurence in the early 1950s.

The young woman was Wendy Hope Solling, a parishioner of CCSL, who subsequently left her fiancé and a career as an internationally recognized sculptor, to enter the enclosed Anglican Franciscan Order at St Mary’s Convent, Freeland, Oxford in 1957. In 1973, at the invitation of the Bishop of Newcastle, Ian Shevill, she returned to Newcastle to establish Australia’s first Anglican community of contemplative nuns at Stroud. As I read more of her life, I discovered further links with Christ Church St Laurence.

In her book Sculptor of Spirit The Story of Angela of Stroud, Faith Reid mentions Rosemary Madigan amongst Wendy Solling’s friends at ‘East Sydney Tech’ in the late 1940s. Rosemary is one of our long time parishioners, dear to us for her sculptured image of Christ atop the St Laurence Chapel and for the magnificent Processional Cross carried at High Mass.

In 1949 Solling left the National Art School of East Sydney to further her studies at the Slade School in London. During her time in London she became a respected sculptor and, somewhat eccentrically for an art student, attended church regularly. During travels in Italy, she saw Michelangelo’s painting of God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel, and sensed the ‘finger of God’ as always having been on her. Though artistically rewarding, her time in London became one of great spiritual loneliness and on her return to Sydney at the age of twentyeight, she attended CCSL every Sunday where the Eucharist was becoming increasingly the central point of my life. (Faith Reid) Meanwhile, her welcome home exhibition in 1954 was well-received. Whilst fulfilling a commission from Morpeth Theological College, she glimpsed her first brown-robed Franciscan Friar. It was Fr Charles Preston SSF known as the ‘burglars’ priest’ for his work in the East End of London. Little did she know that a sermon from this man would utterly transform her life. On 27 November, 1955 she heard him preach at High Mass in CCSL, and in the ensuing week attended a retreat with The Sisters of the Church, where she heard Br Charles speak with a compassion for others that utterly transformed her vision of life, there was an aura of prayerfulness and deep love that flowed from him and which turned me upside down (Faith Reid).

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Sister Angela

She explored her yearning for the religious life with Sister Faith of the Community of the Sisters of the Church and with Br Charles. Charles Preston tried to discourage any thought of vocation, but with characteristic persistence she wrote to Mother Gwenda Mary of the Community of the Poor Clares in Freeland, near Oxford, who agreed to accept her as a postulant for a trial period of six months. Wendy Hope Solling left a close family, dear friends and a loving fiancé for the austere life of a cloistered nun.

The name ‘Wendy’ already belonged to a nun at Freeland, and it was suggested that she take the name Sister Hope. She felt it sounded too pious and asked to be called Angela: not for the angelic associations of the name as everyone has always assumed, but because of the horse-riding, rebellious cartoon Angela of the battered St Trinian’s hat, who kept her cigarettes and whiskey flask in her gym pants. (Faith Reid) The austerity of the enclosure tested her physically and Wendy Solling, 1952 emotionally but she found her prayer life deepening along with a growing desire for solitude. She was able to continue her sculpting and was commissioned by Bp Robert Runcie to design a pectoral cross for his enthronement as Archbishop of Canterbury and also to make a small replica for his personal use.

She established an enduring friendship with the apartheid activist Helen Joseph, who had been placed under house arrest in South Africa for nine years. (This remarkable relationship is captured in the BBC film, Secret Letters.) It was to comfort Helen and assure her of the nuns’ prayers that Sr Angela made the first wooden ‘holding cross’ with its characteristic smooth, rounded edges. The holding cross created by her has become renowned throughout the world as a symbol of solidarity among Christians who seek compassion and justice and pray to be connected and strengthened through the power of God. These crosses continue to be made by Franciscans and are stocked here at Belltower Books - a living testament to the prayer of this deeply spiritual woman.

In 1973, she returned to Australia with the blessing of her Franciscan sisters in Freeland, accompanied by two other pioneer sisters (with one to follow). Her dream was to found Australia’s first Anglican contemplative order of nuns with the support of the Bishop. On arrival in Newcastle, our parishioner, Johanne Kenny, helped drive the group to their first home in the picturesque but dilapidated, convict-built rectory of St John the Evangelist at Stroud.

Little attention had been given to the practicalities of housing the new arrivals and the Josephite Sisters from the convent at Lochinvar came to their rescue, helping with supplies and repainting. They even provided their outmoded nightdresses for the volunteers to wear as paint smocks! Such was the enthusiasm for the fledgling community that they were joined by the likes of George Kilpatrick, Professor of Biblical Studies at Oxford. Fr Eric Hampson, now an honorary priest at CCSL, recounts how he used to visit Stroud from his neighbouring Parish in Branxton, to mow the lawn and say Mass for the Sisters.

Despite great moral support from surrounding dioceses, there were difficulties becoming accepted by some of the townspeople. A lack of money to repair the rectory, and the continued intrusion of curious PAGE 12

The Deacon’s Treasure

Sister Angela

onlookers, meant an enclosed life of prayer was difficult. It was decided to buy land further out of town with money loaned by a friend.

Fr Eric recounts how he accompanied Sr Angela as she roamed the new property collecting soil samples to be analyzed for their suitability for mud bricks. He mentions her extraordinary ability to imagine every detail of the planned buildings in perfect 3D, a skill he attributes to her eye as a sculptor. He also describes her as being like a grasshopper, constantly jumping from one project to another; an attribute perhaps not conducive to patiently building up community in the future.

In the light of St Francis’s injunction to let them erect simple little huts of clay and wood, the sisters and an army of volunteers known as ‘muddies’, built a monastery from over 50,000 handmade mud bricks under the guidance of master-builder Kevin Osborne. Fr Eric arranged for red bricks, cedar doors and window frames to be delivered from a deconsecrated church at Bishops Bridge. These bricks form the floors of the corridors.

Sr Angela describes how she experienced the same passionate energy (felt in sculpting): the dynamic power of my faith, in the overwhelming love of God, that flowed into me and through me and into every mud brick that went into the making of a monastery (Faith Reid).

Amongst the ‘muddies’ was a regular busload of young parishioners from Christ Church St Laurence who would leave on Friday evening under the care of Fr Ellis Jones, and return home on Sunday in time for Evensong and Benediction. Johanne tells us Bishop Gary Wetherill also spent time as a ‘muddy’.

Friars from the Society of St Francis relocated to Stroud, and constructed a similar monastery next to the Clares. They shared their life in what amounted to almost a double monastery.

The monastery and hermitage were blessed and dedicated on July 12 1980. Fr Austin Day, previous Rector of CCSL, describes the Blessing and opening Mass as an: ...historic day in the life of the Australian Church …

We had a wonderful, but exhausting pilgrimage to Stroud when Anglicans in the Sydney/Newcastle area had the most exciting adventurous Catholic day for a very long while. Over 2,000 people were said to be there with 1,500 communicants at the open-air mass celebrated by the Bishop Protector of these two Franciscan Communities, Frank Woods. He was assisted by Bishop Alfred Holland of Newcastle and Br John Charles They looked resplendent in copes and mitres in a huge marquee setting with Franciscan and Capuchin Brothers, and Anglican and RC nuns on either side, some formed a choir. It was good to see Bishop Ian Shevill. The chapels are very beautiful in their absolute Franciscan simplicity, but with lovely use of colour (icons etc). The whole day reminded me of national pilgrimages from London and the big UK cities, through beautiful countryside on the way to Walsingham and Glastonbury. It was all brilliantly organised and a great success helping to make Catholic Renewal much more vital and alive for the industrial city of Newcastle and the pinched Protestant Calvinism of Sydney Diocese! There was about it all a great sense of Catholic joy, peace, simplicity of life and warm accepting humanity.’ (CCSL archives, 17 July 1980 - 31 December 1980).

Stroud monastery became a centre of spiritual renewal with Sr Angela’s ‘exuberant, inclusive and visionary approach to her Anglican faith’ inspiring people the world over (Rachel Kohn) Caroline Jones describes her involvement as one of the hundreds of “muddies and scroungers” who helped build the mud-brick monastery. Angela taught us all to live life to the full. She was one of the greatest inspirations and in my life. (Faith Reid) Angela believed the Clares must adapt to Australian conditions, and after much protracted negotiation, the Community became fully autonomous from Freeland in November 1993. She modified St Clare's original Rule to fit an adaptable, contemplative community living in a small rural town in the Australian bush.

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Sister Angela

In the new community being formed, the outlook was ecumenical, strongly feminist and ‘green’. There was also a perception of belonging to a broad Church that encompassed all denominations, while retaining the sacramentalism of the Catholic wing of the Anglican Church. (Gail Ann Ball) People came to Stroud for retreats, discussions, prayer and counselling. Their accommodation provided the main source of income. Craftwork such as wooden carved crosses, religious sculptures and icons were made, using raw materials from the area, and sold in an attempt to support the community.

Br Bruce Paul SSF, remembers the time he and Angela escaped from the enclosure together: She was in her habit and I'm not sure, I was probably in mine, and Angela was saying, “You know, enclosures are like a pair of bloomers, the elastic stretches when you need.” And I thought that's a wonderful, wonderful image of creativity and flexibility and everything that the Franciscan tradition, and particularly Clare herself, stood for and practised.

Br Brian SFF: Her imagination and enthusiasm were almost overwhelming. It was hard to keep up with her, and because of that she was inclined to fluctuate from hearty exuberance to depression and back again, people like myself did not always understand or appreciate the mind and heart of this very talented artist.

As Angela herself said, people seem to loathe me or love me. That’s OK. Many came to test their vocation, but few stayed for any length of time.

Patricia Brennan and supporters of the movement for the ordination of women (MOW), found spiritual succour at the Monastery. In Film Australia’s production, The Fully Ordained Meat Pie, which graphically portrays the failure of the motion to allow the ordination of women to priesthood in the Diocese of Sydney in1987, Sr Angela is seen encouraging the defeated women with the words, ‘Just laugh in the face of the tiger and just carry on’. Her famous saying, ‘Darling, just do it!’ led to her own ordination as priest at Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle, in 1993, a move she felt was on behalf of all women. She believed ‘there is a giving of oneself to God that transcends all these gender differences. Above all, I am obedient to God. Sometimes the church gets in the way’ (Faith Reid).

Given her passionate views and often inflexible, erratic administrative style, she encountered opposition from within and without her Community and spent some time away from the enclosure living as a hermit.

In the face of declining vocations, The Stroud Monastery Angela created a second stage to the monastery, Gunya Chiara, to embrace lay involvement and engage Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women in dialogue over the sacredness of land and the relationship between Aboriginal Dreaming and the Franciscan tradition. This provoked some unrest and her vision was never truly realized.

Like all religious communities at the time, the future of the Clare Community was uncertain.

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Sister Angela

sisterhoods was overtaken by the general acceptance of women priests. By 2000, having borne the accidental destruction of the monastery library by fire, undergoing radical treatment for cancer and suffering two minor strokes, her health was failing. Sr Angela revisited her Mother House at Freeland where she was warmly welcomed. But, perhaps weary of controversy, she chose to join religious friends in the United States to become an assistant priest in the Church of the Good Shepherd in the Diocese of Massachusetts. She died there in 2002 and her ashes are scattered partly in the States and partly in Australia.

As happens at the end of the life of many women religious and women priests, the Rev’d Sister Angela's mystical spirituality was dismissed by the powers-that-be as flaky.

All the while her talent as an artist and sculptor was being admired, even by the very churchmen who were dismissing her spirituality. It never seemed to dawn on these men Sister Angela that the light that shines through her sculpture is the same light that shone through her person here on this earth. (Rev Carter Heyward) Though now devoid of nuns, this wonderfully meandering mudbrick ‘sculpture’ of a building is Sr Angela’s legacy to all who value a place of peace and simplicity where the very bricks and mortar are imbued with the prayers of men and women yearning for a deeper sense of God’s presence. It continues to welcome people for conferences, workshops, meetings and retreats. With all of us they are on a journey of discovery – a discovery of vocation and discipleship, of the purpose of life, of prayer and of the Christ within each of us, a discovery of walking in the footsteps of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and with that a discovery of themselves, accepted and loved by God, made in His image and likeness. (Br Brian) Parishioners from Christ Church St Laurence continue to make the pilgrimage to Stroud, though nowadays mindful of the increasingly rustic ambience of a bush monastery which offers little in the way of modern amenities. But what it lacks in comfort, it makes up for in the wonder of its unique construction, glorious stained glass windows, sculptured wood fixtures and lovely scenery. It remains a place of deep prayer; the legacy of a visionary woman who found herself struck cleanly through the heart during a sermon at CCSL. The Monastery and Gunya Chiara continue as Franciscan properties, supported by the continuing presence of the First Order of Brothers living at the neighbouring Hermitage and by an Anglican priest-in-residence, the Rev’d Pirial who lives a life of prayer devoted to the Rule of St Francis. The Friends of the Monastery are the administrators, assisted by the charitable organization, The Samaritans, based in Newcastle.

It is a place to contemplate the beauty of Christ & the beauty of creation; and to feel the stirring of the Spirit in your soul.. (Friends of the Monastery, Stroud) Source material 1) ABC, The Spirit of Things: ‘Angela’s Ashes’, Sunday 24 March 2002, Rachel Kohn interviews Dr Patricia Brennan, Rev’d Carter Heyward, Br Bruce Paul SSF. 2) Ball, Gail Anne: Doctoral thesis Univ Syd. 2000 ‘The Best Kept Secrets in the Church: The Religious Life for Women in Australian Anglicanism’, 1992-1995. 3) Brennan, Patricia ‘Creature of holy disorder’, SMH 01/03/2002. 4) Br Brian SSF: Sermon preached at the 25th Anniversary of the Blessing of Stroud, 2 July, 2005 First Order SSF documents. 5) Film Australia 2011: ‘The Fully Ordained Meat Pie’, (According to Fr Ian Herring, “It would be analogous to consecrating a meat pie on the altar of God to ordain a woman…”) Available on youtube.com. 6) Friends of the Monastery, The Monastery of The Blessed Virgin Mary Stroud . 7) Reid, Faith: ‘Sculptor of Spirit The Story of Angela of Stroud’, Bookbound Publishing, 2012 ISBN 978-0-646564-24-1. 8) Waugh, Joseph, Archivist CCSL for Newsheets from 1955 and Fr Austin Day’s correspondence,17 July 1980 - 31 December 1980. 9) Reminiscences from Fr Eric Hampson and Johanne Kenny.

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Poem:

City Church Minnie Fermo

Here the heart worships, Here the eye feasts.

Before the high altar A pavane of priests, Stately and disciplined Pavane of priests.

Weathered and scuffed The frescoed saints curve In long adoration, While heart, mind, and nerve, World-forgetting, and hushed, Daring, dare to take on trust Presence prisoned, concealed.

Oh, say but the word The world to be healed.

Drunk upon incense, Bowed in contrition, Caught up by beauty And held in submission.

Here the heart worships, here the eye feasts On the dance of King David, His pavane for priests.

Here is ever the Loved One In time and in place, In the moment of Truth, At the instance of Grace.

Here I, in humility, Possessed of no worth, Thou – health of my flesh, instiller of mirth.

Man of joy and of sorrow, Here I may borrow May beg of such fullness.

O Lord, in Your goodness Lend me just enough grace.

Early Mass, early sun, Early Saints who surround The Source of our Light Beseeching and ground, Here the heart worships, The hungry soul feasts, Here ascend, oh, for ever, True prayers of true priests.

Minnie Fermo, (1896 to 1995), was a most beloved parishioner of CCSL from 1965 to 1995 .

My CCSL : At the end of 1964 our dear friend, Lucy Cofman, brought me to Christ Church St Laurence for Evensong. I didn’t come again until my mother, Minnie Fermo, came to Australia from England in 1965. Her friend, the actor Martin Redpath, told her he had found a “wonderful” church.

CCSL became a holy home for my mother where she contributed so much of herself. Basic things like stitching, ironing, reading the lessons, but also her paintings, poetry and presence. We used to come together to Sunday Mass and then go home for lunch with my husband Teddy and family. Our son, John, once came with palm leaves from our garden for Palm Sunday.

Anita Florin Everything at CCSL was done with such care and love.

Fr Austin Day was our rector until 1996 and he became a great friend of our family, coming for meals and parties, but he also had an open ear for any problems. He baptised our grandson Harry, married John and Robin and prepared our daughter Sylvia for confirmation.

So many parishioners have been great friends: Earle Backen, Ronald Nichols, Margaret Bradshaw, Gordon Holroyd and of course, many who are still going strong. I am very grateful that I can still come to St Laurence and enjoy such an outstanding and loving clergy.

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The Deacon’s Treasure

As The Years Roll By...St Laurencetide 2015 Peter Whitford

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n important milestone is about to be passed in the Queen’s very long reign, so all readers, including republicans, are invited to test their general knowledge on the following Royalty-accented questions.

1) The longest reigning British monarch is Queen Victoria: 63 years and 216 days. On what day in September 2015 will Queen Elizabeth II surpass Victoria?

Peter Whitford

2) Elizabeth II is the world’s second-longest reigning current monarch after which Asian king?

3) The previous second-longest reigning British monarch was King George III: 59 years and 96 days. His Queen Consort’s name is again famous as the name of a British royal princess, born 2 May and thus a Taurean, like the Queen herself, Will Shakespeare, David Suchet, Roy Orbison and Shirley Temple. Who is this modern princess?

4) The longest reigning European monarch is a French king, Louis XIV, (Louis Le Grand, or Le Roi-Soleil: the Sun King). For how many years was he on his throne? (We’ll allow 5 years either way as a correct answer).

5) Now to other notables: for how many years did the Queen’s Uncle David reign as King Edward VIII? 6) For how many years was Julius Caesar Emperor of Rome?

7) The Commonwealth of Australia has been ruled by six monarchs. Can you name them?

8) In 2005 The Times newspaper announced that Charles, Prince of Wales, had decided the name and number he would take on becoming King. This was denied by Clarence House. Which name and number had Charles allegedly decided on?

9) Which English king earned the sobriquet “the merry Monarch”?

10) Does the nursery rhyme ‘Old King Cole’ refer to a real monarch?

Answers on p31

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These Living Stones John Pollard You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 2:5

John Pollard

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R

ecently, a visitor from Denmark favourably compared Christ Church to the Scandinavian brick churches, commenting that she found the stone walls very warm and impressive and whimsically wondered if it was because they had ‘absorbed’ the prayers of the worshippers.

This was not such a strange comment, for the stones are the major structural feature of Christ Church and their years have given them a physical and perhaps even a metaphysical patina. Indeed, the charismatic seventh Rector, Fr John Hope, (Rector 1926-1964), frequently remarked in his sermons that the very walls of this church are soaked with the prayers of the faithful and their stories are written on them.

Christ Church was the first Anglican church in the city to be built of stone and also the first to be consecrated by a bishop. Next month the parish celebrates the 170th anniversary of this consecration, recalling that on Wednesday 10 September 1845 William Grant Broughton, Australia’s first bishop, hallowed these stones and dedicated the building to Christ, in Sydney City’s Civil parish of St Lawrence.

On that morning the bishop travelled by carriage from his house in Potts Point to this end of George Street to meet with the first rector, William Horatio Walsh, and twenty three other diocesan priests. Many civic notables had gathered for the ceremony as had parishioners who had walked to the new building from the temporary St Lawrence’s Chapel in Elizabeth Street, their spiritual home since 1838. The Sydney Morning Herald next day reported that all the seats were inconveniently filled as the bishop proceeded through the church accompanied by his two chaplains to the recitation of Psalm 24. The prayers of consecration were said and the act of consecration signed and registered by the Chancellor of the Diocese. The bishop then read the Communion service and preached taking as his text Jeremiah 31:23, The Lord bless thee, O habitation of justice, O mountain of power. Broughton obviously enjoyed the service as he wrote later everything is marked by such a degree of order and solemnity that I could wish the observances of this church were taken, if it were possible, as a model for the imitation of every church in my diocese (at that time all of Australia). The parish register shows there were in all 92 communicants and the offertory was £112, a substantial sum in today’s currency.

Music composed by the Elizabethans Thomas Tallis and Richard Farrant, the Georgian James Nares and the 19th century’s Reginald Spofforth, was sung by the parish boys’ choir augmented by the Sydney Choral Society. The repertoire also included the Te Deum from King’s Service in D, Orlando Gibbons’ Sanctus and, as an anthem, Handel’s Lift up Your Heads. The choir was the first robed Anglican choir in Australia. The journal of the Cambridge Ecclesiological

The Deacon’s Treasure

These Living Stones

Society, The Ecclesiologist of 1846 (vol 10, p 158-9) noted that the CCSL choir is large and thoroughly trained and vested in surplices…we hope this example may be widely followed in the colonies.

Were we able to travel back to 1845 we would find the church without a steeple but with the exterior otherwise reasonably familiar. The interior however, was rather different. The church had been designed by Henry Robertson who supervised its building from 1839 until Sydney’s 1842 financial crash. The construction by builders Messrs Taylor and Robb, who prepared the foundations and constructed the walls of the church, the base of the tower and the sanctuary from local Pyrmont stone, was not without problems.

Walsh, who had no hand in the design, was later rather scathing in his criticism of Robertson’s attempt at gothic-revival and made particularly harsh comments about the starved buttresses and the ill formed chancel arch, adding its huge western door; its long and too wide lancet windows, and, all its distinguishing features of poverty and incongruity.

On entering the church, the 1845 visitors’ eyes would have been drawn to the east end where they would have seen the wooden lectern placed in the centre of the aisle and elevated on three stone steps above the then untiled floor. The same carved cedar pulpit we have today was in about the same position, but raised to twice its present height. The great east window, framed by the ill formed chancel arch, was on that day temporarily filled with plain coloured glass, admitting only a muted light.

The choir stalls faced each other across the centre aisle, about a third of the way down the nave. The people’s pews abutted the east wall and there was as yet no chancel such as we have today. What illumination was used is not recorded, but a photograph from 1884 shows a row of octagonal cedar columns standing guard amidst the pews and supporting the gasoliers. The bases remain in place today.

L M Allen, in her book A History of Christ Church S. Laurence, quotes an

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CCSL exterior, 1850

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These Living Stones

unnamed contemporary author as writing of the sanctuary as a small recess at the eastern end, and continuing:…the Altar was given a certain prominence then unknown in any church in Australia. The Sanctuary was raised four steps above the nave and the Altar raised one step above the sanctuary proper. In practise the Altar was raised five steps above the body of the church.

The stone crosses on the roof drew a less benign observation in the Sydney Morning Herald from those suspecting ‘popery’, but the controversy surrounding the attempt to enhance the sanctuary, by adding a Minton tile reredos with a central cross, was still in the future.

At the time of consecration the underside of the roof was visible as were the eight iron -bark columns supporting it. Later, Walsh’s friend, the architect Edmund Blacket, who was a churchwarden from 1851 until 1874, completed the exterior in 1845 and took on the task of beautifying the interior. He designed the present cedar ceiling with its decorated arches and also encased the supporting columns. The original unpainted Australian cedar being rather grim, it was later painted a fashionable Victorian blue, cream and gold with the carved “IHS” medallions on the arches and vermillion at the bases of the columns. The sanctuary ceiling was blue, powdered with gold fleur-de-lis.

In 1906 the ceiling woodwork was repainted the then favourite ‘public service’ green, highlighted by dark cream and the fleur-de-lis were replaced by gold stars. The present pale cream and gold colours were introduced in 1963 when the architect Morton Herman (and his colour consultant daughter) removed all the ‘High Victorian’ decorations, including the Minton tiles from the side walls of the sanctuary and the gold stars on the ceiling.

Like Solomon’s Temple, Christ Church’s interior is wonderfully enriched by the use of cedar, painted or not. Blacket’s ‘open’ pews were criticised for being straight-backed and uncomfortable, however they were, even then, distinguished by their beautifully carved ‘poppy heads’ which we still admire. This was one of the first churches in the colony without high box pews. The south aisle pews were free, the rest were rented by the occupants. Pew rents and generous personal subscriptions were then the main means of financial support. In an early indication of future inclusiveness all seats were declared free in 1904. In 1906 the open straight back pews were filled in with the sloped backs we have now.

Blacket devised the elegant carved design on the pulpit, on the two priest’s chairs in the chancel and on the west end panelling and internal doors. The west end panelling is actually the front of the western gallery which extended across the width of the church from 1845 until 1887. The two manual Holdich organ, built in 1844 and lost in the 1906 fire, was housed above with choir vestries below. Today you may still see the marks, on both the south and north walls by the windows, where the gallery was butted in.

The font, still in use, is carved from Mulgoa stone and was then raised on simple steps. The present handsome tiled baptistery and canopy were added in 1906. Remarkably, for the 1840s, the interior walls of the church were not plastered, as were so many colonial churches, but covered with lime-wash up to the window sills. In 1892 the lime-wash was removed with the assistance of the local fire brigade. The years of accumulated soot from Central Railway was steamed from the walls in 1964 but even today, if you look closely, you will see specks of original lime still in the pock-marks of the stone.

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CCSL interior, 1884

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These Living Stones

Funding problems and a storm which destroyed some scaffolding delayed the completion of the tower and steeple until early 1856. The peal of six bells, cast

by John Taylor and Sons of Loughborough in Leicestershire, which had arrived on the Hamlet in 1853, were then installed and the first bell ringers enthusiastically rang a full peal on New Year’s Day, 1856.

Four additional bells have since been added and despite a previous Rector’s cherished belief that Christ Church’s was the oldest ring on the mainland, the truth is that we are a reasonable third to Saint Mary’s Cathedral and Saint Benedict’s, Broadway.

In 1845 the side walls’ windows were plain glass and only framed in wood. It fell to Blacket to design and supervise the fitting of sawn stone sills and mullions.

Blacket supervised the installation of most of the stained glass in these windows.

Around 1852, a window by Wailes of Newcastle, of a ‘Turkey carpet’ pattern, replaced the plain glass of the east window. This was, in turn, replaced in 1863 by another Wailes window, this time depicting Jesus as the Good Shepherd in the central panel with the two Saints John on either side. This was in turn replaced, in 1906, by todays Te Deum window, designed by John Radecki of the Sydney firm Ashwin and Co. The ‘Turkey carpet’ window was then installed in St Barnabas’ Broadway, where it remained until lost when that church was destroyed in the 2006 fire.

One hundred years earlier, in 1905, a similar fate had befallen the 1863 ‘Good Shepherd’ east window at Christ Church when fire destroyed the organ and part of the east end of the church. In the renovation of the sanctuary, part of the Good Shepherd panel was preserved and now stands above the west door giving those leaving the church and going out into the city a farewell blessing and an assurance of comfort in need. Perhaps if they are willing to accept it, it even offers visitors an invitation to return.

Now as we prepare this year to celebrate Christ Church’s 170th anniversary, in a city so very different from that of 1845, we thank God for the beauty and comfort of these stones, and for the opportunity for spiritual renewal they have afforded to us, to so many past parishioners, and to the visitors and strangers who come daily seeking to know God in this place of peace and quiet.

We also give thanks for our past and present Parish Priests and their assistants who have, through the Holy Spirit, administered the sacraments and preached the Word of God, teaching us that Christ Church is not just a beautifully constructed and decorated pile of stones but, as Saint Peter directs, it is an inspiration for us to become like living stones, being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.

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Parish Profile:

Fr Eric Hampson Prepared by David Reeder

A

familiar figure as part of the CCSL family over the last 30 years, Father Eric Hampson brings his wisdom, love and support to our community of faith. This began with an invitation in the early 1980’s from Fr Austin Day, then Rector of CCSL. Father Eric was working with The Australian Board of Missions at the time, and Father Austin contacted him to offer him an altar at CCSL to enable him to say mass regularly. From this time Fr Eric has made CCSL his spiritual home.

Father Eric, born in 1925 in Durban, South Africa, has led a most varied and adventurous life in the service of God. This has encompassed combat in World War II, serving as a priest in places diverse as South Africa, Cyprus, England, North Queensland, the Hunter Valley, Sydney, Tangiers, Morocco, Sicily, South East Asia, and finally at CCSL and at St James’, King Street.

Father Eric’s life in the Church began as a choir boy at St Thomas’ Durban, but it was his experiences and meetings during WW II in North Africa that firmed a calling to the priesthood. University study in post-war South Africa, was followed by ordination and three years attached to the Cathedral Church of St Saviour in Pietermaritzburg. After serving in country parishes, Fr Eric felt his vocation would develop in the wider Anglican Communion. Granted leave to travel, Fr Eric, with his trusty second hand 250cc Royal Enfield motorbike, boarded a ship for Suez.

After travelling in Egypt Fr Eric landed in Cyprus, where he was soon doing valuable work for the resident English Archdeacon, filling in where needed on the island, happily mobile on his trusty bike. In his memoir One Male Migrant Fr Eric writes about his time in Cyprus: Apart from work, I also had a day off each week, and with my little goatskin bag filled with bread, olives and cheese, I would take the bike for an assault on the mountain range that was crowned with Crusader castles.

Following Cyprus Fr Eric made his way to England via Palestine, Turkey and Greece, including Mt Athos. In England he followed up an invitation from the Rector of Holy Cross, Greenford, Middlesex. This led to a very rewarding period (1954 to 1958) serving as a priest in this busy, beautiful and historic parish.

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Parish Profile: Fr Eric Hampson

1958 to 1960 saw Fr Eric in the West End of London, as secretary to the interfaith Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. He had been a member of this Anglo-Orthodox fellowship since student days.

At St Basil’s House in Ladbroke Grove, London, Here he experienced a rich mixture of Anglican and Orthodox liturgy and tradition, where a constant steam of guests from Crete, Armenia or Ethiopia were part of this very ecumenical household.

For many years Fr Eric had known of the wonderful work of the Bush Brotherhood in North Queensland, and had begun to feel he was called to serve God in this way. Answering this call Fr Eric spent the next six years, from 1950 to 1956, living as a Bush Brother in this remote area. Arriving in Australia as a ‘ten pound migrant’, he took the train to Townsville and was immediately posted as to the small towns of Richmond and Julia Creek, in the middle of the black soil plain. Life here was one of dedicated service to the local people: drovers, prospectors, graziers and their families. His far flung parishioners surely benefitted greatly from his dedication, but sometimes more than he expected. In his memoir One Male Migrant he tells of arriving at a remote property to administer to the family there, only to hear the small son ask “is God staying the night”.

During the next twenty five or so years, Fr Eric fulfilled his vocation as Archdeacon of Mt Isa, as the Australian chaplain to Saigon and Phnom Pen, as the Vicar of the grand Anglo-Catholic parish, St Augustine with St John, in Kilburn, London, and to a ministry at Branxton in the Hunter Valley of NSW. Back in Sydney in the 1980’s Fr Eric brought his invaluable experience to his role as a Field Officer for The Australian Board of Missions, and from here his life with CCSL began.

His clerical adventures were not yet over, however, as very soon he was leaving the CCSL congregation from time to time to be the Locums Tenens in a variety of parishes, from the Argive in Portugal, to Sicily, Tangiers and Madeira.

These late flowerings of vocation are wonderfully described in a second memoir Locum Tenacity.

Fr Eric has in recent years given up so hectic a travel schedule, but continues to be a much loved part of the extraordinary range of human experience that is CCSL.

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As a choirboy in Durban.

The Deacon’s Treasure

An Early Christ Church Family Evelyn Wyatt

I

n 1838 when the St Lawrence Parish Chapel opened in the Albion Brewery, it hoped to attract the numerous respectable individuals who cannot obtain accommodation in the other parish churches.

Seven years later at the consecration of Christ Church in September 1845, did the congregation meet these wishes? It was exceedingly numerous, the aisles and every corner being crowded and all the seats inconveniently full.

While the registers record the names of those baptised, married and buried in the parish, little is known of most of these ordinary souls.

Evelyn Wyatt When snooping in the outer branches of my in-laws’ family tree, the story of one couple of humble origins from the early days emerged, along with that of one of their children and extended family and the influence Christ Church had on their lives.

On 23 September 1845, just thirteen days after the consecration celebrations, a young couple was married. This was the third wedding in the new church and the Rev William Horatio Walsh officiated.

The groom, Thomas Frederick James Fisher, was a 22-year-old shoemaker, who emigrated from London in 1840, aged 17. His bride was Ann Handcock, a 20-year-old Irish girl who could only sign with X (her mark). Thomas’ mother and stepfather, Ann and Thomas Wood, were the witnesses.

As children, both Thomas Fisher and Ann Handcock had each lost a parent. Thomas’ father died when he was five and his mother married Thomas Wood. The Woods, with about six children, arrived in Melbourne in February 1840 as assisted migrants. They spent 2 years in Melbourne before moving to Sydney. By 1845 Thomas Wood was the Christ Church parish clerk.

Part of his duties was to witness marriages when required. In 1845 his name appeared on about a third of all marriage certificates.

Ann was one of a family of nine from Westmeath, Ireland. Her father, Robert Handcock, had been invalided out the army. Her mother, Anne, died when Ann was about 10. The following year her father packed up the whole family and arrived in Sydney in 1836 as assisted migrants. Ann’s older sisters and brothers married and moved to Queensland while she and the younger ones stayed with her father in Sydney.

Returning to our couple. Between the end of 1845 and 1862 nine little Fishers arrived. Ann was a capable mother as all the children survived infancy. The children were baptised at Christ Church, five by Canon Walsh and the others by assistant priests.

Thomas gave up shoemaking in 1850 when he was appointed the sexton for Christ Church.

This job involved care for the Church of England section of the Devonshire Street Cemetery, as well as church verger and, according to Laura Allen, the sexton’s position was paid by the Christ Church Parish.

The family moved to George Street South, to a dwelling on the site at the meeting of Pitt and George Streets, where, in 1810 Macquarie had built an elaborate toll bar. After demolition, it was replaced by a building which was occupied in turn by a police Watch House and ambulance depot and then by Marcus Clark’s first building.

The Fisher family occupied this residence for about seven years, before moving to Buckingham Street, Surry Hills, where Thomas and Ann remained until their deaths in the 1890s. Thomas’ position as sexton ceased with the closure of the Cemetery in 1867, and he became a grocer.

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An Early Christ Church Family

One of his stepbrothers, George Wood, took over the role of parish clerk from his father in 1852.

Poor George came to an untimely end in 1860, aged 30.

Probably all the children were educated at the Christ Church school. We know the eighth child, Albert, born in 1859, was a pupil and went on to have a very prominent musical career in Sydney.

His musical talents must have been recognised and CCSL in the 1880s, showing the buildings to the south of the church fostered from an early age as he gave a complimentary concert in Christ Church schoolroom at the age of eleven.

From the late 1870s until 1933 he contributed greatly to both the sacred and secular musical life of Sydney.

At the age of 20 he was associate organist for the inaugural concert of the Sacred Choral Association. This choir was conducted by Mr William Stanley, organist at Christ Church for 12 years. It was formed for the performance of six oratorios in the International Exhibition held in Sydney in 1880 at the Garden Palace in the Botanical Gardens. Albert continued with the Association and at the age of 23 was elected conductor, succeeding Montague Younger, the organist at St Andrew’s Cathedral.

For ten years until 1891, Albert was the organist at St Paul’s at Redfern. This was during the final years of the incumbency of the Rev Alfred Stephen and in 1888 he advised on specifications for their new organ.

For three years he was organist at St Andrew’s Summer Hill, then organist from 1894 St John’s Church, Ashfield, until his death in 1933. This included the first radio broadcast of a church service from St John’s in 1923.

Prior to the establishment of the NSW State Conservatorium of Music in 1915, the organist Hector Maclean arranged with Trinity College London to become their local representative. In 1885 the Sydney College of Music was established and from 1898 Albert was a music teacher and examiner. This involved travelling to regional areas of NSW. He composed church music, was an organist for the Masons and accompanied visiting instrumentalists and singers.

The Fisher family changed allegiance from Christ Church to St Paul’s at Redfern. The reason is not known, perhaps they were supporting young Albert, perhaps they were supporting Rev PAGE 28

The Deacon’s Treasure

An Early Christ Church Family

Alfred Stephen, whom they would have known as a curate at Christ Church for many years or perhaps it was the retirement of Canon William Walsh.

However, for the Fisher family, the early days of Christ Church not only provided a place for worship and acceptance, it also provided employment for some family members, a home for seven years and education for their nine children who flourished.

References: Sydney Morning Herald – various: Illustrated Sydney News 6/12/1890: CCSL Baptismal and marriage records: NSW BDM: Ancestry.com: Wikipedia Devonshire Street Cemetery: A History of Christ Church S Laurence Sydney, Laura Mary Allen 1939.

My CCSL: My earliest memories of church, aside from the odd Christmas pageant, are of serving as ‘boat girl’ to the thurifer of the inner city, Anglo-Catholic parish of Christ Church in New Haven, Connecticut. My father served as a seminarian there while he was studying to become a priest. Christ Church, New Haven was the first place I remember sensing that the actions and words of the liturgy connected me to something bigger than myself.

When my husband and I settled in Sydney in 2004, my father had heard of CCSL through a colleague and suggested that I might like to visit. I wasn’t looking to join a church at the time but decided to attend Midnight Abigail Shirlaw Mass one Christmas. From the moment I walked in the doors, I felt like I had come home. My earliest connections with the church were reawakened by the smell of the incense, the stillness amidst the chaotic inner city, the raising of voices to the glory of God in words and cadences handed down over centuries. The beauty of the music and liturgy moved me to return at Christmas and Easter for a number of years.

One day in 2013, I happened to have a look at CCSL’s website and noticed the link to the Children’s Ministry. My daughters, Nina and Vivien, and I attended our first Sunday service that week and have been coming back ever since.

We were made welcome at Sunday School and in church from the first time we visited and were reassured that the wiggling and clamour of little ones were not seen as an interruption but as a welcome addition to worship at CCSL. This inclusiveness has given my girls the same opportunity to connect with the music and liturgy of the Anglican Church that I had as a child.

Nina and Vivien have been part of the Sunday School, worshipping and glorifying God in song, learning about scripture and the traditions and prayers of our church, and more recently, practising being acolytes. My involvement in the Children’s Ministry, seeking to make the Bible accessible and relevant to young members of our parish, has strengthened my own faith and connection to the church. I have also benefitted from worshipping on my own at some of the Feast Day celebrations and Holy Week services.

My family and I are incredibly grateful to have found a spiritual home at CCSL and look forward to developing that relationship for many years to come.

No. 75 • St Laurencetide 2015

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Book Review by Anthony Miller:

Cana Communities: Celebrating 40 Years.

T

his book compiles short, sharply focused experiences narrated by people connected with Cana, including volunteers from our parish’s Saturday-night shelter. This content corresponds to the essence of the Cana project, which is all about the unique and mysterious value and beauty of each person.

These qualities are discovered in individual contacts.

Discovering the sacred in the ordinary: it is one meaning of Anthony Miller with Fr Brian Stoney the eucharist.

The book’s verbal content is complemented by informal photos of the people in need and the volunteers who make up Cana’s varied communities. The widepaged format of the book symbolizes Cana’s aim of broadening our horizon.

The moving spirits of Cana over most of its forty years have been Brian Stoney, an ex-Jesuit who died in 2008, and Anne Jordan, a sister of the Presentation Order, still very much alive. Both have been mavericks, working outside the boundaries of the institutional church, although - or because - they have remained profoundly faithful to the spirit of the gospel.

Both have the quality of saints, though they would hate to have that term bestowed on them. They are extraordinarily open, receptive, non-judgemental, in relating to their fellow humans. They are also determined, single-minded about their path, and exercise a compelling charisma in calling others to join them as they walk it. The contributions in the book show the influence of Brian’s and Anne’s characters.

Cana The maverick spirit of Cana means that it works also outside the Communities: boundaries of the social services bureaucracy. It applies for and receives no Celebrating 40 government funds. It puts people first: it will not sacrifice human need, however Years. Strawberry far its demands may run, or human contact, however unproductive it may seem, Hills NSW: to the dictates of a supposed efficiency.

Cana Despite this limitation on its resources, Cana has extended its activity Communities widely. Celebrating 40 Years is instructive about these activities beyond our shelter.

Inc., 2015. 112 Cana operates a number of houses that provide longer-term accommodation for pp., $20. men and women. It has offered mentoring for exprisoners. For several years, it operated the Cana Café in Redfern, but more recently it has closed the café and opened a community farm at Orchard Hills in western Sydney, which gives training in various trades through Western Sydney TAFE. One thing that emerges in the book, and which volunteers at our shelter would confirm, is that in all Cana’s activities it is not volunteers who give and disadvantaged people who receive. The transaction goes both ways and, as many biblical parables teach, we all take away more than we put in.

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The Deacon’s Treasure

My CCSL: From Pulpit to Pew. Retiring after 45 years of Parish Ministry in the Methodist and Uniting church, where could I find a place to worship? To the surprise of many of my friends, I chose Christ Church St Laurence.

I found at CCSL anonymity and space. My wife Beryl and I were welcomed without any questions being asked. I found the space I was seeking, and you allowed me to sit in a pew, rather than stand in a pulpit. I also had time to accept a different style of worship.

Revd Wilfred Death I came here for the quality of the music, and after 17 years, I still come for the music. I am never disappointed. Thank you choir for your dedication and ability to inspire every Sunday. * I needed to worship in a church that is all inclusive. Christ Church St Laurence excels at this. Top marks. * I needed the ritual and the liturgy based on the lectionary. You may be surprised to know how similar this is to the Methodist Church Book of Offices. * I needed a church where hymns are sung properly. Thank you Peter for your ministry to me. It does my heart good to sing to your playing, especially when it is a Wesleyan hymn. * I needed a church where the ministry of the word is important. Top marks to Fr John and Fr Daniel. * I needed a church where love is obvious, and I have found so many wonderful friends here. The humour here is very special; I no longer take myself seriously.

Thank you all for accommodating my ever changing beliefs. Where else could I worship.

Answers to Quiz 1: Wednesday 9 September 2015. 2: King Bhumibo Ajulyadej, Rama IX of Thailand (ascended his throne 9 June 1946) (Elizabeth II ascended to hers 6 February, 1952) 3: Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. 4: Louis XIV reigned 72 years 110 days.(14 th May 1643 – 1 September 1715. 5: Less than one year: 20th January 1936 to his abdication on 11th December 1936: 10 months and 22 days. 6: Trick question! Julius Caesar was never Emperor of Rome. His title was “Dictator” until the notorious 15th March,44B.C. 7: Victoria, Edward VII, George V, George VI, Elizabeth II. 8: George VII, to honour his grandfather. 9: Charles II, reigned 29 May 1660 – 6 Feb.1685 10: Maybe, maybe not. A possible historical contender is King Coel Hen, (Hen meaning ‘the old’) King of Northern England after the Roman withdrawal.

Perhaps King Coel called for his pipe, bowl and fiddlers three to celebrate the withdrawal!

No. 75 • St Laurencetide 2015

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Poem:

Laurence

Heather Sykes

The young, unlined face gazes from his chapel window Along the aisle and into eternity.

His deacon’s robes are of fine cloth, More clean and fine than ever he wore in life, But bare feet show his poverty.

Gridiron and palm tell of martyrdom endured, While halo and angel-held crown Show rejoicing in heaven for work well done.

The homeless, the unseen, the treasures of the church Still wait, and Laurence, barefooted, in old deacon’s robes, Still battles for the poor.

Heather Sykes

Sketch: Sydney Diocesan Archives

My CCSL: My first day worshipping at Christ Church St Laurence was at matins on Mother's Day 2014. I had set myself on attending church on that Sunday some time during the week, and had found CCSL by Googling Anglo-Catholic Sydney. My search yielded two results - Christ Church St Laurence, and St James, King Street - Christ Church being chosen as it was an easier journey by train.

Upon walking through the west door I was struck with the vastness of the space (compared with other parish churches I had visited), the beauty of the ornate ecclesiastical furniture, and the friendliness shown to me by two members of the CCSL community Ryan Austin-Eames Hilary handed me a prayer book, and gestured at the appropriate times to indicate when to stand or sit; and Fr Daniel, who invited me to stay for the 7.30 communion service. Above all, as a student of Malay indigenous religion, my first impression was of a space and people potent with 'semangat' - that is, a place rich in 'soul-stuff'. I like to think that my first impression has been well and truly vindicated – my wife and I have been welcomed with open arms into the life of the parish, and my short association with the Cana Communities has yielded no shortage of humbling moments.

It is through Christ Church that I came to be confirmed in August 2014. It is through Christ Church that I have been discerning my Christian vocation for the past 12 months. And it is through Christ Church that I have deepened in my faith and found a spiritual home; and for this I am truly thankful to God, to the clergy, and to the parishioners of CCSL. While I may never become a parishioner of decades, I am grateful for the time I have been given. Above all, it is through Christ Church that I have come to believe that along with what happens to the Eucharistic elements after the prayer of consecration, the body of Christ is present always at CCSL. PAGE 32

The Deacon’s Treasure