| Physical description: | Description of the Place Generally
The place consists of three main buildings with small surrounding grounds which are tightly arranged in an irregularly shaped block where George and Pitt Streets converge into Railway Square.
The sandstone church building with its steeple addresses George Street and is seen in full front elevation with the spire cut into the sky axially down Valentine Street.
Immediately to the north of the church is the AKA building, a premise owned by the church, being a three-storeyed liver-brick shop building along conventional lines. To the south of the church on George Street is an open area to the rear of the rectory. Some 2.5 m back from the alignment is a rendered brick wall painted pink which is the remains of the shop display structure which the church leased to Marcus Clark from about 1906 until the 1960s. In front of the wall are three large plane trees and associated planters and seats. Behind the wall is built a metal double-garage structure.
Facing Pitt Street to the south of the church is the Edwardian rectory building, a fine and elaborate face brick construction, the language of which is repeated in the school building, a four-storey building to the north of the church. The Pitt Street alignment is fenced with a face brick wall with sandstone capping of the same date and style as these buildings.
The church property also bounds Rawson Place and an unnamed lane running off it. The surveys show that the place is part of a city block whose only development, apart from the shop display window, are unchanged since before 1926. The church is only fully visible looking down Valentine Street; however, the tower and spire can be seen uninterrupted as one proceeds south along George Street from Town Hall. The church and spire are also clearly visible from Railway Square, and a dramatic and very close view of the church and spire is obtained from the elevated entrance to the country trains platforms at the Central Railway building.
Physical Survey
The place and its setting were inspected on 8 May 2001 and the current configuration of the site and buildings recorded. The views to the place and key urban relationships were recorded. The recording of these is shown in the following figures and schedules attached as Appendix 2.
Liturgical History of the Interior
From the physical and documentary evidence gathered, is it possible to analyse the changes to the interior of the church made for liturgical reasons since its first layout was completed by Blacket in 1864.
Liturgical change, meaning the arrangement of the interior, its fitments and furniture, is integral to the history of the parish. The first is the Tactarian Style layout brought to completion in about 1864 with the installation of the second east window to the design of William Wailes and Edmund Blacket together.
The second phase is about the rearrangements made by Charles Frederick Garnsey in 1886 to support Anglo- Catholic ritual worship. The principal elements of this arrangement were all the bringing of the choir and the organ to the east end, enlarging it in the process, the raising of the altar table on three additional steps of marble and the adornment of the church with a crucifix above the pulpit and cross and the candles to the altar.
The resumption for Central Railway Station and the fire in 1906 combined to provide opportunities to take these revisions further. In the third period the church gained a separate side chapel dedicated to St Laurence, enlarged vestries, including a sort of choir vestry under the organ, elaborate decoration to the chancel and a chancel screen. With these developments the Anglo-Catholic church interior arrangements were completed except for the fresco by Lo Schiovo made in 1938.
It is important to note that the arrangements did not take away the previous one, but built them up, only to the extent required. The interior, unlike St James, retained the bones of its previous arrangements. In the last two periods the changes amount to more practical reworkings of some details with the exception of the elaborate fresco of 1938 by Vergil Lo Schiovo. Of some stylistic interest is the stripping bare in the 1960s of certain Victorian elements in order to strengthen the colonial attributes of the church interior, at the hands of the architect Morton Herman.
In summary, it can be said Christ Church retains a great deal of its original interior, but overlaid with substantial but not radical changes that importantly give effect to the Anglo-Catholic character of the place as brought about in the 1880s. (Conservation Management Plan, Clive Lucas Stapleton, 2001) |
