St Michael's Cathedral, Wollongong
in Wollongong, AustraliaCategory: Attraction
0 views 
0 shares 
0 comments
set bookmark!
Created/changed by:
System
Address details
St Michaels Preschool, 74 Church St, Wollongong NSW 2500, Australia Print route »
Phone & WWW
Business hours
Info
The St Michael's Cathedral is the principal Anglican church in the city of Wollongong, New South Wales and the mother-church of the Bishop of Wollongong. It is located on Church Street, Wollongong in the centre of the city.On 2 April 1999 the cathedral was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register with the following statement of significance:
The prominent siting of St Michael's reflects the historic primacy of the Church of England in setting the direction for the Wollongong community, and the site remains a dominant landmark within a large metropolis. St Michael's built fabric and site development demonstrate the long standing impact of the church upon its community. As the seat of the Bishop in the Wollongong region of the Diocese of Sydney, the Cathedral has associations with official recognition of the importance of the region to the state as a whole.
St Michael's rectors and parishioners have always had a strong association with the leaders of the Wollongong community. Since the time of Dean Ewing, many St Michael's rectors have had the responsibility of overseeing the church activities of the Illawarra region as Rural Dean.
St Michael's has had a strong association with the Church of England's national leadership. Bishops Broughton and Barker, and Archbishops Saumarez Smith, Wright and Mowle all demonstrated a special and personal focus in the leadership and strategy for St Michael's, resulting in a church with strong ties to the Evangelical tradition within the Anglican Church. The perceptible upgrading of St Michael's importance in the post war period has created associations with some of the leading figures within the denomination. It has a special association with the retiring Sydney Archbishop Harry Goodhew who was rector, Archdeacon and Bishop of Wollongong.
Blacket's design for St Michael's has some unusual features and is amongst the earliest works where Blacket began to express his own architectural confidence. The church structure remains largely intact as built, and much of the interior remains as Blacket envisioned it. The building is a high quality and rare example of a Gothic parish church with a developed geometrical base in its symmetry and planning layout. Its quality reflects the optimistic character of the local community in 1858. the church is pat of a larger grouping of significant buildings that combine to form the most prominent historic group of buildings in Wollongong, and one that compares with the better civic groups in country NSW.
