Cathedrals in Australia - St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
By Team MavEtJu on 05-Oct-17. Waypoint GA10848

Cathedrals in Australia - St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney

St Andrew's Cathedral is the cathedral church of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney in the Anglican Church of Australia. The cathedral is the seat of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of New South Wales.

Located in central Sydney, the cathedral is one of the city's finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture. Designed by Edmund Blacket, it was ready for services and consecrated in 1868, making it the oldest cathedral in Australia. Joan Kerr described St Andrew's as "a perfect example of the colonial desire to reproduce England in Australia in the mid nineteenth century."

St Andrew's Cathedral is built to the cruciform shape traditional of Christian churches and symbolic of the faith. The body of the cathedral, or nave, with lower aisles on either side, is crossed by the transept, forming a chancel for the seating of clergy and choir at the eastern end. The sides of the choir are traditionally known as cantoris, the side of the precentor, or cantor, and decani, the side of the dean, the senior clerical appointee within the cathedral. See Cathedral architecture and Cathedral diagram.

It is customary for cathedrals to be orientated on an east-west axis with the main door to the west and the sanctuary to the east. St Andrew's conformed to that tradition. But a major thoroughfare, George Street, runs by the eastern rather than the western end, making the main entrance less accessible. It also meant that when an electric tram system was installed in the street, the noise frequently drowned out the service of Holy Communion.

In 1941 the interior was therefore reoriented. A new raised chancel floor was built in the west end, the west door was permanently closed and the reredos was placed immediately in front of it. All the internal fittings of the chancel were relocated, the positioning of the reredos right against the wall creating some extra space. There was a claim that the acoustics were improved but this is spurious.[citation needed] While, on one hand, the trams would not have seemed so loud, being more remote, the negative effects on the internal acoustics were significant and a very large number of choristers were employed to make themselves heard.

In 1999–2000 major conservation and restoration work was undertaken to restore the original internal layout, whereby the sanctuary was relocated at the cathedral's eastern end. This was achieved under deanship of the Very Reverend Boak Jobbins. As part of the reorientation and conservation, the Whitely organ was removed from the north transept gallery, thus revealing one of the larger of Hardman's windows including, notably and somewhat controversially, the Crucifixion, the only depiction in the entire cathedral, together with the crucifixions of Saints Andrew and Peter.

For more information, see the Wikipedia entry.

Denomination: Anglican
Founded: 1837
Dedication: St Peter the Apostle

When logging this virtual cache, please add a photo of yourself and/or your GNSSr receiver in front of this building!