• Title
  Old St Phillip's, Church Hill
• Call number
  ML 456
  Status: On display – Paintings from the Collection, Room 1, West Wall, no. 21
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  ca. 1840
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Paintings
• Reference code
  872472
• Issue Copy
  Digitised
• Physical Description
  1 painting - oil on board
  
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Artist died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• Published Information
  Australian Town and Country Journal (1888, January 28), p. 21
• Variant title
  
  Old St Philip’s, Church Hill
• General note
  
  Panel manufacturer's label on reverse "Charles Roberson ... 51, Long Acre London". Roberson was at this address with this business name in 1840: see the National Portrait Gallery, London, British Artists' Suppliers index https://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers/ (accessed 28 January 2021)
  
  Digital order no:Album ID : 874538
  "This painting, Old St Philip’s, Church Hill (ML 456) showcases the second structure with the crenelated clock tower that made it the tallest building in Sydney for several years (you can see a Presbyterian church, the Scots Church, in the background). It did have the rather unfortunate distinction of being referred to as ‘the ugliest church in Christendom with its eight bells hung in the ghastly tower’. [vi] Yet, it was important enough to capture in paint, even if the artist’s name is now lost".
  
  The original St Phillip’s was a simple wattle and daub construction built after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1783. It was destroyed by arson in 1798. The second church on York Street, also St Phillip’s, was built out of stone and opened to parishioners in 1810. Today, the third iteration St Philip’s Church is in Lang Park, Wynyard opposite the site of its predecessor on York Street. Consecrated in 1856, this re-imagination of Australia’s first Christian place of worship was designed by Edmund Blacket. Now named for St Philip the Evangelist the earlier Churches were named in honour of Governor Arthur Phillip (1738–1814).
  
  References:
  Rachel Franks, Coordinator, Scholarship (State Library of NSW)
  Our History’, Church Hill Anglican Sydney, online
  ‘St Philip’s Church of England Including Interior and Grounds’, State Heritage Inventory, Heritage NSW, 2006, online; entries within Historical Records of Australia utilise both spellings as do articles in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser.
  V Kemp in John L Guy, ‘Building construction practice in the colony of New South Wales from the arrival of the First Fleet to the end of the primitive era and it influence in later time’, Second International Congress on Construction History, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 2006, p. 1491.
• Signatures / Inscriptions
  
  Frame label "Old St Phillip's Church, Church Hill"
• Date note
  
  Dated from panel manufacturer's label on reverse on the painting.
• Subject
  St. Phillip's Church (Sydney, N.S.W.)
  Churches--New South Wales--Sydney.
  
• Exhibited in
  
  Paintings from the Collection - State Library of New South Wales (2018)
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE9482649

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