SYDNEY'S CATHEDRALS

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19140, 25 October 1927, Page 15

SYDNEY'S CATHEDRALS

NEW SITE FOR ST. ANDREW'S. (TVfiH OUR OWlf CORRESPONDENT.) SYDNEY, October 13. Although the Anglican Church, by a large majority, has decided to surrender the existing site of St. Andrew's Cathedral, alongside the Sydney Town Hall, for a new site in Macquarie street, to meet the needs of the underground railway, and to accept also, as part of the bargain with the Government, a very handsome monetary allowance, it remains finally for Parliament to say whether the Cathedral shall grace the new site, within a stone-throw of the magnificent Roman Catholic Cathedral, facing Hyde Park. The agreement between the Government and the Church has to be ratified by the Legislature, where the battle of sites will inevitably be fought afresh since not a few lay members of Synod are members of Parliament.

Cathedrals are not built in a day, and although the new St. Andrew's will take very many years to complete, if it is built in Macquarie street, people have already rushed into print, resenting the suggestion in some quarters that it should be of the late Renaissance type of St. Paul's, London, and emphasising the "ghastly patchwork" possibilities, with a cathedral of that type, and, cheek bv jowl with it, so to speak, the Gothic of St. Mary's Cathedral and of the Registrar-General's stately offices. If the Cathedral is built on the new site, it will have as a poor relation a few doors further along the decrepit Parliament House, unless in the meantime it collapses by the sheer weakness of old age.