Edmund Blacket - "Architect and Surveyor"

"Architect and Surveyor"

The early 1840s were a time of economic depression in New South Wales brought on by a severe drought in 1839, so Blacket was very fortunate to immediately gain employment from Bishop Broughton as Inspector of the Schools in connection with the Church of England in the Colony. This position involved the design and supervision of the building of schools, churches and parsonages. As the colony rapidly expanded, many school buildings were designed to be multi-purpose, serving as churches on Sunday and sometimes as court houses. Blacket began work on 1 January 1843, and on 18 January delivered to the Bishop the plans for the church of All Saint's, Patrick Plains (now Singleton). He estimated that it could be built for £700. It was eventually completed in 1850 for £713.11s.6d. Other churches that he supervised, designed or extended were St John's Ashfield (1843), St Mary's Balmain (1843), St Paul's Carcoar (1845), the old St Stephen's, Newtown (1845) and Christ Church St Laurence, Sydney.

In May 1843, he put up a brass plaque on his door, advertising himself as "Architect and Surveyor" and writing to his brother Frank in London: "There is nothing to be gained here by hiding ones talent in a bushel". In the same letter he wrote of his aim to "improve the taste of the discerning public upon ecclesiastical architecture." In July of the same year, he began this by giving his first lecture, on Norman architecture, presumably at the Sydney School of Arts. Towards the end of the year, he and Sarah rented a house from Dr Hammett in Stanley Street, off College Street, where he was soon to receive an important architectural commission. Their first child, Edith, was born at Stanley Street the following year.

Christ Church St Laurence was designed by Henry Robertson in 1840. From 1843, Blacket undertook the completion of the interior and then in the 1850s he built the tower and spire. This was to become a highly significant project for Blacket. The Church of England in Sydney had been founded in 1788 by the first Anglican priest in the colony, Richard Johnson. This foundation came at a time of austerity within the Church of England, predating the Oxford Movement. The first churches in Australia, such as St James', King Street, were essentially "preaching boxes" in which the pulpit was placed centrally against one of the long walls and surrounded by tiered seating of box pews, each designated for a family.

Blacket was instrumental in introducing to Christ Church St Laurence all the elaborate High Church details in the style of the great Catholic architect, Augustus Welby Pugin. Sydney Evangelicals were shocked at the furnishing, the liturgy and the robed male choir, seeing it as "scandalous", and "papist". Later, Blacket was to be one of the architects to transform Greenway's St James in keeping with a High Church mode of worship (as it remains today). The Reverend WH Walsh at Christ Church St. Laurence enthusiastically helped Blacket to gain other important commissions. Blacket also had a private practice during this time, one of the most notable of his commercial commissions being the Kent Brewery for Henry Tooth. From 1843 onwards he also began receiving commissions for private houses.