St Francis Xavier's Roman Catholic Church. Berrima. NSW. Australia. - This Old Church on Waymarking.com

Berrima has a unique collection of unspoilt Georgian sandstone homes and important public buildings from the 19th century.

St Francis Xavier's is one of only two churches in Australia designed by the architect Augustus Pugin, who worked on the design of the Houses of Parliament in London.
Designed in 1842, it is his perfect exemplar for the re-creation of a small English medieval village church.

From 1840 the Catholic community in the Berrima district had been worshipping in a chapel converted from two huts formerly used to house chain gangs. In 1846, Dean John Grant of the Campbelltown mission determined to erect a permanent church in Berrima, and as a result Polding supplied him with a set of Pugin's plans for a small two-compartment church. Polding came down to Berrima to bless and lay the foundation stone in mid 1847, but work on the building's erection did not commence for another two years with William Munro as builder. Munro would appear to have started the job upon completion of Edmund Thomas Blacket's Holy Trinity Anglican Church (1847-49) in the same village.

Originally known as St. Scholastica's it stands on the site of the Berrima stockade, where the road gangs that worked on construction of the Great South Road were housed. When the gangs left Berrima in 1838, the Catholic Chaplin of NSW, Father John McEncroe, applied to the Government for the land on which to build a church and a school. The first mass was celebrated in 1840 and later that year the foundation stone was laid. The building of a more permanent church was first mooted in 1840 and a subscription list opened, but it was 9 years before construction began. Builder William Munro was just finishing Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Berrima when he secured the contract to build the new catholic church. In February 1849 Archbishop Polding laid the foundation stone in the presence of some 150 local residents. The stone came from the same quarry used for building Holy Trinity. The church has remained virtually unaltered since its construction in 1851 and still reflects Pugin's exacting standards of proportion. In the late 1880s, the Berrima church was incorporated into Moss Vale parish and the name changed to St.Francis Xavier.

Designed in an Early English Gothic idiom of around the mid thirteenth century, the church consists of: a four-bay nave, buttressed at the corners, with north porch and a single bellcote astride the west gable; a two-bay chancel with diagonal buttressing to its east wall; and a sacristy abutting the chancel south wall. It is constructed of ashlar sandstone and has corrugated iron roofs.

Designer/Maker: Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin
Builder/Maker: William Munro
Construction Years: 1849 - 1851

Sunday Mass times: 11.00am (First Sunday of month)

Date the Church was built, dedicated or cornerstone laid: 02/04/1849 Age of Church building determined by?: Cornerstone or plaque If denomination of Church is not part of the name, please provide it here: Catholic If Church holds a weekly worship service and "all are welcome", please give the day of the week: Sunday Indicate the time that the primary worship service is held. List only one: 11:00 AM Street address of Church: Hume Highway Berrima., NSW. Australia. 2577 Primary website for Church or Historic Church Building: [Web Link] Secondary Website for Church or Historic Church Building: [Web Link] If Church is open to the public, please indicate hours: Not listed

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