St Paul’s Seaforth Anglican Church marks 150 years serving the local community
This week marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of one of the peninsula’s oldest churches – St Paul’s Church at Seaforth.
This week marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of one of the peninsula’s oldest churches – St Paul’s Church at Seaforth.
When its doors opened for the first time in 1875, St Paul’s must have seemed like a church in the wilderness.
But while the small stone church still stands, now part of a larger structure, the area around it has changed beyond recognition, having developed over the years into a thriving residential and commercial district.
Located near the corner of Sydney Rd and Frenchs Forest Rd at Seaforth, St Paul’s was opened just 10 years after the first permanent St Matthew’s Church in Manly.
The first St Matthew’s Church in Manly opened for service in 1859, although the timber building was temporary until a more substantial stone church was completed in 1865.
Originally, all of the peninsula was part of the parish of Willoughby, centred around St Thomas’s Church at North Sydney, which was erected in 1843.
But as the population north of the harbour increased, the parish of Willoughby was divided into smaller parishes, among them St Matthew’s, Manly, which covered the whole of the northern beaches.
But just as Manly developed through the 1850s, so too did outlying areas to the west in the district then called Middle Harbour but now called Seaforth.
And as the population of the Seaforth area increased, the need arose for a more convenient place of worship than the distant St Matthew’s Church in Manly.
On September 17, 1871, just six years after the completion of St Matthew’s Church in Manly, parishioners in the Seaforth area began holding their own church services.
The first service was conducted in a room lent by Peter Ellery in his home overlooking The Spit, at which Rev Gurney of St Matthew’s officiated.
Over the next four years, the parishioners of Seaforth worked diligently towards achieving their next goal – a true church of their own – led by the two most prominent parishioners in the area, Peter Ellery and Joseph Cook.
Peter Ellery was a pioneer of the area who had lived near The Spit since 1844 or earlier and had begun the punt service at The Spit in the late 1840s.
Joseph Cook was the secretary of St Matthew’s Church in Manly and was also the founder and editor of The Australian Churchman.
Cook used his journal to promote the construction of a church to serve the parishioners of Middle Harbour and within a year of the first service in Ellery’s home, nearly £200 had been donated towards the cost of acquiring land and building a church.
In 1872, the parishioners of Middle Harbour were offered four possible sites for a church at Seaforth, eventually choosing a piece of land offered by Peter Ellery, for which the trustees of the church paid £25.
Plans for a Gothic stone church were drawn by Alfred Cook and the foundation stone of the new church was laid on August 30, 1873, by Mrs Frederick Barker, the wife of the Lord Bishop of Sydney, amid as much pomp and splendour as the isolated community of Seaforth could muster.
Then church was built by Peter Ellery’s son John, between August 1873 and September 1875, at which time the church elders decided it was sufficiently completed to permit services to begin.
Once completed, the 10m by 6m sandstone church with its shingle roof could seat 92 people.
But where the laying of the foundation stone had been a grand occasion, the first service in the new church on September 5, 1875, passed with little ceremony.
The first Sunday school for local children was held in the church on February 13, 1876.
As the years passed, the congregation of the church increased, as did the breadth of its ministry.
In 1924, officials of St Paul’s Church took over the temporary wooden chancel of the old St Matthew’s Church in Manly, placed it on land adjacent to St Paul’s at Seaforth and converted it to a hall.
Another adjacent piece of land was acquired, resulting in the existing rectangular church land at Seaforth.
In 1937, Middle Harbour was raised to the status of a parochial district and received full recognition as a parish in 1947.
After World War II, there was a massive expansion of development on the peninsula and Seaforth was no exception.
By the 1950s, there were four churches within the parish – St Paul’s at Seaforth, St Peter’s at Manly, St Stephen’s at Belrose and All Saints at Balgowlah.
Under Rev W.K. Deasey, inducted as a rector of St Paul’s in 1950, the church expanded further into the community – a new rectory was built, more land was acquired, a new church hall was built at North Balgowlah, services including a mobile church were extended to meet the spiritual needs of the growing population and plans were laid for the erection of a new church at Seaforth.
The foundation stone of the new church, which incorporated the old one, was laid on November 13, 1960, and the new church was officially opened on April 30, 1961 – 90 years after the beginning of church services in the area.
Today the church, now called Seaforth Anglican Church stands proud amid the residential and commercial development of Seaforth, a far cry from the wilderness of Middle Harbour 150 years ago.
