AUSTRALIAN ROMANESQUE A History of Romanesque-Inspired Architecture in Australia by John W. East 2016 CONTENTS 1. Introduction . 1 2. The Romanesque Style . 4 3. Australian Romanesque: An Overview . 25 4. New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory . 52 5. Victoria . 92 6. Queensland . 122 7. Western Australia . 138 8. South Australia . 156 9. Tasmania . 170 Chapter 1: Introduction In Australia there are four Catholic cathedrals designed in the Romanesque style (Canberra, Newcastle, Port Pirie and Geraldton) and one Anglican cathedral (Parramatta). These buildings are significant in their local communities, but the numbers of people who visit them each year are minuscule when compared with the numbers visiting Australia's most famous Romanesque building, the large Sydney retail complex known as the Queen Victoria Building. God and Mammon, and the Romanesque serves them both. Do those who come to pray in the cathedrals, and those who come to shop in the galleries of the QVB, take much notice of the architecture? Probably not, and yet the Romanesque is a style of considerable character, with a history stretching back to Antiquity. It was never extensively used in Australia, but there are nonetheless hundreds of buildings in the Romanesque style still standing in Australia's towns and cities. Perhaps it is time to start looking more closely at these buildings? They will not disappoint. The heyday of the Australian Romanesque occurred in the fifty years between 1890 and 1940, and it was largely a brick-based style. As it happens, those years also marked the zenith of craft brickwork in Australia, because it was only in the late nineteenth century that Australia began to produce high-quality, durable bricks in a wide range of colours. But good brickwork requires good bricklayers, and this was also a period when Australia was blessed with many artisan bricklayers, often paid at a rate which was completely incommensurate with their skill. A study of the Australian Romanesque is thus also a study of fine brickwork of a quality which we are unlikely to see again. Architectural history is not just a history of the design of buildings. The story of the Australian Romanesque is also the story of those who made decisions to build in this style and the forces that guided that choice. It is the story of the emotions which the Romanesque stirred in Australian Christian parishes and clergymen (and they were all men). It is also the story of the architects who prepared the plans and guided the clients in their final choices. It is the story of businessmen (and again, they were almost all men) and bureaucrats who selected secular versions of the Romanesque for particular commercial buildings, schools, court houses, etc. And of course it is also a story of the people who used those buildings and of their response to them. Such a history can only be written by studying in detail the stories behind the hundreds of Romanesque buildings in Australia, and that is beyond the scope of the present work. However a start can be made by identifying the buildings themselves, and the architects who designed them, and then assembling that data into some sort of coherent narrative. That has been the modest aim here. With luck, this short history will stimulate others to embark on the more detailed case studies which will, in time, give us a better understanding of the Australian Romanesque. 1 Methodology This study is based on a database of about 650 Romanesque-inspired buildings throughout Australia, some of them never built, some of them long demolished. The buildings were identified from many sources, including standard architectural histories, the contemporary building and architectural press, heritage databases, and newspaper databases. Of course the buildings identified are only a fraction of the total, but it is hoped that they are sufficiently representative to give an accurate picture of the whole.1 The choice of buildings for inclusion in the database was often problematic. Which characteristics identify a building as "Romanesque-inspired"? The standard guide to Australian architectural styles, by Apperly, Irving and Reynolds,2 has been invaluable, but it still leaves some grey areas unilluminated. Many decisions must remain a matter of personal judgement, but in selecting buildings for inclusion, the guiding principle has been that the building must exhibit at least two of the standard Romanesque motifs which are described in Chapter Two. The present history aims to condense the information contained in the database into a manageable form. It begins, in Chapter Two, with a description of the main motifs of the Australian Romanesque, because it is essential to understand these before one can look intelligently at the buildings. Chapter Three provides an Australia-wide overview of the topic, to create a broad-brush summary and provide a context. The remaining chapters are devoted to individual states, giving a more detailed account of local manifestations of the style. As to the dating of buildings, it should be understood that the dates given are normally the year(s) during which the buildings were constructed. This has been done for the practical reason that this information can often be established with reasonable accuracy. Of course the architect's original design will pre-date the construction of the building. On the question of terminology, it must be remembered that some Australian architectural historians deplore the use of the term "Romanesque Revival," on the grounds that there was never a medieval Romanesque architecture in Australia, and therefore it was never revived. Others object to such quibbling over well-established and well-understood terms. To avoid controversy, in the present study the term "Romanesque-inspired architecture" has generally been preferred, or more simply, "Australian Romanesque." 1 A version of the database will be published online, under the title: A Checklist of Romanesque-Inspired Architecture in Australia. 2 Richard Apperly, Robert Irving and Peter Reynolds, A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture: Styles and Terms from 1788 to the Present, Corrected ed. (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1994). 2 Acknowledgements My greatest debt is to the many Australian architectural historians on whose work I have drawn and from whose knowledge I have benefited. I am particularly grateful to those who have created the directories, databases and encyclopedias which are the indispensable tools which so greatly facilitate the work of the modern architectural historian. Although some of the architects whose work is examined here have been the subject of significant investigation, little if anything has been written about many of them. On the Australian Romanesque in general, the pioneering scholars have been the late Phillip Kent and Anne Neale, whose writings have been of great assistance to me. Many diocesan archivists, parish secretaries and parish priests have kindly responded to inquiries about specific buildings, and have often provided photographs as well. I am sincerely grateful to them for their time and assistance. A study like this depends on an enormous amount of pictorial material. It would not have been possible to complete it without access to the work of many photographers, living and dead, named and unnamed, from whose labours and skills I have benefited. Because of the quantity of pictorial material assembled during this project, I made a decision at an early stage not to attempt to record the names of the photographers whose work I was using. This was a pragmatic decision, taken to save time, but I am very conscious that it is hard to justify. I hope that those whose work I have used without attribution will forgive me. 3 Chapter 2: The Romanesque Style The Medieval Romanesque If style concepts are by their nature only loosely defined, among them the one called Romanesque is especially elusive. This is because, more than most style labels, it is lacking in contexts: it is not defined with a particular people, dynasty or historical period, and there is only restricted evidence that it was recognized at the time.1 It is impossible to make any serious study of Romanesque-inspired architecture in Australia without having a basic understanding of the historical models on which it was based. However, as the above passage from a recent history of Romanesque architecture demonstrates, the term "Romanesque architecture" is hard to define precisely. There is wide divergence of opinion as to the dating of the Romanesque. A traditional view regards it as the architecture of the Latin Church (i.e. Western Europe) in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but some authorities discern its origins in the Carolingian period (around 800) and still others trace it back to the final years of the Roman Empire in the west. There is general agreement that it was supplanted by the more elaborate Gothic style, with its pointed arches, which emerged at the end of the twelfth century. The term "Romanesque" first appeared in print in 1819. It was coined by a British art historian, William Gunn, to describe a style which emerged in the later years of the Roman Empire. This was a style in which the arches spring from the abacus of the capital … This innovation once sanctioned was never afterwards abandoned … it by degrees obtained the general preference, so that in edifices constructed subsequently to the reign of Constantine, it became their prevailing character, and which, as expressive of the architecture from which it is a vitious deviation, I shall denominate Romanesque.2 "Romanesque" was thus originally a derogatory term employed to describe a style which was seen as a degenerate version of classical Roman architecture. As this style persisted in use throughout the era popularly known as the Dark Ages, it inevitably carried an aura of crudity and barbarism.