History
In 1852, land was set aside for a parish district which included South Yarra and parts of Prahran and Toorak.
On 17 August 1854 a public meeting was held at the Ayres Arms Hotel opposite the site, which resolved ‘that a place of worship in connection with the established Church of England is urgently required to meet the wants of the rapidly increasing population of South Melbourne’.
Trustees were appointed at the end of March 1854. and a grant of land title vested in August 1854. Governor LaTrobe contributed £20 towards the project before leaving the colony.
At a meeting with the Trustees on 5 December 1855, the Vicar-General, the Very Revd. Hussey Burgh Macartney, promised to appoint a clergyman if the Trustees could guarantee a stipend.
On 17 December 1855 a meeting held in the then South Yarra Club Hotel – now The Arcadia – raised the money necessary for the parish to apply for government grants in aid.
The first service was held at the Free Presbyterian school room in Punt Road on 16 December 1855, and The Rev.d William Newton Guinness, was licensed shortly thereafter.
The foundation stone for the church was laid on 26 April 1856, by Major General Edward Macarthur, Administrator of the Government of Victoria and son of John Macarthur.
By April 1857 the first portion of the church, consisting of the nave and the base of a tower, were completed at a cost of £2850, and the church was open for divine service.
The first Vicar, William Guinness, also built the Vicarage, completed in 1859 at a cost of £4000. Years later in February 1885, Gerard Kennedy Tucker, founder of the Brotherhood of St Laurence was born in the house.
In 1858, the church was enlarged to accommodate the increasing numbers of people who were attending services. The transepts and chancel were added at a cost of £6327, and the new church re-opened for public worship on 8 December, 1859.
In the early 1860’s, with the new Government House at Toorak, a group of leading Melbourne families felt the need for a church of their own. The trustees of Christ Church, however, felt they could not consent to the eastern end of the parish being annexed while there was still a debt for the building of the church. The Trustees of the new church of Toorak, eventually agreed to contribute £300 towards the liquidation of the debt. By the 31 December 1862 £300 was received and the new parish of St John’s Toorak was established.
Finally, on 21 December 1875, the building was Consecrated by Doctor Thornton, the Bishop of Ballarat.
In September 1880 the Reverend W.N. Guinness, after almost 25 years, resigned as Incumbent and returned to County Sligo, Ireland.
The Reverend Horace Finn Tucker was then Inducted as Incumbent on 11 November 1880, St Martin’s Day, coincidently the day Ned Kelly was hanged. Fr. Tucker took up his ministry at a most favourable moment in the history of the parish. His predecessor had seen the church safely through all its anxious and difficult earliest years and left the parish free of debt.
Further alterations and repairs to the church, however, continued as the parish grew. Of note, the foundation stone of the tower and spire was laid by Sir Henry Brougham Loch, Governor of Victoria, on 29 October 1881, modelled on the spire at Salisbury Cathedral. Mr Thomas Budds Payne gave £2000 for its erection, as a memorial to his daughter Rosa. The existing base to the tower was assessed to be too feeble to bear the new superstructure, so at considerable cost the tower was removed. A further £2000 was spent to rebuild the base.
In July 1886 the spire and south aisle were both completed, at a total cost of £4500, and the north aisle finished 3 years later. The total cost of the building was about £17,000, close to $5,500,000 today.
Tucker, however, was a man of much wider vision and concern, and he set about establishing three mission churches in the area, and then during the depression of the 1890s, promoted a scheme for resettling the unemployed in country areas, with The Rev.d Charles Strong.
Tucker’s first parishes were in central Victoria, where his sermons and pioneering spirit attracted the attention of Bishop Moorhouse. Influenced by the Tractarian and Oxford Movements, Tucker had a genuine concern that the life and outreach of the parish be centred on worship – Eucharistic worship – enhanced by the ceremonial splendour of the Middle Ages and elaborate choral music.
Christ Church flourished during Tucker’s time, such that on Easter Day in 1910,
“There were more communicants at Christ Church than any other parish church in the Diocese.”
With the annotation, ‘This is as it should be.’
Elected in 1894 a canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Fr. Tucker retired from Christ Church in 1908, and died 3 years later. He was remembered by his parishioners for his good-humour, compassion and public service.
And as David Cuthbert reflects in his history of the parish, since these times,
“Basically Christ Church’s Fortunes have swung with boom and depression, with leadership and its absence, with demography and social change… And what swings of fortune there have been! Christ Church has experienced great prosperity and (technically) bankruptcy. She has been characterised as ‘a somnolent parish’ by the Dean of Melbourne, and worked up to claim to be and probably be the leading church in Australasia. She has been pronounced as ‘dead’ by her own Secretary in Melbourne’s leading daily newspaper, only to spring alive and render outstandingly distinguished service in the Second World War. She has been at various stages very close utterly marginalized by, and then, in moderate measure, reconciled to the community about her in South Yarra. Of course, throughout there has been continuity as well as change. There has been continuity of faithful witness and continuity of faithful service. And who is to say that the quality of this witness and this service has been greatly affected by the fluctuations in the church’s fortunes?”
