St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, officially, St Mary of the Presentation Church, is a heritage-listed

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

at 13 Church Street,

Mudgee Mudgee () is a town in the Central West (New South Wales), Central West of New South Wales, Australia. It is in the broad fertile Cudgegong River valley north-west of Sydney and is the largest town in the Mid-Western Regional Council Local gov ...

Mid-Western Regional Council The Mid-Western Regional Council is a Local government in Australia, local government area in the Central West, New South Wales, Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. The area is located adjacent to the Castlereagh Highway that passe ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia. It was added to the

New South Wales State Heritage Register The New South Wales State Heritage Register, also known as NSW State Heritage Register, is a heritage list of places in the state of New South Wales, Australia, that are protected by New South Wales legislation, generally covered by the Heritag ...

on 2 April 1999.

History

The church was first built in 1857, when local priest Father Callaghan McCarthy had built a church, sanctuary and sacristy. It was effectively rebuilt by between 1873 and 1876 to the design of Edward Gell, with

Tambaroora Tambaroora is a locality in the Bathurst Regional Council local government area of the Central West of New South Wales, Australia. There was once a gold mining town of the same name, now a ghost town. It lies to the immediate north of Hill End, ...

contractor Mr. Webb and Bathurst stonemason Mr. Burns carrying out the work. The new design incorporated the pre-existing sanctuary and sacristy in the redevelopment while constructing the body of the current church. The foundation stone of the rebuilt church was laid on 7 December 1873 and it formally opened on 11 November 1876. The spire was added to the tower in 1911.

Description

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church is a

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

church in Victorian Ecclesiastical Gothic designed by Bathurst country architect, Edward Gell. It has an especially fine western facade with pointed arched doorway and side recesses and narrowly pointed stained glass windows. Beautifully scaled rose window in stone and stained glass. The church has a tower with flared copper

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spire ...

balanced in a symmetrical composition with

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

end of southern

aisle An aisle is a linear space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, in buildings such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, parliaments, courtrooms, ...

. The side elevation features repeating pointed arched stained glass windows. The church organ was built in 1866 by J. W. Walker of London for St Jude's Anglican Church, Randwick. Under direction of Charles Richardson, in 1907 the organ was transferred from Randwick to Mudgee with a new set of pipes to the old specification. Richardson also decorated the display pipes in his style, and other alterations included the fitting of a new keyboard, the addition of a

tremulant __NOTOC__ A tremulant (; , , ) is a device on a pipe organ which varies the wind supply to the pipes of one or more divisions (or, in some cases, the whole organ). This causes their amplitude and pitch to fluctuate, producing a tremolo and vibr ...

, and the removal of the hand-blowing apparatus.

Heritage listing

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church is a fine church from the post-

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, ...

era, making a significant contribution to the character of the central area of Mudgee. St Mary's Roman Catholic Church was listed on the

on 2 April 1999.

Gallery

Image:685 - St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Presbytery, Convent & Hall - PCO Plan Number 685 (5045728p1).jpg, St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Presbytery, Convent & Hall - PCO Plan Number 685

References

Bibliography

Attribution

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Marys Roman Catholic Church Mudgee

Mudgee Roman Catholic churches in New South Wales Articles incorporating text from the New South Wales State Heritage Register Roman Catholic churches completed in 1876 1876 establishments in Australia Victorian architecture in New South Wales Gothic Revival architecture in New South Wales Gothic Revival church buildings in Australia Sandstone churches in Australia 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Australia Victorian church buildings in Australia