Church & House

[xenith]

From Government Cottage, looking along the garden path.



I've shown this one before, but it's useful as a locational shot, at the end of the street is the church and just beyond, although not visible here, is Government Cottage.


Government Cottage, not be to confused with the commandant's house which is on the opposite side of the site. This one is next door to the church, and it was used by visiting officials. I forget when it was built so I shall have to look on the website (and I won't grumble about it, nor will I find anything useful, oh well). The State Library has a photo of it at the time of occupation and it shows what appears to be standard iron verandah roof but which is apparently just canvas.




Out the front of the house, the garden has been restored, and a rather nice garden it is even in autumn. (The house is at the top of the path, the church to the left hiding behind a tree branch.)


I can't bring myself to put up a photo of the whole building, but for the benefit of those who weren't sick of the sight of the thing but the time they were a teenager:


Built in the mid-1830s, with much of the stone carved by the boy prisoners over on the point. It was never consecrated because it was used by various denominations. In my little yellow book Port Arthur, 1830-1877, by Ian Brand, there is an extract from a report by Lieutenant Gov Eardley-Wilmot to Lord Stanley which mentions this situation:

On the nomination of Mr Durham by your Lordship to Port Arthur, the present Chaplain, Mr Manton would immediately be displaced; and the very rumour of it, created a sensation there, which has been attended by important consequences. Hitherto all denominations of Christians, whether Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Independent or Roman Catholic, have been satisfied in attending one common place of worship at Port Arthur, so long as no decided ensign of any particular creed was erected. But now that a Church of England clergyman is to be established there, and a Church consecrated accordingly, all of these different creeds inform us they cannot conscientiously attend the Church of England service.

I need not trouble your Lordship with an account of the gradual steps, which the convicts have taken to get themselves exonerated from attending the Church Service; suffice to say that on Sunday the 4th October last, one hundred and eighty-five of the convicts at Port Arthur refused to go to church. This Emeute was put down by the judicious conduct of Capt Booth the Commandant, who at once acceded to their religious scruples, and kept them in a room by themselves, with proper books at their disposal, during the time of Divine Service.


This place has its ghost stories, including that of a prisoner who was digging the foundations when another attacked and killed him with a pickaxe (that's an account of the trial).

The church was burnt out by a fire in 1884.