Bishops Lodge is a heritage-listed former residence and boys' hostel and now house museum at Moama Street, Hay, in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia.

In 1856-7 Captain Francis Cadell, pioneer of steam-navigation on the Murray River, placed a manager at Lang's Crossing-place with the task of establishing a store (initially in a tent).

However inter-colonial disputes over trade thwarted these aspirations and instead of booming Hay remained small and isolated, but importantly connected to Sydney via a rail line.

The Riverina area may have included almost one third of the colony of New South Wales but at that time, prior to mineral discoveries around Broken Hill and the development of irrigation schemes, it was sparsely populated.

From December 1881, when the generosity of John Campbell, MLC, enabled the new Diocese to be established with a ten thousand pound bequest, the towns in the western Riverina began vying for the honour of being the cathedral city.

He travelled extensively throughout the area during his early ministry and experienced the extremes of the Riverina climate and had ample opportunity to consider the design of a building to accommodate his family and the administrative needs of the diocese.

For example, the Yaralla Cottages in Concord, Sydney, were also completed in 1889, but in an English Queen Anne Revival style with what has been described as 'archetypical Sulmanesque marriage of brick and finely carved sandstone detailing.

At that time Hay was an established town in the centre of the vast Riverina plains, with many imposing public buildings and urban services such as reticulated water.

St Paul's pro-cathedral was erected by the end of 1885, the original plans to build a school room and synod hail having been hastily re-arranged and improved upon in order to create a "temporary" cathedral.

This was an area subject to flooding by the Bungah Creek, and the Bishop felt it would be exceedingly valuable for the cultivation of horse feed and fruit trees, if irrigated.

In November 1890 an extraordinary plague of locusts stripped the entire garden, eating all the vegetables and flowers and the leaves and young shoots of the fruit trees, in some cases ring-barking the stems.

The Bishop's Lodge vegetable gardens were better off than most, as the beds then currently in use were above flood level, however he did note that their strawberries, asparagus and rhubarb were out of sight and would probably perish.

[1] By the early 1890s Linton's diocese covered over a third of New South Wales but included few more than 20,000 Anglicans; many of the landholders were absentees or non-Anglicans while the mines at Broken Hill were attracting increasing numbers of Methodists.

Bishop Anderson had had experience in Queensland with similar bush conditions to those he met in the Riverina Diocese, now a see of over 70,000 square miles, with fourteen parishes worked by fifteen clergy.

At the time of arrival in Hay, Bishop Anderson was thirty-six and a man of great activity and physical strength, essential attributes for what was still largely a pioneering role.

During the first fifteen years it was a family of young children, enjoying beach holidays at Portarlington, playing with dogs, cats and ponies, holding tennis parties and having lessons either with a governess or at the private Hay Grammar School run by Mrs Gegg, wife of the manager of the Bank of New South Wales.

The much reduced income he received meant he was obliged to use almost his entire private capital of between £5000 and £6000 in meeting the expense of educating his family and running the Bishop's Lodge household.

Within the Linton incumbency, there had been a formal entrance from Lang Street with a wide carriage-way leading to the turning circle in front of the building, but for most of the twentieth century only a walking path down the centre of the carriageway has been maintained for pedestrian visitors to the Lodge.

By about 1915, when Bishop Anderson and his family had been in residence for twenty years, the view from the front verandah of the Lodge was one of well kept lawns and beautifully tended gardens on every side.

Flanking this main path for its entire length were trellises made of pine poles threaded with wire on which the Chinese gardener, Ah Mow, grew all kinds of white and black table grapes.

The absence of a willing buyer obviously forced the diocese to reconsider its decision to dispose of the Lodge, for six months later the newly incumbent Bishop Reginald Halse took up residence there.

[1] During the early period of Bishop Halse's incumbency, the grounds, which still extended down to Lang Street, are remembered as extensive gardens of trees and shrubs dissected by a number of paths where young clerics could occasionally be seen at their devotions.

[1] Nine years after Halse's arrival and halfway through his incumbency as Bishop of Riverina, the decision was taken to convert part of the Lodge for use as a boy's hostel.

Bishop's Lodge was seen to be admirably suitable with its large house and spacious grounds providing plenty of space for tennis, cricket and football.

Mr Carides died in 1980, and, after living alone in the house for five years, Mrs Panaretto negotiated to sell the property to the Hay Shire Council in 1985.

[1] Within the Linton incumbency, there was a formal entrance from Lang Street with a wide carriage-way leading to the turning circle in front of the building, but for most of the 20th century only a walking path down the centre of the carriageway has been maintained for pedestrian visitors.

Flanking this path for its entire length were trellises of pine poles threaded with wire on which grew all kinds of white and black table grapes.

[1] The construction system was innovative, to avoid the problems of soil movement in the extremes of seasons which cause masonry buildings to crack and to allow the structure to cool rapidly at night in the summer, while being insulated from the worst of the daytime heat.

Its lightness and durability and ability to withstand the seasonal expansion and contraction of western Riverina soil which causes extensive cracking of masonry buildings has not been generally appreciated.

[1] The utilitarian plainness of the building is relieved by finely detailed timber verandah posts, window and door mouldings, roof ventilators.