Edmund Blacket

Arriving in Sydney from England in 1842, at a time when the city was rapidly expanding and new suburbs and towns were being established, Blacket was to become a pioneer of the revival styles of architecture, in particular Victorian Gothic.

While Blacket is famous for his churches, and is sometimes referred to as "The Wren of Sydney",[a] he also built houses, ranging from small cottages to multi-storey terraces and large mansions; government buildings; bridges; and business premises of all sorts.

Blacket was educated at Mill Hill School, near Barnet, and although he showed an early interest in architecture, spending his holidays sketching and measuring old buildings, his father opposed him taking up the profession.

"[9] He had letters of introduction to prominent residents of Sydney, including Sir Charles Nicholson, Thomas Sutcliffe Mort and a recommendation to Bishop William Grant Broughton from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[2] Blacket was an enthusiastic writer, leaving a shipboard journal in the form of an ordinary school exercise book[e] and sending many letters to his family in England, and to his children, particularly his youngest daughter Hilda, to whom he once sent thirty stamps, as an encouragement to write back.

After his father's death in 1858 he wrote to his mother-in-law that "there has never been an instance in which I have failed to receive a letter from him, and in addition he has regularly directed and posted to me the Illustrated London News and Punch."

The purpose of the architect was seen as being to create designs of such archaeological correctness that they reproduced the styles of ecclesiastical architecture prior to the Reformation, as is demonstrated in the work of the renowned Augustus Welby Pugin.

Since it was the wish of so many colonials, not the least of whom was the Bishop, to assuage their homesickness by at least attending a church that reminded them of one in Cornwall, Yorkshire or East Anglia, Edmund Blacket was to become a very popular man.

[4] The early 1840s were a time of economic depression in New South Wales brought on by a severe drought in 1839, so Blacket was very fortunate to immediately gain employment from Bishop Broughton as Inspector of the Schools in connection with the Church of England in the Colony.

[4] Of these three buildings, St. Paul's is the most derivative of other Victorian models, the arrangement of triple aisles of almost equal height, each with an open timber roof is repeated many times in the work of Pugin and his followers.

Grand plans for a square church had been made by Governor Lachlan Macquarie and his architect Francis Greenway, but these had been abandoned after proceeding no further than the laying of the foundation stone in 1819.

Blacket initially designed towers that accommodated the wishes of both Bishops, but he also wrote to a relative in Yorkshire asking them to send drawings of the façade of York Minster.

This pleased the committee and the cathedral was finished much as demonstrated on the model, but with one very significant change: the west front, while retaining its form, had it details redesigned, in the light of the drawings that he received from Yorkshire.

It was furnished with richly carved furniture designed by Blacket himself and a cycle of 27 windows by John Hardman & Co. of Birmingham depicting the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

The cost of living greatly increased owing to the gold rush and with six children to support and earning £300 a year, Blacket left the Public Service in September 1854, to be succeeded by William Weaver.

[4][16] Blacket was involved with the foundation of Sydney University from the outset, and played a role in selecting the site on the Parramatta Road at the top of a rise overlooking Grose Farm (now Victoria Park).

One of his first tasks as University Architect was to persuade the august committee to accept the notion that Perpendicular Gothic really was the only right and appropriate style for the building, because of its association with most colleges of both Oxford and Cambridge.

The building is in the Perpendicular Gothic style with a front of 410 feet (125 metres) broken at the centre by a tower of 89 ft (27 m), beneath which there is a lofty archway, and surmounted by large pinnacles.

While the whole exterior of the building, with its glowing sandstone, battlemented roofline and array of glinting leadlight windows give an imposing effect on top of the hill, it is the Great Hall that is regarded as the finest part of the design.

The building, occupying a highly visible position fronting onto College Street and overlooking Hyde Park in the City of Sydney, was begun by Edward Hallen in 1832, to a Regency design, but considerably smaller than intended.

[q] One bank's neoclassical exterior survives on the corner of George and King Street, but the interior was gutted in 2011 to accommodate Louis Vuitton's flagship Sydney store.

His little country churches, in golden sandstone where available, with their steep gables and small bellcotes are so familiar in New South Wales, and established such a strong tradition to be imitated in stone, weatherboard and brick, that they are often seen as so commonplace as to be unremarkable.

Even at a church as remote as St Mark's, which was surrounded by fields and forest, and had neither village nor full-time priest, the details of the design commanded Blacket's care, the little building having an elegant gable over its fluted doorway, and floral bosses, long since destroyed, at the ends of its drip moulding.

St. John the Evangelist, Glebe, 1868, is Blacket's most famous design in the Norman style, in which rich mouldings and carved capitals form a striking contrast with the plain round arches.

Edmund Blacket was to design four cathedrals for the Church of England, All Saints, Bathurst, 1845; St. Andrew's, Sydney, (appointed architect 1846); St. Saviour's, Goulburn, 1874; and St. George's, Perth, 1878.

Other decorative features include the foliate carving of the capitals, much of it in the stiff-leaf style of Wells Cathedral; pierced cinquefoil openings in panels above the hammerbeams; and a screen of white New Zealand stone.

At St John's the design is even more complex, because, near the top of the upper window, the tower itself suddenly appears to become octagonal in horizontal section, before the spire is reached.

Morton Herman writes of the spire of St Mark's, Darling Point, that it is a conspicuous landmark for miles around, "contrasting...yet part of the silhouette of the hill, amply demonstrating Blacket's ability to make buildings seem inevitable on their sites.

[25] The daily papers, as far away as Perth, where St. George's Cathedral was under construction, carried obituaries praising him and citing Sydney University as "probably the finest structure in the Australian Colonies".

[18] Hunt appears to have been influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, particularly Philip Webb, and ultimately he created buildings of great originality such as the Anglican Cathedrals of Grafton and Armidale.