In 1823 Raine and Ramsay (after taking Governor Macquarie back to Britain) settled in Sydney and from 1823 until 1828 ran in partnership a business in the heart of the city, as shipowners, agents, general merchants and woolbrokers.

Although he "had devised liberal things for planting a Church and School" on his estate, mental illness had prevented him from going further (Steel & Cosh, Irving & Pratten) Immediately after his death, his widow, together with the Learmonths, began to realise these aspirations.

[1] In 1907 the Ramsay family erected a new two-metre (seven-foot) high fence around the whole Vault Reserve: palings were used on all sides except the west (towards the church) where pickets were preferred with a lockable gate.

It has four double windows and projecting buttresses on each side, with a porch in front, a high pitched roof, and a belfry, in appearance, overtopping it, the latter being intended exclusively, however, for ventilation, as the school bell is to be hung on one of the adjoining trees.

This was still the policy when the two foundation stones were laid on 28 September 1930, one by Mrs Frank McLeod, a parishioner for over forty years, the other by the minister, John Gray, in honour of the reticent Ramsays.

When on 25 July 1866 "a Committee to manage the temporal affairs of the Congregation" at Dobroyde was chosen in the school-hall, the first member to be nominated and elected was Alexander Learmonth, "whose great fitness for the duty was known to them all".

As part of changes to the chancel planned by Dr Cumming Thorn in 1964, it was moved to the opposite end of the church by the Melbourne organ builders, George Fineharn and Sons Pty Ltd.

The names of seventy-seven men who had served in World War I had been inscribed on panels of the organ case: since these were no longer accessible in the new location, Buchanan made an entirely new honour board which was installed in the west porch and dedicated in 1969 as part of the second stage of the centenary celebrations.

Elizabeth Mary Forbes (1865-1926) was the second wife of Colonel John Hay Goodlet, head of a great building materials firm and a major Presbyterian benefactor, who lived at Canterbury House in South Ashfield.

Religion is suggested merely by giving the sitting room window a low, pointed-arched head, with a plaster label mould above, and punching three trefolled openings in the valance under the porch roof (Howells & Nicholson).

The 1909 fence in front of the church and hall features a base of rock-faced, coursed stone supporting a wrought iron balustrade with a variety of curlicue ornamentation reflecting early 20th century Arts & Crafts influences.

Two vehicular-width gateways provide access to the hard-paved area in front of the church and feature dressed sandstone gateposts with intersecting gabled tops and stop-chamfered corners.

The somewhat unusual "scalloped" northwest and south-west corners of the fenced-in area appear in the configuration of the site from the earliest available plans, though how exactly the modern wire-mesh and paling fences of the present boundaries follow the original alignments may well need to be verified by survey.

Aligned along an east–west axis (and thus somewhat angled to the street frontage) the building is a symmetrically laid out and simply detailed example of mid Victorian "Ecclesiastical Gothic" church architecture.

In formal terms the church comprises a simple rectangular nave with wide, steeply sloping slate roof terminating at the west end at a central, square tower originally (but no longer) surmounted by a thin metal clad steeple.

Tied buttresses along the north and south walls and gothic arched heads to the main entrance porch, other external doors and the traceried windows generally conform to the details typical of the period, style and building type.

The flanking doors in the west wall of the church, though featuring similar arched heads and tied pilasters, have simple hood mouldings instead of the elaborate frieze.

[1] The bays of the north and south walls of the nave are punctuated by pairs of lead-light, stained glass windows set in gothic stone tracery with variety given by the changes in the detailing of the quatrefoil in the spandrel above the main lights.

[1] The walls generally are of plain rendered masonry with a painted finish with face stone used for window and door surrounds, the latter featuring carved mouldings to the gothic-arched heads supported on tied pilasters.

Further changes were made in the 1970s-80s with the removal of the original Dodds organ to the west end of the church and the infilling of the central arch with sawn stone above a relocated timber panelled dado.

The warm-red face brickwork of the walls, the wide-eaved red tiled roofs with exposed rafters and white-painted timber joinery are generally typical of the period and simply but carefully detailed.

The symmetrical front elevation features a small projecting porch with gothic-arched opening decorated with chamfered bricks and hood-moulding and surmounted by a plaque bearing the St Andrew's cross (signifying the building's Presbyterian allegiance).

[1] Stones laid either side of the main entry date to 27 September 1930, one being set "on behalf of the congregation of St David's by Mrs T. McLeod and the other in grateful remembrance of the gift by the Ramsay family of this land, church building and the original school hall in 1869 ... by Rev W.J.

At the western end a pair of small offices adjacent to larger meeting rooms are located either side of the entry hall within the 1930s wing across the front of the original building.

The main west elevation features the asymmetrical layout, massing and formal elements typical of its style including a broad-spreading slated hip roof with terracotta ridging and small ventilator gambrels, a gable-roofed projecting wing with rectangular bay window expressing the presence and importance of the main living room, a smaller gable-roofed porch breaking the line of the verandah roof to mark the entrance with its decorative cut-out frieze and brackets (understood traditionally to represent the Trinity and thus point to the ecclesiastical context of the building).

The precinct is significant for reflecting the will for reunion of the schismatic Presbyterian churches in the 1860s, the deeply committed philanthropy of its founders, particularly the Ramsay family, and is associated with a succession of notable ministers, kirk sessions and congregational members.

The hall is significant because it was built by private philanthropy to house the first Presbyterian Sunday School in the state and though subsequently altered, the major part of the original (1861-2) structure remains.

Other important associations include Simeon Lord, Peter McCormick who published his "Advance Australian Fair" c. 1878, Dr John Dunmore Lang - a stormy petrel of Presbyterianism in NSW and Prince Albert, The Duke of Edinburgh.

The siting of the precinct - and particularly the church - atop a low rise with a sizable frontage to Dalhousle Street contributes to its role as a local landmark within an area more densely developed.

The Vault Reserve's cemetery is highly significant as a rare and substantial example of a private burial ground within a major church curtilage and reflects both the original influence and continued associations of the site with the Ramsay family.