[1] During his 1841/1842 trip to England, John Bede Polding OSB, first Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, was exposed to the impact of the revolutionary new Gothic Revival works by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.

He attended the dedication of Pugin's St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, England, in June 1841 and subsequently consecrated Robert Willson there in October 1842 as first Catholic Bishop of Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land.

Polding came down to Berrima to bless and lay the foundation stone in mid-1847, but work on the building's erection did not commence for another two years, with William Munro as builder.

[1] Research by historian Linda Emery reveals that the major local contributor, promising 20 pounds, was publican Bryan McMahon, owner of the Berrima Inn in Jellore Street.

The other major contributors to the building fund were also publicans – Michael Doyle of Berrima, Redmond Connor of Sutton Forest and John Keighran from Bargo.

Builder William Munro was finishing the construction of Berrima's Holy Trinity Anglican Church when he secured the contract in 1849 to build St. Scholastica's.

[3][1] St. Scholastica's was for many years the focus of Catholic worship in the district, but as the railway towns of Mittagong, Bowral and Moss Vale developed, Berrima declined.

With the exception of the chancel, porch and sacristy ceilings and the corrugated iron roofs, the entire structure is original and intact and unaltered.

[1] The present forward altar is original, as is the baptismal font (not by Pugin), all other furnishings dating from not earlier than the last decade of the nineteenth century.

In its layout and permanent liturgical furnishings: piscina, sedilia, Easter sepulchre recess, provision for a Doom painting (the designed rood screen appears not to have been erected)-it is a comprehensive expression of his ideal for the revival of a small English medieval village church.

[1] St Francis Xavier's, Berrima, is of state significance as the only intact and essentially unaltered Pugin-designed building in New South Wales, indeed in the whole of Australia.

The building is one of only two such Pugin churches of its particular typology and with these liturgical furnishings in the world, the other being Our Lady and St Wilfrid's, Warwick Bridge, Cumbria, England.

[1] St Francis Xavier's Roman Catholic Church was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 25 January 2008 having satisfied the following criteria.

St Francis Xavier's Church is of state significance as a comprehensive demonstration of its designer Pugin's ideals and theories as embodied in his writings.

As the acknowledged father of the Gothic Revival his publications had a profound impact on the course of nineteenth-century design, particularly as applied to church architecture and furnishings.

It is also of star significance for its association with Pugin who was a key figure in the establishment of the Victorian Gothic Revival style for church buildings throughout the British Empire.

St Francis Xavier's, Berrima, has the ability to demonstrate the creative brilliance of Pugin, England's greatest and most influential early-Victorian designer and theorist.

The building, being intact and with his designed liturgical furnishings (except for its rood screen which may never have been constructed), fully exemplifies his ideal for the re-creation of a small English medieval village church.

Its fidelity to the Early English idiom of the middle of the thirteenth century was, at the time of its design in 1842, well beyond the compass of any architect in the Colony of New South Wales.