page_title: Edmund Blacket
section_title: Spires
hierarchical_section_title: Edmund Blacket / Other buildings / Churches / Spires
caption_attribution_description: Australian Church, the spire of St John's Darlinghurst, (1871) architect Edmund Blacket. This photo has been assembled. The very bright new restoration stonework has been slightly dulled digitally.
context_page_description: Edmund Thomas Blacket was an Australian architect, best known for his designs for the University of Sydney, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney and St. Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn.
  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. He was the most favoured architect of the Church of England in New South Wales for much of his career, and between late 1849 and 1854 was the official "Colonial Architect to New South Wales".
  While Blacket is famous for his churches, and is sometimes referred to as "The Wren of Sydney", 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's architectural practice was highly influential in the development of Australian architecture. He worked with a number of other architects of both Australian and international importance: James Barnet, William Wardell and John Horbury Hunt. Among his children, Arthur, Owen and Cyril followed him into the profession.
context_section_description: The most visible signs of Blacket's career are the spires that he positioned on hilltops around Sydney and in several country towns. Unfortunately, among those proposed but never realised are the spires of three of Blacket's grandest churches, Goulburn Cathedral, St Thomas's, North Sydney and All Saints, Woollahra.
  Among those that were completed, two are outstanding, those of St John's Anglican Church, Darlinghurst and St Stephen's, Newtown. As with the design of any spire, the architect faces the challenge of placing a structure of octagonal plan upon one of square plan and both structurally and visually bridging the difference. In both examples Blacket makes it "difficult to determine where the tower ends and the spire begins".
  At St Stephen's (1871), the tower has an accompanying stair turret that rises to the level below the tall upper belfry window. At that level, both the tower and the top of the turret are encircled by a battlement, as if the tower itself might well end there, as it does at St Paul's, Redfern. But it does not; it rises, somewhat narrower, and visually reduced by the clever play of overlapping forms. Each of the tall windows on the four sides is set into a slightly projecting plane, with its own gable, very similar in form to that which Blacket often used around doors. These rise like dormers between the broaches, overlapping the meeting of the spire and the tower, so the horizontal definition between the two occurs only at the corners. Unfortunately, in the 1990s the large poppyhead on the top of the spire became unsafe and was removed which has lessened the visual impact.
  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. The change to the section is masked by the presence of four large pinnacles which rise from the corners at this point, as if they were sitting on the buttresses but are in line with the tower itself. Behind the pinnacles, once again Blacket has placed an encircling battlement which appears to mark the point where the tower ceases to be tower and becomes spire, or vice versa. Harmonious with the four crocketed pinnacles, and on the same level, are little dormer windows.
  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." Herman says of the Sydney landscape that "had St Mary's, Waverley, and All Saint's, Woollahra, gained their intended spires the main heights of the whole district would have culminated in Blacket spires and provided impressive sights from all points of view".
caption: The spire of St. John's, Darlinghurst
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