page_title: Edmund Blacket
section_title: Cathedrals
hierarchical_section_title: Edmund Blacket / Other buildings / Churches / Cathedrals
caption_attribution_description: Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia - St Saviours Cathedral designed by Edmund Blacket in 1874. Picture taken by AYArktos
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: Edmund Blacket was to design four cathedrals for the Church of England, All Saint's, Bathurst, 1845; St. Andrew's, Sydney, (appointed architect 1846); St. Saviour's, Goulburn, 1874; and St. George's, Perth, 1878.
  All Saint's Cathedral, Bathurst, was a simple, lofty Norman design in the attractive local red brick of all Bathurst's older buildings. It was greatly enlarged in the late 19th century, and then mostly demolished and replaced because of subsidence.
  St. George's Cathedral, Perth, is also of brick, and the details are of a simple Early English design. Blacket designed a single tower and spire, asymmetrically-placed and of majestic proportions. When a tower was eventually built, it was not of Blacket's design.
  Joan Kerr indicates that St. Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn was one of Blacket's favourite buildings, as, unlike his cathedrals in Sydney and Perth, he was not hampered either by distance, or a previous architect's foundations. It was here that Blacket was able to really indulge a love of Flowing Decorated ornamentation. There are three very large windows, of seven and six lights in the chancel and transept ends, each with highly elaborate and distinct tracery, inspired by, but not identical to, famous Medieval windows. That in the North transept has a wheel based on the Visconti emblem of a window in Milan Cathedral, but by the judicious placement of two small tracery lights, Blacket has turned it into a sunflower, an emblem frequently used by one of the stained glass firms he employed, Lyon and Cottier. 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. The stained glass includes windows by two of England's major firms: John Hardman & Co. and Heaton, Butler and Bayne, and Sydney's two leading firms: Lyon and Cottier and Ashwin and Falconer.
  Goulburn occupied much of the last nine years of Blacket's life, and ultimately, his family donated the crucifix which he had carved on his voyage to Sydney. At St. Saviour's, as at St. Georges, Blacket's tower and the ornate crocketed spire was not built in his lifetime. The tower, without the spire and pinnacles, was completed in the late 20th century.
caption: St Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn, (1874), was intended to have a tall and decorative spire.
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