Edmund Blacket

Blacket was an enthusiastic writer, leaving a shipboard journal in the form of an ordinary school exercise book[lower-alpha 5] 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.[2]

In 1849 Blacket assisted his cousin Thomas Blacket Stephens in his immigration to Sydney.[7] Thomas went on to be a prominent citizen and politician of Brisbane, Queensland. Blacket's brother Russell, who joined him in Australia in 1858, ran a school in Wollongong and was the father of Wilfred Blacket, barrister.[8]

All his other brothers and sisters remained in England, and their descendants include his great nephews Patrick, Lord Blackett and Basil Phillott Blackett. The breach with his parents and in-laws apparently healed. 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 first edition of the former paper was published shortly before he left England, and would have kept him informed of architectural developments in England.

In 1847 Blacket was officially appointed Diocesan Architect for the Church of England, while still continuing with his private practice. The designs of three of Blacket's most significant churches date from 1847 to 1848. These are St. Paul's, Redfern, St. Mark's, Darling Point and St. Philip's, Church Hill. As Joan Kerr points out, Blacket has used these three buildings as essays on the three main periods of English Gothic architecture: Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular, his motive being perhaps to impress Sydney with his scholarship.[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. However, the window traceries, which are of the most complex of the three English styles and for which drawings still exist, display Blacket's mastery of Gothic design.[lower-alpha 9]

For St Mark's, Darling Point, Blacket showed the committee a design based upon an engraving of the church at Horncastle, Lincolnshire. Unlike St. Paul's, St Mark's has a high nave lit by small clerestory windows with trefoil lights above the aisles. The building work was interrupted in 1851 by the departure of men for the Australian gold rushes. The spire, which is a feature of the leafy streetscape of Darling Point Road, was chosen from 14 different versions prepared by the architect, and was paid for privately.[4][lower-alpha 10]

The tower of St Philip's Church, Sydney, (1848-58), was inspired by that of the Bishop's alma mater, Madgdalen College, Oxford.

At St Philip's, Church Hill, Blacket was to replace the church built by Governors Hunter and Bligh and justifiably known as "the ugliest church in Christendom".[2] Bishop Broughton, both here and at St Paul's, wanted the design based on his beloved Magdalen Tower at Oxford. But although Blacket used the paired windows at St Philip's, the design was not a replica. Blacket was masterly at designing in the Perpendicular style and, as with other designs (such as the spire of St Mark's), he produced alternative versions which he slotted into place on the drawing or glued on as flaps, so that the Parish Council could choose. In this case they selected a design with double the usual number of windows in the clerestory level, and also two large windows in the southern side of the chancel as well as the six-light window in the eastern end, so this church, in contrast to St Paul's, Redfern, is unusually light. Unlike the Decorated Gothic tracery at St Paul's, the Perpendicular Gothic tracery is repetitious in its form. The visual effect of the church is one of harmony and elegance of proportion. Because of the Evangelical nature of this church, there is no figurative decoration, but the east window by James Powell and Sons of Whitefriars, "variegated with flowers and interspersed with texts", cost £200[4] and is one of the finest non-pictorial windows in Sydney.

St. Andrew's Cathedral 1837–68, is a very tall building for its width, appearing a cathedral rather than a large parish church.[lower-alpha 11]

Blacket's association with St Andrew's, the Anglican Cathedral of Sydney, began in 1846. 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.[10] By the time of Blacket's arrival, St Andrew's was under construction to a design by James Hume. It was to be a Neo Gothic structure of a relatively timid design and scale, cruciform and with narrow transepts. The foundations were laid, the south transept was almost complete, and in places the walls were 15 feet (4.6 m) high. The work had ceased through lack of funds owing to the drought. In 1846 Blacket, who was seen by the committee to have a greater grasp of architectural principles and design than Hume, was appointed to replace him as architect of the cathedral.[4]

While the cathedral was under construction, a temporary wooden cathedral was erected, and one of Blacket's first jobs was to create a stained-glass window for it. Being unable to acquire coloured glass, he painted plain glass and fired it, using part of the crypt beneath St James, King Street, as his studio. This window, which predated commercial stained glass manufacture in Australia, has been lost. Blacket was very pleased with it and wrote to his brother Frank "the folk who come to see it ... can hardly believe it is not stained glass."[4]

Blacket's design for the cathedral was restricted by the foundations that were already in place and the existence of Perpendicular tracery built to Hume's design in two of the aisle windows. The challenge to Blacket was to create a building which worked within the limitations of scale but still had the imposing quality of a cathedral. Once again, Bishop Broughton's aim was to have a replica of the Magdalen College tower, but Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand had laid the foundation stone in 1842, and his recommendation had been for two towers. 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.[4]

The towers of St. Andrew's Cathedral have been inspired by those of York Minster.

By 1847, all of Blacket's proposed changes, including the elaborate façade and lengthening of the nave had been accepted.[lower-alpha 12] In order to make sure that his design was truly the best possible solution, he sent copies of his plans to England, to both the Oxford Society and the Cambridge Camden Society for comment. His design was acceptable to both, the Oxford Society in particular waxed lyrical, saying that his design "had realised the idea of a cathedral, as diverse from a parish church". However, Oxford wanted the roof of the aisles to be of steeper pitch, and a decorative moulding (or string course) around the interior walls, while Cambridge wanted more pinnacles and just one large window in the transept ends. Blacket obliged by making such changes as he could, but the string course and the rebuilding of the paired windows in the existent transept were impractical. Blacket had the model-maker J.C. White construct a detailed cardboard model of a scale 1 inch to 8 feet. 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.[4][lower-alpha 13]

Blacket's modification of the west front is to a much richer and more vertical design. This was achieved by the adoption of several features of the famous façade of York Minster, including abandoning the paired "Magdalen College" windows in the uppermost stage in favour of large mullioned windows framed by a flamboyant arch rising to the level of the ornate parapet.

The nave is like those of 15th-century churches in Suffolk.

These are more strongly modelled than at York, and meet the obliquely set pinnacle above them in a continuous upward-sweeping movement. Another such flamboyant moulding rises from the tall central window to overlap the gable in a manner both complex and inventive.

The interior, despite its small scale, and the large size of the piers,[lower-alpha 14] has a lofty, spacious and elegant appearance. 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 cathedral was opened and consecrated on 30 November 1868 by Broughton's successor, Bishop Frederic Barker.

Joseph Kinsela writes, "Such is Blacket's grasp of English Late Gothic style that the interior could be taken for the product of the fifteenth century. There are no Victorian clichés.... Not many Australians are aware of the architectural status of St. Andrew's Cathedral...[it] is the equal of the best 19th century work in this style."[11] However, not everyone was enthusiastic at the time, one critic writing, "We are compelled to say that seldom has so dull an inanity been produced at so great a cost."[12]

At the University of Sydney, Blacket built the Anglican St. Paul's College and supervised the building of the Catholic College of St John's after the resignation of its designer William Wardell. Insofar as the building was completed, he was faithful to Wardell's design, but he omitted several features, such as the western cloister, for lack of funds. In 1881, Blacket designed the Clarke Buildings of Trinity College, a residential college affiliated with the University of Melbourne. These residential buildings were executed in brick, with decorative stone features and carved columns. He later also added a kitchen and staff accommodation block. A design for a chapel at the college was not proceeded with. The Clarke Buildings were extended and completed and Arthur Blacket in 1888.[16]

One of Blacket's best known commissions was the extension of Sydney Grammar School in 1855. 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. Because of the structure of the school board, Blacket's plans for the extension had to go before the Legislative Council for approval. He added a wing to either end of the building, respecting the proportion of the original, but with two floors where the earlier stage had one, and with the centre of Hallen's building having a Doric portico.[4] The portico was not constructed until 157 years later, and in the intervening period, the design looked strangely vacant in the middle.

Blacket also designed the Avoca Street front of the Prince of Wales Hospital at Randwick, Mudgee Hospital and the ornate Blind Asylum on the corner of William Street.[4][lower-alpha 16]

Many of Blacket's banks date from the 1850s and 60s, as do many of his houses. Whereas churches and associated buildings were generally of the Gothic and occasionally of the Romanesque style, the Classical style was more usual for banks, many of them stylistically based upon the palaces of Renaissance Florence. These included The Bank of Australasia and The English, Scottish and Australian Bank, both on George Street, The Exchange Buildings on Spring and Gresham Streets and The Liverpool and London Insurance Company on Margaret Street. Of the banks and offices that Blacket designed within the Sydney CBD, several survived into the 1970s but were eventually demolished to make way for high-rise development.[lower-alpha 17] 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. As late as 2008, when it housed the Blacket hotel, a few internal fittings – a staircase, and the bank vault among others – remained. Many of his small shops and commercial premises exist in other parts of Sydney such as Redfern and King Street, Newtown, but invariably with the street level façade altered beyond recognition.

Other commercial buildings included Mort's Wool Stores at Circular Quay, which are now demolished,[2] and David Cohen's & Co general store in High St Maitland, which was originally three stories but only the ground floor, occupied by Centrelink, is now remaining after a fire in 1970.[17]

"Greenoaks" (now "Bishopscourt"), Darling Point, built for Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, (1840s-60)

Blacket built houses both great and small. They ranged from a little five-room house for E. O. Heywood on Glebe Point Road to Henry Cary Dangar's castle-like Grantham, formerly on Pott's Point.[2] With its battlements, turrets, grand staircase and magnificent harbour views, Grantham rivalled Government House. Joan Kerr writes, "It was one of the grandest houses in Australia and certainly the grandest of this baronial Gothic type. Its demolition was an appalling loss...."[4] Henry Gilbert Smith, the founder of Manly, was a favourite client whilst Blacket was in private practice, having designed his Georgian house, Fairlight House, two versions of the Style Hotel (both since demolished), and St Matthew's Church (also demolished), all in the Manly area.[18][19]

Blacket also built several Anglican Church rectories, most of which are in a simple, asymmetrical, Gothic Revival style with gables and some Gothic detailing in the bargeboards and verandas, such as those at Berrima and Bega. He also remodelled Thomas Sutcliffe Mort's house Greenoaks in the Gothic style—it was since renamed Bishopscourt as the residence of the Archbishop of Sydney until its sale to private interests.

A common residential commission late in the practice was for rows of terraces. As three of his four sons, Arthur, Owen and Cyril, joined him, terraces became a major occupation for "Blacket and Sons". A row with decidedly eccentric aesthetic details, for which Cyril was almost certainly responsible, exists in Petersham, and is similar to those designed for W. H. Paling in 1881.

As an architect, Blacket is most famous for his churches. The exact number that he designed is unknown but totals more than a hundred, earning him the epithet, "The Wren of Sydney". 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.

Blacket's churches range from small multi-purpose school-cum-churches to cathedrals. Several of his finest churches are among the most highly valued heritage buildings in Australia.

Blacket's small churches, such as St Peter's, Watsons Bay, (1864) are numerous and provided the model for later Australian churches, in stone, brick and weatherboard.

While the general outline of these buildings, with steeply pitched roofs, lower chancels and small bellcotes are easily recognisable, the form varies from tiny buildings like St Mark's Greendale, (1848) to the somewhat larger cruciform St Michael's, Wollongong, (1858). 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.

Blacket's small church designs varied in style from Norman at St Silas, Waterloo; to staid Early English Gothic as at St Peter's, Watson's Bay (1864) and St Thomas's, Narellan (1880); to Perpendicular at Holy Trinity, Berrima, (1847) a comparatively wide church spanned by a hammerbeam roof of unusual design.

All Saints Church, Woollahra, (1874-82) is Blacket's most ornate design.

Many of his larger churches are among Blacket's best known buildings. The designs are extremely varied; Blacket could work in any of the medieval styles, and built larger churches in all of them, while the forms of the buildings range from the aisleless hall of St Mary's, Waverley; to the aisleless cruciform church of St Paul's, Burwood; to the triple-gabled church of St Paul's, Redfern, the aisled church of St Michael's, Surry Hills and the clerestoried church of St Stephen's, Newtown.

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. Blacket also designed the major furnishings.

St. Thomas', North Sydney (1877–84), is a cathedral-sized building in the Early English style, it is of very robust external appearance, being of rusticated masonry and internally, very spacious. Designed by Blacket near the end of his career, it was built by his sons and grandson who provided the designs for much of the furnishings. Like a number of his later works, it has a rose window of an early French Gothic type. The spire was never completed.

All Saints Church, Bodalla, was designed to commemorate the life of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, 'father of Australian dairying', and was built between 1880 and 1901 from granite quarried on Mort's estate. While a Blacket design, it is unlikely that he ever saw the site or the church which was overseen by his son Cyril. However, it also features hand-wrought iron hinges and straps said to have been designed by Blacket himself.[20]

St Michael's Anglican Church, Surry Hills was first designed in 1854, but Blacket modified and reduced it, as required, to cut costs. The church plan accepted in 1882 is rare among Blacket's designs in having simple Geometric Gothic tracery in its windows rather than the Flowing Decorated style of which he was a master. All Saints, Woollahra, on the other hand, presents Late Geometric Gothic at its most opulent and ornamental.

St Paul's Church, Burwood, is an essay in the Flowing Decorated Gothic.

Blacket's preferred style for a medium-to-large church was Flowing Decorated Gothic. Unlike the other historic periods of Gothic architecture, this style permitted him to vary the design of the tracery from window to window. This was far more time-consuming and costly than designing in the Early English or even the Perpendicular style, but it gave free rein to Blacket's creativity and skills as a draughtsman. During his time spent in Yorkshire during his youth, Blacket would have become familiar with two of the most famous of all Flowing Decorated windows in England, the west window of York Minster and the east window of Selby Abbey. The influence of these designs, and that of the equally famous east window of Carlisle Cathedral, can be seen in Blacket's east windows at Goulburn Cathedral; St Stephen's, Newtown; and St Paul's Burwood.

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.

All Saints 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 Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn, (1874), was intended to have a tall and decorative spire.

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.[4] 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.[lower-alpha 18] 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.[4]

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.[21] 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.

The spire of St. John's, Darlinghurst

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".[2]

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."[2] 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".[2]

The memorial hatchment to Edmund Blacket in St. Andrew's Cathedral

Edmund Blacket died suddenly from "apoplexy" on Friday 9 February 1883 aged 65 at his home "Roland Villa", Croydon Street, Petersham, Sydney.[22] 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". His funeral on Saturday 10 February 1883 was well attended[23] and the coffin bearers included three of Australia's most distinguished architects: William Kemp, John Horbury Hunt, and the Colonial Architect, James Barnet.[2]

Blacket was buried with his wife in Balmain Cemetery, and his name was added to the tombstone that he had designed for her, but at the closure of Balmain Cemetery in 1942, their ashes were removed to St. Andrew's Cathedral, where an enamel hatchment and a small brass plaque mark the place of their interment.[2] Their memorial stone was relocated to Camperdown Cemetery.[24]

As a person, Blacket was held in high esteem, those who knew him recalling his good qualities for later historians; H. G. Woffenden wrote in the 1960s: "Edmund Blacket was an upright God-fearing man who shunned controversy, professional publicity and social acclaim. An exemplary husband and father, he had been churchwarden and alderman, and was widely respected and admired for honesty, diligence, accuracy, fortitude and propriety."[8]

Not all critiqued Blacket's contribution favourably, with Woffenden opining in his 1967 biography drawn from his thesis that Blacket "... put tradition before innovation... [and] as a consequence stylistic development was severely restricted; quality declined as other less dedicated practitioners exploited popular taste by substituting burlesque plagiarism for scholarly eclecticism."[8]