Then & Now: The ugliest church in all Christendom!

Lang Park is a triangular handkerchief of land on the rise up from George Street to the ridge that goes over the bridge. It is inconsequential, sans meaning, sans beauty. But it resounds with history.

With the second image, I tried to recreate the first, which allegedly was sketched in 1817. St Phillips stood in the centre of what is now Lang Park, but which in the first half of the 19th century was known as "Church Hill". There were churches all around, eventually, but not initially. This was he only church in colonial Sydney until the construction of St James on Macquarie Street. Indeed, the colony was divided into two parishes, St Phillip's Sydney and St John's Parramatta, both presided over by the Reverend Samuel Marsden.

This was the second St Phillip's, the first was burnt down in 1798 - deliberately, I gather. This one on Church Hill had a sod turned in 1798, but was not "open for business" until toward the end of 1800. It was built of shoddy materials to a shoddier design, by shoddy workmen, and was replaced in 1856 by another building about where that windmill is (now we would say "on York Street").