It’s not heritage listed, so let’s knock it down, even though it’s 120 years old.
That’s the thinking on St James Anglican Church at Kent Street, Minto, which avoided permanent oblivion at Tuesday night’s council meeting.
The owner of the site, and therefore the historic little church, the St James Anglican Church Parish, was seeking permission to demolish the old church, which has not been used for religious services for some years.
One of the problems associated with heritage listing is that it creates a major headache for the owner.
There are restrictions on improvements and so on, so many owners are not very keen to gain heritage listing.
But in this case, as no doubt in many others, there are moral and ethical reasons to be taken into account in deciding whether to seek heritage listing.
The building belongs to the Anglican Church parish.
But its history belongs to the people of Minto who for around 100 years got married in it or had their children baptised or used it for funeral services.
According to one of the submissions at the council meeting, St Mark’s Anglican Church is the oldest standing building in Minto village.
As this resident pointed out, for many years Minto was a self contained village, and this church was a big part of its community life.
In the third Australian century, it’s very important that local communities across the land protect as many physical links to the past as they can.
And that’s what this church is, having been built all the way back in 1897 around the corner form the present site.
In 1918 it was dismantled and put together on the present site.
As a result it comes with two foundation stones, another reason it should not be touched, let alone demolished.
We stopped being so reckless with our historic buildings in the 1990s because we realised how important it was to keep those links to the past.
We are not there yet and we too easily decide to demolish, sometimes because it’s the easiest option.
Well, we must work hard to find ways to retain our history wherever and whenever we can.
Demolition must always be an option of last resort.
Maybe St James can be the start.
Hello, my name is Joan Cootes and my friend Laurie Porter and I were the ones who spoke at the Council meeting last Tuesday. Thank you so much for writing this article. The more people who know about this, the more likely it will be that we can get something positive done. I don’t quite trust the church wardens/parish council in this matter, and I really do hope that this beautiful little Church will see at least another 100 years or being loved and used by the local community.
I need to point out a mistake in your article, Mr Kontos. You called the old church “St Mark’s” but it is actually St James. Would you please correct this, otherwise people might get very confused. Thank you.