The Church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Carlton
Although never completed, this church is of architectural significance as one of the first and finest full blown red brick Baroque church designs in Victoria, and the second classically styled Catholic church built in Victoria. The new church was designed by Tappin Gilbert and Dennehy and constructed in 1897-99 of red brick with unpainted cement render dressings in the Baroque style. A chapel and large dome were proposed in the original design but never constructed.
The remarkable interior decoration is by A F D Cavallaro who arrived in Australia from Italy in 1899. The altar in the new church was relocated from St Patricks Cathedral where it had been originally installed in 1868. The interior is of aesthetic significance for exhibiting a richness of decoration particularly the paintings by A F D Cavallaro, executed on canvas and then fixed to the elliptical barrel vaulted ceiling.
The encaustic tiled floor by the Australian Tessellated Tile Company, stained glass by Hardman of Birmingham, and Brooks Robinson of Melbourne, Stations of the Cross by J Hennessey, and altar decorated by Ferguson, Urie and Lyon are also important elements. Architects: Reed, Smart & Tappin.
The beautiful altar and its reredos with painted panels are believed to have been originally in St Patrick s Cathedral. Above it is a fine Crucifix with figures of Our Lady and St John. These are a little lost on the wide blank space of the wall that terminates the east end (liturgical east; the church is not oriented), although in recent times efforts have been made to redeem the sanctuary from the drabness of its structural surroundings to make it a fit setting for solemn liturgies in connection with Corpus Christi Seminary.
An elegant addition is the sanctuary organ, built in 1929 for a convent in New South Wales and installed in Sacred Heart in 2011-12. This supplements the bigger organ in the choir gallery, a substantial instrument of 1886, subsequently enlarged. The church was originally noted for the high quality of its joinery. Two panelled confessionals remain, but the pulpit is dismantled and stored in a side porch. It could be easily reassembled if preaching fashions change.
For at least a century, Carlton was the centre of Melbourne s Italian community (who donated a grotto with a statue of Our Lady in the grounds of the church) and Sacred Heart was a thriving parish. But the district declined as a residential area and by the 1990s the church was close to moribund. It has found new life as the Seminary Church for Corpus Christi College. A Mass is celebrated each Sunday at 11.30am in which the seminarians generally take part as servers or singers.
Location: The Church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, 169 Rathdowne Street, Carlton, Vic
