The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
15 February 2004

Home
Archive
Subscribe
Links
Contact

Birthday wishes for Aloysius

SA parishes merge

Focus on family

Gregorian Schola offers singers big chants

Gibson’s Passion ‘work of faith’, says cardinal

How to help create a ‘culture of peace’

Pregnant pause: The joy of showing our baby the way

There is a doctor in the house

Wollongong diocese buys site for high school

Boree log bush bash

Work in Catholic education brings honour for four

Bishop launches ‘significant’ new faith courses

$80,000 boost for drug fight

Editorial: Greatest story

Letters: Something special

Conversation: Fr Aiden Kelly, prison chaplain - Helping souls in a captive Congregation

On a walk with God ...

A credible Jesus

A biblical-based Mary

A life of Mercy with music

Care, prayer still very much in order

The Polding legacy

‘Catholic-only’ order denied

US-bound on the pitcher’s mound

The Polding legacy

The Polding Altar in the crypt at St Mary’s Cathedral

By Kevin Quinlan

Archbishop John Bede Polding, Sydney’s first archbishop, bought 12 acres (4.85ha) of land at Petersham for Church purposes in 1852.

By 1865 he had set aside about 4½ acres for use as a cemetery, which was opened that year.

About 4400 burials had been conducted there by 1884, when Petersham Council effectively closed the cemetery down.

They had included the archbishop himself, who had died at 88 on March 16, 1877, after a reign of 43 years.

About 15,000 walkers and more than 275 coaches had accompanied his remains along Parramatta Rd from St Mary’s Cathedral to the cemetery.

The interment was in a below-ground vault, described in the Illustrated Sydney News as “situated in the centre of the burial ground in a conspicuous position. It is eight feet long by five and a half feet wide and the height to the centre of the arched roof is six feet. A large wooden cross, easily seen from the Petersham road, marks the locality”.

The Freeman’s Journal of March 24, 1877, says the vault had 14-inch walls and a nine-inch arch and was cemented inside. It gives what must be the external dimensions and says that “considering the time for building the vault, it reflected very great credit on Mr Eaves who was clerk of works for the construction of the cathedral at the time”.

The report continues: “It is understood that the remains of the late Archbishop will only repose there temporarily, it being intended to have them removed to St Mary’s Cathedral, where a mortuary chapel will ultimately be erected for their reception”.

An early wood engraving shows what appears to be a concrete slab over the grave with the archbishop’s coat of arms on the surface.

In May 1878 his successor, Archbishop Roger Bede Vaughan, suggested to the bishops of NSW and neighbouring colonies that a general collection be made throughout Australia for the erection of a mortuary chapel over the grave of Archbishop Polding.

Designs for a tomb, not a chapel, were prepared by William Wardell, architect of St Mary’s Cathedral, in November 1879.

J Hanson, monumental sculptor of Sydney, won the contract, and sent the designs to an artist in Carrara, Italy, by whom they were executed.

The monument, with a large quantity of undressed marble to be used for steps, arrived early in June 1881. By the end of that month the monument had been erected and the steps put in place.

The tomb was composed of white Carrara marble and was described at the time as presenting “an elegant, massive and most imposing appearance” with the Gothic design being “exquisitely chaste and beautiful”.

The centrepiece was a large rectangular block of white marble, which was led up to by three marble steps on all four sides. The stone itself was 8ft (244cm) long by 4ft 2in wide and 6ft above the top of the steps. On top of this was a large Latin cross carved from a block 7ft long and 12in thick. The sloping sides below the cross were engraved with the Archbishop’s name and date of death.

The main block had 12 deep panels, five on each side and one on each end. There were two blank panels on each side with the other eight carved in bas relief. Two had the archbishop’s arms, two had sacred monograms and the others symbols of the passion of Our Lord (e.g. the cross, sponge and spear, the robe and dice, the pillar of the scourging). The monument had cost £1200, a very large sum at the time.

In 1890 the tomb was described as being in the centre of the ground, enclosed in a circular piece of ground, fenced in with a dwarf wall and iron railings.

The “ornamental iron railing” was still there in May 1926 and “the ground within was a well kept lawn”.

However, the tomb “seemed to be suffering the ravages of time, if not of vandalism, for a good deal of the lead lettering had disappeared”.

The first section of the present St Mary’s was opened in September 1900. In 1901, Devonshire St Cemetery was resumed for the construction of Central Railway Station and preparations were being made for the transfer of the remains of the pioneer priests McEncroe, Therry and Power to a vault beneath the floor of the cathedral on St Patrick’s Day.

Cardinal Moran, who succeeded Archbishop Vaughan (he had died in England in 1883), had long wanted to transfer Archbishop Polding’s remains from Petersham to the cathedral. It was decided to do this on the same day.

All the remains were taken to St Benedict’s Church on March 16. About 250,000 people lined the route of the procession to St Mary’s Cathedral, where the remains were placed in a vault in the Chapel of the Irish Saints just to the right of the sanctuary.

The cardinal said the transfer from Lewisham of the monument to Archbishop Polding could take place later and proposed a site for it in the square in front of St Mary’s.

The cardinal died in 1911.

The monument was still at Petersham in May 1926 when the Freeman’s Journal published a photograph and a report that it was to be moved, possibly to the crypt of the cathedral.

The Australian Holy Catholic Guild, a benefit society founded by Archbishop Polding in 1845 (and lasting until the early 1990s) decided about this time to sponsor removal of the tomb to the crypt to be used as an altar.

Archbishop Michael Kelly, who succeeded Cardinal Moran, supported the plan. The estimate of £200 was higher than expected but the guild proceeded to raise the sum from its branches.

Early in 1927 the 20-tonne monument was taken from Petersham to the yard of Anslem Odling and Sons, marble and granite merchants, of Riley St, Surry Hills, to be transformed into an altar.

Extensions to St Mary’s, including a crypt under the southern end, were opened in September 1928, but it was not until early 1933 that the crypt was sufficiently developed to allow the altar to be installed. It had apparently been at Odlings since 1927.

As installed, the altar is 4ft high and 3ft 3in deep.

Archbishop Kelly, who died in 1940, was succeeded by Archbishop (later Cardinal) Norman Gilroy.

In October 1946, when the remains of Archbishop Vaughan arrived from England, the remains of Archbishops Moran, Polding and Vaughan and the pioneer priests were relocated to the crypt, close to the Polding altar. The Mellocco Bros installed the mosaic floor between the 1940s and 1961.

The first Mass in the crypt was on March 8, 1942, at the altar in the Kelly Memorial Chapel, the burial place of Archbishop Kelly. It is not known when the Polding Altar was first used for Mass.

In 1884 Cardinal Moran had invited the Little Company of Mary to Australia and offered them land at Petersham. They gradually developed Lewisham Hospital on the site.

Most of the remains and headstones were removed from the cemetery in the 1920s and 1930s to allow construction of a novitiate and some additional hospital buildings. The hospital continued until 1987 when it closed and the site and buildings were bought by the Society of St Vincent de Paul.

The sisters constructed a grotto on the site of the archbishop’s grave some time after 1937. About 1976 the iron cross and railing had been removed and a large crucifix and statues of Our Lady and St John were added.

The grotto was still there in 1998, when I last visited, backed by the brick wall around the garden of the former novitiate. It seems most likely that the underground vault is still in place below the grotto.

Sadly, there is no plaque or other record of the significance of the site.

Kevin Quinlan has prepared unpublished indices to burials in the former Catholic cemeteries at Petersham and Concord (Longbottom). Inquiries c/o Burwood and District Family History Group, Burwood Library, 4 Marmaduke St, Burwood, NSW 2134. Thanks to Ann Steven for some of the information used in this article.