ST MONICA'S CATHOLIC CHURCH

St Monica's Catholic Church, at the corner of High and Station streets, Kangaroo Flat, was built in 1926, south of St Monica's Primary School. The church is a richly decorated, gabled and buttressed, Gothic Revival red brick church with tuckpointing and white stuccoed contrasts. The roof is steeply pitched and clad with original slate tiles. The gable ends have characteristic Gothic Revival copings with crosses at the apexes; the main west gable has a large rose window with a dressed course and blind triangular panel above; and nave windows which are all lancets with trefoliated inner frames and conspicuous quoin surrounds. The side buttresses are two-stepped with cement-rendered offsets; the west gable has three-step angle buttresses with cement-rendered gablets capped with pinnacles. The front porch also has two buttresses; there is a faceted apsidal sanctuary with attached vestry. The external doors are planked and appear to be long standing. The church addresses the west and is located in the approximate centre of a rectangular allotment, with an open landscaped area to the west, a row of specimen trees to the north and a car park to the east (rear). The trees to the to the north boundary are a variety of species and appear to have been planted at the same time or soon after the construction of the church. 

St Monica's Catholic Church, at the corner of High and Station streets, Kangaroo Flat (built 1926), is of local historical, social and aesthetic/architectural significance. 

St Monica's Catholic Church is historically significant (Criterion A) as the principal Catholic Church and centre of Catholic worship at Kangaroo Flat since 1926. The first Mass at Kangaroo Flat was held in 1857 on the site of the present church, then the International Hotel. The association between Catholicism and this part of High Street is reinforced by St Monica's Primary School, located to the north-east of the Station and High streets intersection, on a site originally developed by the Catholic community from the 1860s. It is also of social significance (Criterion G) as the centre of the local Kangaroo Flat Catholic community since 1926, including being the focus of church services and worship.

Aesthetically and architecturally (Criterion E) St Monica's is a substantially intact, richly decorated, gabled and buttressed, Gothic Revival brick church with tuckpointing and white stuccoed contrasts, and a steeply pitched slate clad roof. It is a vigorous and robustly scaled church, with vivid red brick walling, and distinguished by Gothic Revival elements including copings with crosses at the gable apexes, and a large rose window with a dressed course and blind triangular panel above to the west gable end. Other elements of note include the lancet windows with trefoliated inner frames to the nave; two-stepped side buttresses with cement-rendered offsets; the three-stepped angle buttresses with cement-rendered gablets capped with pinnacles to the west gable; the buttressed front porch; and the faceted apsidal sanctuary with attached vestry. The unusually thick and emphatic extrados surfaces on St Monica's reflect an emphasis on making churches more visible and sturdy in appearance during the 1920s. The subject church is also emphatically processional and demonstrative of the proportionally long churches which predominated in Victorian church architecture during this period. St Monica's, which has not been significantly modified since construction, additionally occupies a prominent location on High Street at the north end of Kangaroo Flat's retail strip.