SOUTH ESSENDON PRIMITIVE METHODIST CHURCH & HALLS (FORMER)

The Church, on the corner of Buckley Street, was designed by architect Evander McIver and built in 1882. It is Early English Gothic in style, with buttressed bichrome brick walls, raking corbels to the front gable, and a gabled bellcote. Transepts were added in 1911, to a design by architect GB Leith which matched the navein form and detail.

The South Essendon Sunday School Hall, to its north, was designed by local architect Victor G Cook, and built in 1923. That same year, Cook also designed the small red brick Kindergarten Hall, which sits behind it. The Sunday School Hall is red-brick building in a simplified Arts & Crafts Gothic style with a dominant front gable and battered buttresses to the front corners. Unusual details for the style include returning eaves creating an open pediment on the front gable, and the semi-circular arched window within the gable. A classroom, with a tracery window, was added to the south elevation of the Sunday School in 1929.

Later alterations and additions to the place are not significant.

How is it significant?
The former South Essendon (Primitive) Methodist Church and halls are of local historical and architectural significance to the City of Moonee Valley.

Why is it significant?
It is historically significant as an illustration of the important role the Methodist Church and its adherents played in the early history of Essendon. The South Essendon Primitive Methodist Church was founded in 1854, with services held first in a private home, and from 1856 in a timber building in Nicholson Street. The 1882 Church is also significant as the second-oldest surviving church building in Moonee Valley. The 1923 Sunday School Hall and Kindergarten Hall are tangible illustrations of the continuing expansion and prosperity of the Methodists during the interwar period. (Criteria A & B)

The Church is architecturally significant as a representative example of a 19th-century Methodist Church with a relatively planar gabled facade, in the Early English Gothic style. Here the modest design is enlivened bichrome brickwork, raking corbels to the front gable, and a gabled bellcote. (Criteria D & E)

Group

Religion

Category

Church