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PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (FORMER)

Location 65 Wills Street and Templeton Street DUNKELD, Southern Grampians Shire File Number 381 Level Stage 2 study complete

[1/1] 23604 Presbyterian Church

Statement of Significance

What is significant?
The former Dunkeld Presbyterian Church now houses the Dunkeld and District Historical Society. The building is located in the south-east corner of Wills and Templeton Street , one block south of the Glenelg Highway, in the central grid of the township. The former church is a simple primitive version of the Gothic Revival style, and includes the main church with a vestry at the rear and a later porch at the front. The construction combines bluestone walls with Grampians sandstone quoins. There are no buttresses but the side walls have three lancet windows, now modified on the east elevation for extensions, and the vestry has one. The arches of the windows are treated as simple trefoils. The roofs of the nave, vestry and porch are gabled and clad with corrugated iron. The main gable has a simple finial. The building has been extended on the east side and the interiors have been modified to convert it into a museum and meeting rooms. There has been no architect or builder associated with the design of the structure. In later years, the vestry of the church was used as a police station after the devastating 1944 bushfires which burnt much of the township. In recent years the former church has been used by the Dunkeld and District Historical Society. The Historical Society have placed a collection of historical records and objects within the building, as a museum collection. These include the burnt stump of a tree carved with dates by Granville Stapylton, the second-in-command of Major Mitchell's, when they camped at nearby Lake Repose on 3rd October 1836. The church and the collection survive in good condition, and both retain a high degree of integrity.

How is it significant?
The former Presbyterian Church is of historical, architectural and social significance to the township of Dunkeld and the Southern Grampians Shire.

Why is it significant? The former Presbyterian Church is of social significance to the township of Dunkeld as the focus for the strong Presbyterian population who settled the area in the mid to late nineteenth century. Historically, it is significant for demonstrating the strong Presbyterian faith in the Shire. Architecturally, it demonstrates a style of building which is typical of Presbyterian churches in the late ninetieth and early twentieth centuries. Of further historical significance is its use after the 1944 bushfires, when the vestry at the rear of the structure was used to house the police station, which had been destroyed by fire. Its use as a historical society is also of historical and social significance, as this provides and important focus for the people of Dunkeld and surrounding districts, and provides a tangible link with the past.