St Augustines Anglican Church, Leyburn, Anglican church in Leyburn, Australia
St Augustine's Anglican Church is a timber church on Dove Street, built of 12-inch pit-sawn timber with a shingled roof, designed by Richard George Suter and dedicated in 1871. A vestry was added in 1918, and stained glass windows were installed behind the altar in 1986. A memorial to gold miner Dan Bray stands in the grounds.
Anglican services were held in Leyburn from the 1840s, and the parish was formed in 1861 with a parsonage on land given by the Gore family of Yandilla. The church itself was built in 1871 on a site bought in 1870 for £4, funded by money sent by students of the College of St Augustine in England at the wish of Bishop Edward Wyndham Tufnell. It was dedicated in September 1871 by Bishop Tufnell to St Augustine of Canterbury, with John Baillie as contractor. A vestry was added in 1918 so the priest from Pittsworth could stay overnight.
The church is also known as St Augustine's Church of England, named for St Augustine of Canterbury. A memorial in its grounds honours gold miner Dan Bray, who died in 1901, and all the goldminers of Leyburn's early history buried in unmarked graves. The parish marked the building's 150th anniversary on 14 November 2021.
St Augustine's stands on Dove Street, on the north-eastern approach to Leyburn from Toowoomba, near the old Court House site. The timber church remains an active Anglican place of worship, so visits are best arranged around service times; check locally before travelling.
The building was added to the Queensland Heritage Register in 1992 and stands as an early example of timber church construction in rural Australia. Its craftsmanship in wooden architecture makes it notable for those interested in construction methods.
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