St Paul's Anglican Church in Clyde

The Clyde (1) area was until a few years ago a strictly rural area and in common with most country areas the significant community buildings consisted of the School, the Hall and Churches. This post looks at the history of St Paul's Anglican Church. Most of the early history comes from A Clyde History website (see here). The Church was located on the east side of Berwick-Clyde Road, between Patterson's Road and Hardy's Road (2), on land donated by the Ridgway family (3). The early history is a bit hazy - Anglican services were held in either the School or an earlier building on the site (4).  There is evidence that the early church was called St John's (5). A new Church was erected in 1887 and officially opened on May 1, 1887 (6) and as 1887 was the Golden Jubilee year of Queen Victoria's reign the Church was called St Paul's Jubilee Church (7). 

The building was destroyed by a bush fire on February 21, 1906. This was a devastating loss to the community but they were fortunate that the fire did not cross the road and burn down the school which was sheltering 50 children.

Report of the fire that destroyed the Church

The Age February 22, 1906 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/196315900#

The people of Clyde worked quickly to replace the building and the new Church was opened by the Archbishop of Melbourne, the Reverend Henry Lowther Clarke on December 15, 1906 (8). The Church served the people of Clyde for many more decades - not only Church Services and Sunday School but a venue for the milestones of life - weddings and funerals. I have included two reports below.

Report of the wedding of Lorna Collins of Clyde to Jack Duncan of Cardinia at St Paul's, Clyde.

Dandenong Journal, October 21, 1945 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/214333655#

Obituary of Mrs Ann Hardy (nee Poole) of Clyde North. Her funeral was at St Paul's.

Dandenong Journal, April 8, 1953 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/215818398#

Times changed and the Church closed. In 1999 (9) it was relocated to Beaconhills College in Pakenham. These photos show the Church shortly before it was relocated. They are part of the Casey Cardinia Libraries collection.

St Paul's Anglican Church, Clyde, c. 1999.

St Paul's Anglican Church, Clyde, c. 1999.

St Paul's Anglican Church, Clyde, c. 1999.

Gone! Site of  St Paul's Anglican Church, Clyde, c. 1999.

Trove List 

I have created a short list on Trove of newspapers articles connected to St Paul's at Clyde, access the list here. All articles referred to here are on the list.

Notes

(1) This is an explanation about the naming of Clyde and Clyde North. It was named after the River Clyde in Scotland. The name was originally given to a watercourse that divided the Mayune and the Garem Gun runs. Apparently, a shepherd named James McKay, who worked for Alexander Cameron (1813 -1896) had cut the name on a tree whilst watering sheep, the name was then used for the creek and then the town. Clyde was initially based north of the existing town along Berwick Road, basically between Patterson Road and Hardy’s Road. When the railway went through in 1888, the town which developed around the railway station became known as Clyde and the original town was called Clyde. http://seha.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Place-names-and-their-meanings-by-Heather-Arnold-July-2020.pdf

(2) This early history of the Church comes from Campbell, John A Clyde History: Public Hall and Mechanics’ Institute Jubilee (Back to Clyde Committee, 1978. John Campbell's book forms the basis of some of the material on the Clyde History website which is researched and maintained by Joan Vanderhorn. Joan and John are siblings. See the website here https://clydehistory.000webhostapp.com/.   You can read the full entry on St Paul's here - https://clydehistory.000webhostapp.com/html/0503chpauls.html The location of the Church comes from this map from the website https://app.box.com/s/234lb7txspov3z5k488c

(3)  Campbell, John A Clyde History: Public Hall and Mechanics’ Institute Jubilee (Back to Clyde Committee, 1978) The pages are not numbered.

(4) Campbell, op. cit.

(5) Two examples of the use of St Johns - South Bourke & Mornington Journal November 16, 1881, see here  and  South Bourke & Mornington Journal May 30, 1883, see here.

(6) Campbell, op. cit.

(7) Campbell, op. cit.

(8) Campbell, op. cit.

(9) The date of the removal of the Church comes from the website. You can read the full entry on St Paul's here - https://clydehistory.000webhostapp.com/html/0503chpauls.html

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Clyde

There is a great website produced by Joan Vanderhorn and John Campbell on the history of Clyde. Naturally enough it's called A Clyde history and the website address is  https://www.earlyhistory4clydevic.com/index.html Joan and her brother John grew up in Clyde and in 1978 John wrote the book A Clyde History: Public Hall and Mechanics' Institute Jubilee to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Clyde Hall. If you have an interest in Clyde history or just an interest in the general history of the area then this is a great site.

Joan has also created the Clyde Victoria 3978-History blog http://clydehistory.blogspot.com - to accompany the website. The blog is more interactive and you can leave comments - plus it is easy to add content to so is more immediate. The Clyde website and blog are great examples of using new technology to promote history. Obviously Joan and John have a great knowledge of Clyde history and by creating this website and blog they are sharing it with the wider community. It's not only this generosity in freely sharing the information that I feel is really important but the fact that the website and blog are recording the life of a township that is undergoing massive change - farms are now being developed into housing estates. I know that change is inevitable but that's why it is important that people like Joan and John are prepared to record and share our changing history.

However, this change is not the first change in the history of Clyde - this came came with the coming of the Great Southern Railway which was opened through to Tooradin in October 1888. A station was built south of the original Clyde township and this effectively created two towns, the original settlement between Pattersons Road and Hardys Road and Berwick-Clyde Road and the new Railway town (where the existing town of Clyde is). The old town became officially known as Clyde North as from 1915 and the rail town became known as Clyde. To find out about the Schools, Halls, Churches and other businesses in both Clydes click here.
The Library has very few photographs of Clyde, but we do have a few aerials from 1981, which I have reproduced below. The top aerial shows the Clyde Cricket Ground, called the Lineham Oval, on the corner of Clyde road and Pattersons Road (top right corner), then following Clyde Road to the bottom of the photograph, where it intersects with Twyford Road. You can follow Twyford Road into the second photograph where you can see the Clyde township.

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Cranbourne Meteorites

The first meteorite discovered in the Cranbourne region was in 1853. The first time they came to the public notice was in 1854 at the Melbourne Exhibition when a horseshoe was exhibited made from a specimen of iron from Western Port (1).  This iron turned out to have come from the Cranbourne No. 1 meteorite. Another crop of iron (Cranbourne No.2) had also been discovered 6km from the first however it wasn’t until 1860 that the two outcrops of ‘iron’ were identified as meteorites. This publicity bought to life another meteorite which had been unearthed in 1857. This meteorite is known as Cranbourne No. 3. These meteorite discoveries created interest overseas partly due to their size, and were reported in scientific papers.

We will look at the meteorites in detail. Cranbourne No. 1, weighs 3,550kg is now housed at the National History Museum in London. It has been in England since 1865 when it was acquired by the British Museum. Alexander Cameron (1815-1881), the father of modern Cranbourne (2), was one of the first people to bring to a wider public the discovery of the Cranbourne meteorites. The first meteorite was discovered by William MacKay, around Craigs Road in Devon Meadows, and he assumed that it was part of an iron deposit. He had made it into a horse shoe and it was displayed  at the Melbourne Exhibition of 1854.  In 1860 Cameron took the horse shoe to Melbourne to a conference to convince the powers that be that Cranbourne should have  a railway line due to the commercial possibilities of this iron deposit.  At the conference the Town Clerk of Melbourne, E.G Fitzgibbon,  thought that this was not iron but a meteorite and he then presented his findings to the Royal Society and this put the Cranbourne Meteorites on the world stage with interest from the British Museum and the Emperor of Austria (3).

Cranbourne meteorite with the chain which was employed to pull it from its position for transport to the Melbourne Museum, 21 February 1862.

Photographer: Richard Daintree.

State Library of Victoria Image H36595

Cranbourne meteorite with the screw-jack with which it was moved from its position for the first time since its arrival on this planet, 21 February 1862.

Photographer: Richard Daintree, Richard

State Library of Victoria Image H36594

Cranbourne No. 2 weighs 1,525 kg and is at the Melbourne Museum, though it was initially purchased by the British Museum for £300 in 1862. Colonial scientists strongly protested at the loss to England of both these meteorites and so Cranbourne No.2 was returned to Melbourne. It had been discovered in Clyde at the property owned by James and Charlotte Lineham. In an article (reproduced below) in the Pakenham Gazette on October 3rd 2001, there was an interview with two great grandchildren of James and Charlotte, Glenda Tait and Jean Hermon, who remembered stories their grandmother Susanah Beazley (nee Lineham) told of the meteorite Grandma said the meteor was worshipped by the Aborigines who came to the property and that it was special to them and they cried when they saw it being taken away.

Pakenham Gazette October 3, 2001. Click on image to enlarge it.

Cranbourne No.3 was discovered in 1857 and was 6.8kg. It was found on the same farm as Cranbourne No.1 and had been broken in two, one part being used as a kitchen hob. Unfortunately both pieces are now lost. Cranbourne No.4 is 1270 kgs and Cranbourne No.5 weighs 356 kg. They are both at the Melbourne Museum and were both unearthed in separate locations in 1923 in the Devon Meadows area between Browns Road and North Road.

Cranbourne No.6 was discovered in Pakenham, west of the Toomuc Creek, during works connected to the widening of the Princes Highway, in 1928 and weighs 40.5 kg. Numbers 7 & 8 were both discovered in 1923, in the same paddock as No.5 and weigh 153 kg and 23.6 kgs respectively. Numbers 4, 5, 6 and 8 are at the Melbourne Museum and no.7 is at the University of Melbourne.

No.9 was discovered in 1876 in a railway cutting about three kilometres east of the Beaconsfield Railway station and weighs 75 kg. It was broken up into samples which are now at various Institutions around the world. Cranbourne No.10 was found at Langwarrin in 1886, by a farmer ploughing his field. No.11 was discovered two kilometres north of Pearcedale in 1903. No.10 is 914 kg in weight and is at the Melbourne Museum and No. 11 is at the National Museum in Washington, and weighs 762 kg.

Number 12 was also found in Pearcedale, in 1927 though it was not identified as a meteorite until 1982. This 23 kg piece was on display at the now demolished City of Casey Civic Centre at Narre Warren, I believe it is currently in storage.  The last and thirteenth meteorite was found on a market garden at Clyde, and weighs 83 kg. The farmer had being working around this rock for years, but it was only dug up and identified as a meteorite in 2008. Though he could have sold it for a large sum of money, he generously donated it to the Melbourne Museum and it is now on display at the Casey RACE Leisure Centre at Cranbourne.

This map, showing the locations of the Meteorite finds, is reproduced from a tourist brochure produced by the Shire of Cranbourne to promote their Meteorite display on the South Gippsland Highway in Cranbourne. Click on image to enlarge it.

Most of these meteorites were discovered by chance, mostly by farmers ploughing their paddocks. The Meteorites were all located in a straight line, except for the slight deviations of No.6 and No.11, and are 21 kilometres apart (see map above). There are no large craters, such as the one at Wolfe Creek in Western Australia, as the Cranbourne Meteorites impacted at a low angle on swampy or sandy ground. Our meteorites are iron of the Octahedrite type, the most common type of iron meteorite and are some of the heaviest in the world.  I also googled “Cranbourne meteorites” and came across an interesting report (4) where the Cranbourne No.1 meteorite was used to test the theory that there was water on the moon. The actual experiment involved comparing the akaganeite which formed on the meteorite to akaganeite taken from rocks collected by Apollo 16 from the moon. The Cranbourne Meteorites are of international importance and I wonder how many other meteorites may still lie undiscovered in our area?

Footnotes

(1) Gunson, Neil The Good Country: Cranbourne Shire (F.W. Cheshire, 1968), p.63.

(2) Gunson, op. cit., p. 52

(3) Gunson, op. cit., p. 64
(4) The article referred to is Experiments on the stability of FeOOH on the surface of the moon by Lawrence A. Taylor and Jacqueline C. Burton. Published in Meteoritics, v.11, no.3, September 30 1976.

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