Past and present parishioners of Nagambie Parish will come together on 19 November 2023 to celebrate 150 years of St Malachy’s Church in Nagambie. In preparation for the anniversary, parishioner Rhonda Robinson shares a brief history of St Malachy’s Church.
By Rhonda Robinson
Father Michael Farrelly, the Parish Priest of Kilmore at the time, was instrumental and responsible for building a Catholic Church in Nagambie. Along with the Right Rev. Dr Goold, Bishop of Melbourne, Fr Farrelly, laid the foundation stone of the church on Sunday 1 December, 1872.
The Church was designed by Dublin-born architect Thomas Anthony Kelly, and was built by Messrs Bell Brothers of Melbourne under the watchful eyes of Mr John Lester, Clerk of Works, and Fr Farrelly who regularly travelled by horseback from Kilmore to the building site to monitor building progress.
The church building is of Gothic style architecture, composed of double brick, roofed in slate, with Geelong freestone quoins on foundations of Avenel granite. The stained-glass windows above the altar and at the opposite end of the church are the work of the esteemed Ferguson and Erie Company, who were the leading manufacturer of stained glass in the colony.
St Malachy’s church was opened on Sunday 15 March, 1874 by the Rev. Dr Fitzpatrick, Vicar General.
The 150th anniversary of St Malachy’s will be celebrated on Sunday 19 November 2023. Bishop Shane Mackinlay will celebrate Mass at 10.00 a.m. and will bless a plaque placed on the front of the Church to commemorate the occasion.
This will be followed by a small ceremony where the Bishop will rename and dedicate the former presbytery to be now known as the Kearns Centre. The Parish of Nagambie, by which it was then known, was erected in 1875 and Fr Patrick Kearns was appointed the first Parish Priest in 1876. He was instrumental in building many churches and schools throughout the vast parish, including an elegant presbytery, completed 1881, which will be named in his honour in November this year (2023).
