Christ Church Cathedral is at the centre of Dr Ian Eckford’s PhD, focusing on the Gothic Revival architecture as designed by John Horbury Hunt.
Ian’s interest in the Cathedral was initially sparked due to a personal connection as his great-great-grandfather and his siblings were baptised at the original church on the site, Christ Church.
“When Governor Macquarie sailed up from Sydney, the harbour pilot at the time was my great-great-great-grandfather, William Eckford,” Ian says.
The Cathedral’s restoration walk has immortalised Ian’s family connection to the site, with a dedication to William Eckford and his wife Mary Eckford in the path.
Pursuing a career in architecture, Ian would soon be drawn back to the Cathedral, where his interest would continue to grow.
“After the earthquake in 1989, our architectural practice, EJE Architecture, was engaged to manage the restoration and repair work,” he says.
“Two of the partners, Barney Collins and Peter Campbell, managed that and I used to come up to the Cathedral to see how some of the works were going, just purely out of interest.
“It gave me the opportunity to spend time going around and looking at it in more detail. And I thought: ‘it’s a brilliant building’. There’s nothing like it, of course, in Newcastle.”
Christ Church Cathedral’s significance was highlighted when it became a state heritage listed item in 2011.
As the largest Anglican Cathedral in NSW, it was deemed a landmark building not just for Newcastle but the entire state.
“It’s the third largest Anglican Cathedral in Australia, after Saint Paul’s in Melbourne and Saint John’s in Brisbane,” Ian says.
“The Cathedral is a really magnificent example of Gothic Revival architecture in Australia in the 19th Century.”
Apart from the Cathedral, Ian found Horbury Hunt’s story fascinating.
He spent the next four years researching his background and writing a thesis.
“I thought: ‘well, gee, this would be an interesting thing to take further’, and, once you start going down there, you dig up more and more.
“I was just collecting that much information that I thought: ‘I’ll go and talk to the university and see if they see a research degree in it’ and they did straight away.
“The thesis had to focus on Horbury Hunt’s work and what inspired him to do it, and his experience.”
