Anglican Parish of Collingwood History 4 1875 St Saviour's Collingwood

In Victorian England it was common for the church to charge parishioners for the use of pews, and this practice also spread to the colonies and to St Philip's Collingwood. In an area like Collingwood, this practice excluded the poor. St Philip's was well known for its more 'upmarket' congregation, consisting of councillors and JPs, and there were therefore few seats in St Philip's for the poor.

As early as 1861 an influential layman, Charles Baker, denounced the pew system, and pressure mounted for a church to be more available to the poor. The solution was the founding of St Saviour's Mission church on the corner of Oxford Street and Mason St. Mission churches were funded separately and did not charge for their pews. St Saviour's is the earliest mission church in Collingwood, the only originally Anglican church still standing in Collingwood. It now belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church. Click here to see an early engraving of this church, courtesy of the State Library of Victoria (46K).

The new mission church was opened in 1875 with street preaching and temperance meetings. It cost three thousand pounds. It was made of local Collingwood bluestone and was consecrated on 19th December 1880.

Its clergyman was the Rev Charles Yelland, a young man of twenty-nine with a zealous mission to the poor. His congregation were mainly small landlords or local traders; not councillors or JPs as was the case at St Philip's. Not surprisingly therefore, the rector of St Philip's opposed the founding of St Saviour's Mission Church.

It was a mission church for only 11 years. In 1891, Yelland died, and a year later the church lost most of its funds in the collapse of the Mercantile Bank. But yet, it recovered. In 1899 a school opened next to the church and in 1900 the church itself opened after renovations.

In 1958 St Saviour's became the Russian Orthodox Cathedral Church of the Protection of the Holy Virgin and remains in Russian Orthodox hands to this day.

Map Copyright Melway Publishing 2001. Reproduced from Melway Edition 28 with permission.