Wesley Church, Lydiard Street

The first Methodist service to be held in the Ballarat area took place on 28 September 1851 and during the second half of the 19th century a number of Methodist churches were erected in the city, the most prominent of which was Wesley Church, Lydiard Street, centrally located in the town.

The present bichromatic brick church was erected in 1883-84 to the design of Terry & Oakden in an Italianate Gothic style, with additions in 1899.  In 1922 the choir gallery - originally with a cast iron balustrade - was redesigned.  The church is built on the edge of the ‘escarpment’.  The main entrance in Lydiard Street is set at a higher level than the apse and the floor follows the slope of the land.  The external brickwork is elaborately detailed around the windows and doors with notched brickwork while the external walls have diapered patterns.  The amphitheatrical interior is lofty and spacious and includes cast iron galleries at the sides and rear of the nave.  The building is comparable with the firm’s Toorak Methodist Church which was wantonly demolished in the 1980s.

The first pipe organ, in the early building, was a large single manual instrument and probably the first organ in Ballarat.  It was later moved to the Methodist Church, Pleasant Street, Ballarat, St Mark’s Anglican Church, Camberwell and finally to St Paul’s Anglican Church, Fairfield where it was broken up in the late 1960s.