St Saviour's Cathedral is crumbling

Chair of the Heritage Conservation Committee, John Quilter, and the Dean of the Cathedral, the Very Reverend Phillip Saunders, met with the Post on Friday.

During a tour of the cathedral, Mr Quilter picked up a handful of dust, evidence of slowly deteriorating sandstone. "You can scrape holes in the stone, it's gone that soft," Dean Saunders said.

"Two very significant stone objects within the cathedral have been affected by rising damp. They are the Font and the Reredos, which is behind the altar. The bottom is just crumbling away."

Mr Quilter said the natural run from Montague St down to Bourke St had led to water becoming trapped under the cathedral.

"Sandstone is like a sponge when it comes to water. It absorbs. We've done water metre tests of the walls and they are very, very wet inside the stone," he said.

Thanks to a NSW Government Office of Environment and Heritage $150,000 grant, work will soon begin on construction of a water impervious trench around the base of the cathedral to help the walls dry out.

But run-off from the top of the Church St hill is just one problem. The state of the roof, and making the cathedral water tight, is more pressing.

Designed by Edmund Blacket in 1874, St Saviour's was more suited to English weather. That is, gentle rains.

"The gutters and downpipes are significantly smaller than they need to be because, in Australia and particularly Goulburn, we have long periods of no rain and then flooding rains," Dean Saunders said.

"There have been waterfalls down the inside of the cathedral and, of course, a lot of the heritage textiles, beautiful woodwork and carved stone work would be affected.

"Because the sandstone is porous, the water can go through the sandstone down under the floor and affect the rising damp."

The Friends of the Cathedral have committed to fund the repair of the baptistery and stone has been sourced for the work, but Mr Quilter said "it would be silly to do that until we've addressed the causes of the wear and tear and damage".

Some $2.5 million is needed to address roofing issues. Through community fundraising, half a million dollars has been raised over five years toward the work.

"There's a big problem, and then a lot of little problems," Mr Quilter explained.

"Just to make the roof water tight we would need to repair damaged ridge capping, flashing, improve the flashing in certain parts, increase the size of the gutters and put overflows in all of the rain heads, increase the size of the downpipes and replace some of the slated tiles."

One-thousand "broken and cracked" slate tiles are in immediate need of replacement, in the longer term all the tiles on the roof will need to be replaced too.

"The slate tiles have a natural life span and for the roof as a whole we are approaching the end of that life span," he said.

Dean Saunders said the cathedral was one of Australia's "best-kept secrets". More than 7000 people visited the cathedral last year, he said, making it an established tourist attraction.

"The original conception of the building in the townscape was for it to be a central feature. Montague St down to Belmore Park, and the precinct along Bourke St and Auburn St, are all meant to be an integrated civic hole and then up to Victoria Park over the hill," he said.

"People sometimes don't remember how significant the cathedral is in terms of both the history of Goulburn and the history of the State.

"Blacket built this and he himself was so proud of it that he thought it as his favourite ecclesiastical work."

Built on the back of the 1870s wool boom, St Saviour's stands as an important marker in Goulburn's history.

Bricks from a church that stood on the grounds pre-1820 were repurposed as the Cathedral's floor.

Each emblem on the pews, armrests and pillar cornices are uniquely designed and each window is shaped differently. The bishop's cathedra boasts the tallest canopy in Australia and the organ is among the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.

After World War I, an "outpouring of grief" led to the addition of a 1920s gothic white soldier's chapel, where those left behind would light a candle and pray. The original flag of the 7th Light Horse - the last cavalry ever to charge - hangs from the walls.

It's this delicate portion of the cathedral that is among the endangered heritage treasures. Water stains line the walls and dust from deteriorating sandstone skirts the floor.

"If nothing was done, within a couple of years there would be a serious health and safety issue... stones could give way," Dean Saunders said.