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ST ANDREWS DAY

The Oldest Church in the Shire of Mundaring

As this year is swiftly coming to an end, we notice it is Thanksgiving Day in America on 28th November and another special day this week is St Andrews Day on the 30th November.

The first church in the Mundaring area was called St Andrews. It was the first Anglican Church building in the hills and was built on land donated by W.H.McGlew.

On Wednesday 4th November 1903 Bishop Riley came up to Glen Forrest then known as Smiths Mill on the afternoon train to officiate at the laying of the foundation stone.

It was said a crowd of 200 people met Bishop Riley and marched with him to the site. The church was consecrated on the 25th February 1904 with a congregation of 70 people filling the church.

After celebrating the 90th and 100th anniversaries and placed on the Shire’s Municipal Inventory in1997 numbers attending the church began to drop and services were ceased, and the building was then considered “surplus to the requirements in the Bellevue/Darlington parish”.

Various community groups tried to get support for services to be resumed with no success and the church was deconsecrated on 17 August 2006.

The building was sold and has been cleverly integrated into a new architect designed home which was completed in 2015.