The golden jubilee of the William Carey Chapel

Helen Penrose, Carey’s Centenary Historian

Although the school decided to build a chapel as a war memorial, it was an expensive dream that took 27 years to be realised.

Headmaster Vivien Francis (1945–7) convinced the School Council, in 1945, to build a hall instead of a chapel as a war memorial. He believed that a hall would ‘form the centre of the corporate life of the school’, and could double as a chapel and gymnasium. It offered a practical solution to the acute shortage of money and building materials after World War II.

In 1954, the building fund appeal for the hall had been so successful that in the following year, after the hall had opened, plans were extended to include several other facilities such as a chapel and an enlarged science block. Although the chapel was supposed to have been the priority, it was delayed so that the science block could be enlarged first.

Everyone hoped the chapel would be built next. As it was to be constructed next to the hall in bricks to match, the bricks were purchased in advance in 1955 and stored at the School. The first chapel design, by architectural firm Paynter and Dixon, echoed those at other Melbourne schools – typically influenced by English public school architecture – and adopted a traditional approach with a rectangular nave, small transepts and neo-Gothic windows. However, the urgent need for sporting facilities – sparked by Carey’s admission to the APS in 1957 – pushed the chapel off the building agenda once again.

A new chapel design, in 1960, placed it on top of a swimming pool, and led to a level of derision relating to the convenience this could offer for full-immersion baptisms. As chaplain Alan Wright later wryly remarked, he wasn’t consulted about that design. Nevertheless, fundraising for the combined chapel–pool proceeded that year in a major appeal labelled ‘Forward Carey’. Of the nine projects listed, the chapel ranked second to the Bulleen Sports Complex. Unfortunately, the appeal did not raise sufficient funds to build the chapel too.

‘Onward Carey’, the next major appeal, launched in 1969, had a shopping list of a senior study centre, a third storey for the science block, a library, a new Junior School, a swimming pool and a chapel. Finally, 27 Daniell Place, bought in 1960, was designated as the chapel site.

When the William Carey Chapel opened in 1971, it crowned the School on its highest point in an arresting visual statement that blended modernism and purpose. Until 2010, when it was partly obscured by the new Performing Arts Centre, its grey-slated pyramid roof could be seen by all who drove up Barkers Road.

Designed by Cecil and Graham Lyons, the chapel honoured the imaginative concepts of chaplain Alan Wright. He later recalled how the architects were ‘really attuned to what I was trying to express … The building had to represent the soaring of the human spirit towards the mystery of God’. Cecil Lyons encapsulated this with the pyramid roof. The stage inside allowed students to explore the whole of life as a drama, and to grapple with its indivisibility from religion and spirituality.

Alan Wright was thinking, at the time, of the concept of Poor Theatre, in which no elaborate sets or costumes were needed. Moveable seating, rather than fixed pews, were also essential for flexibility. The media deck symbolised ‘a serious thrust towards more actively engaging students in learning by involvement in the community, using the block timetabling of English, history and religious education once a week in every class at Year 10 level’. Placed in the entrance, the baptistry freed up interior space, made a deliberate and provocative statement about the potential for spiritual discovery, reminded visitors of Baptists’ historical spiritual awakening, and represented the School’s Christian foundation. For Alan Wright, the William Carey Chapel was ‘not meant to be just a memorial to Carey, one of the great Christian pioneers in a past age, but a place where, in an entirely different and urgent global context, we can be inspired to “do another William Carey”!’

The William Carey Chapel was extensively renovated during 2020 to be lighter, brighter, and accommodate more people. It continues to crown the School as a significant outward statement of its Baptist heritage.