Heathcote Catholic church: the early days

THE Heathcote region’s first Catholic priest was Father Patrick Birch who arrived in the late 1850s.

He was based at South Heathcote where there was a large weatherboard chapel and cottage, with the former also being used as a school.

This chapel was destroyed in a violent storm in December 1862 and although it was temporarily re-erected, plans were made to build a new Catholic church on corner of Ebden and Pohlman streets.

Kilmore architect John Fleury was commissioned to design a brick building that would be known as St Mary’s.

The foundation stone was laid in March 1864 and the McIvor Times noted that “a parchment scroll of Latin, on matters relating to the church, together with the Argus, McIvor Times, McIvor News, the Victorian, and the coins of the realm, from a sovereign down to a farthing, were deposited in the cavity, and the stone was laid with the usual ceremony.

“After laying the stone his Lordship Bishop Goold, put five sovereigns on the stone and Father Branagan added the same amount.

“The example was followed by others, until £22 was deposited there to the credit of the building fund.”

The new church was consecrated in October 1865, and in 1894 it was joined by an ornate presbytery which was demolished in the late 1970s.

By June 1865, the priest was Father Neville and he led Sunday services in Heathcote on a fortnightly basis, while travelling to surrounding areas on the alternate weeks.

Over the following years there was a number of priests, some incumbent and others temporary.

Father Kearns was there for the first half of the 1890s and he was succeed by Father Denis O’Dee in 1897.

Father O’Dee was parish priest at Heathcote for almost 40 years and his name is now remembered in the O’Dee centre at Holy Rosary Primary School.

Heathcote gained a branch of the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society in 1894.

This was a church-based support network founded by Irish immigrants in 1868.

While the McIvor Times featured a lengthy account of its opening, the society largely disappeared from the paper’s pages other than in notices of meeting.

In 1910 a new Sacred Heart School was built on the south Heathcote site.

This would eventually combine with the new Holy Rosary Primary School in 1959, opposite the church and next to the Presentation Convent constructed in 1925.

The convent building now houses the school’s O’Dee centre.

By the First World War, it was clear that St Mary’s church did not meet the needs of its congregation.

In 1917 the old church was demolished and work began on Mary, Help of Christians, which stands to this day.

Its construction was mentioned in the McIvor Times in an account of a St Patricks Day sports meeting at the showgrounds.

This competition was in aid of the church building fund, but the amount raised was not stated.

The church itself was completed before the end of the year and consecrated on 13 December.

However there is no mention of this ceremony in the McIvor Times.

At the time its pages were filled with news from the battlefields and many column inches were devoted to the second conscription referendum.

But this omission is still surprising given the central role played by the church in the lives of so many district residents.

According to census figures, the number of Roman Catholics in Heathcote over the latter part of the nineteenth century stayed fairly steady at about 20 per cent of the total population.