Saint Andrew’s Cathedral

Saint Andrew’s Cathedral is the Anglican cathedral of Sydney. The building is a sandstone church that was begun by James Hume, a Scottish-born architect, and completed by the English-born architect Edmund Blacket. The building of the cathedral underwent several delays. The Scottish-born colonial administrator Lachlan Macquarie, then governor of the colony of New South Wales, laid the first foundation stone in 1819. However, the government of the United Kingdom appointed John T. Bigge, an English judge, as a commissioner of inquiry into the affairs of the colony. Bigge insisted that the plans for the cathedral should be abandoned. In 1837, the colony’s new governor, Sir Richard Bourke, laid another foundation stone, but work on the building stopped again in 1842, and did not resume until Blacket was appointed architect in 1846. The cathedral was completed and opened in 1868.