St Philip and St James: The Church on the Hill

The stone came from the banks of the Onkaparinga River — ironstone quarried from the cliffs below and hauled up the face of the hill with a winch anchored to a rocky outcrop at the summit. That anchor stone still sits in the churchyard today, among the graves to the south of the tower, its plaque reading: 'This stone was used as an anchor for hauling stones with bullocks in the building of the Church tower in 1850.' When a correspondent for the South Australian Register passed through Noarlunga in March 1851, the building was still unfinished, but already unmissable:

On the right, descending into Noarlunga, we passed a new church, in which it is intended to accommodate 200 persons, and of which the foundation stone had not long since been laid by the Bishop... It is dedicated to St. Philip and St. James, but was yet unfinished.

South Australian Register, 14 March 1851

Before the Church

The township that would become Noarlunga was laid out by the South Australian Company in 1840 inside the deep bend of the Onkaparinga River. Within a decade it had a steam flour mill, a post office, a brewery, two hotels, and a cluster of stores. Until the church was built, however, the Anglicans of the district had no proper place for services. The Reverend Arthur Burnett — appointed to the parish before the church existed — held the first Anglican services in the lodgeroom of the Horseshoe Inn, the hotel that stood at the foot of the hill on the edge of the market square. It was there, in the years before the church opened, that Burnett baptized the sons of the Dungey family, whose father had been resident in Noarlunga since about 1843 — the same family who would serve the church as verger, committee member, harmoniumist, and vestry officer for the next eighty years.

The Noarlunga and Willunga parishes were among the first constituted by Bishop Augustus Short after his arrival in South Australia in 1847. Burnett had come out on the same ship as the Bishop — the Derwent — and on reaching the colony he literally pitched his tent at Willunga, which put him within reach of Port Elliot and Yankalilla as well as Noarlunga. His circuit eventually took in Aldinga too, with services held in whatever space was available.

Three men led the effort to raise a permanent church: Richard Bosworth, Philip Hollins, and J. S. Clark. Bosworth would go on to serve the church as lay reader, warden, and eventually synodsman — one of the most sustained lay contributions to Anglican life in the southern districts. At a subscribers' meeting in June 1850, the three were elected as trustees and £180 in subscriptions had already been raised. A government grant of £150 was expected, bringing the anticipated total to £400. The land — an acre of town land given by the South Australian Company, conveyed by George Fife Angas, Henry Kingscote, and James Ruddell Todd in trust for a Church of England — was already secured, and an architectural design had been approved. Bishop Short came to Noarlunga to lay the foundation stone in July 1850. Among those present was Daniel Le Poidevin, a young Guernsey-born carpenter recently arrived in the Morphett Vale district, who recalled the ceremony sixty-five years later as one of the landmarks of his new life in South Australia.

Ironstone and Hessian

The design was later attributed to Burnett himself, modelled on a church in England — a scheme that gave Noarlunga its tower and its pointed arch, and that Miller would later follow as a template when he built St Matthias's at Myponga. The builders were local: the stonemason William Davey, son of a farming family in the district, and a Mr Shepard whose first name is not recorded. The name of the church itself was, according to Miller — who came to know its early history well — given in honour of Philip Hollins and James Clark, the two laymen who had done most to bring it to completion.

Two years after the stone was laid, the Adelaide Observer reported "the intention to complete, forthwith, the Church so long in course of erection at Noarlunga." Subscribers were called to meetings in July and November 1852 to agree on how to finish the work; a list published in the Register that November showed £284 raised from more than seventy donors. Richard Bosworth had given £30, Philip Hollins and J. S. Clark £20 each; the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge added £25, and the Governor and the Bishop £5 apiece. William Davey, who had helped build the church, contributed ten shillings and sixpence. But the dispute deepened before the work was done. J. S. Clark resigned as a trustee in December 1852, and in January 1853 the Register reported the church "was not opened on Sunday last" — the windows still unfinished, the borrowed seating removed, and no resolution in sight. By April 1853, workmen were at last engaged in the flooring and internal fittings, and the Register reported the church was "soon to be reopened for public worship" — the word "reopened" suggesting there had been an earlier, brief period of use before the dispute forced it closed. Three years after the foundation stone was laid, the building was ready.

What emerged was a church substantial in its mass — a fifty-six-foot tower of ironstone rubble over a pointed arch — but austere inside almost to the point of emptiness. The floor was rammed earth. Hessian covered the windows in place of glass. No chancel, sanctuary, or east window had been fitted, and the walls had never been plastered or painted. The site itself — a quarter of a mile from the township up a steep hill — was as much a liability as an asset. In fine weather the prospect from the hilltop was remarkable, but on hot days, or wet ones, the climb deterred the older members of the congregation and provided the rest with a ready excuse for absence.

The First Ministers

Burnett served the parish until 1856, when he returned to England after more than a decade on the circuit. His successor, the Reverend Thomas Richard Neville, served until 1862. Neither man left many records; the vestry minutes from this period were not preserved, and what survives of the church's early history depends on accounts set down by those who came later.

Miller's Twenty-Nine Years

The Reverend Edmund King Miller arrived in 1863 and stayed for twenty-nine years. His appointment was not without initial uncertainty: a correspondent writing to the Advertiser in January of that year noted that "many persons have given up their sittings in the church" and that Miller, elected as minister of the Willunga church, would have to earn Noarlunga's separate endorsement. The vestry did not take long to make up its mind. At a special meeting held on the evening of 3 February — just four days after that letter appeared — John Mudge, the churchwarden, presided. Mudge had arrived from Torquay in Devonshire on the ship Recovery in 1839, taken up land on the Main South Road near Noarlunga, and been one of the church's first wardens since it opened. He was also chairman of the district council. The meeting resolved to ask the Bishop to confirm Miller as incumbent.

The Easter vestry that April showed what he had taken on. The accounts carried a debt of about £13. The church held only afternoon services — a situation the vestry described as preventing "the church from making progress in her duties" — and a bell, needed for years, had still not been procured; subscriptions for one were formally begun that evening. His circuit was immense: Miller was at that point the only Church of England minister between Adelaide and the far south. Yet the congregation warmed to him quickly. That March, the Sunday school had made its annual outing to the beach — forty scholars in vehicles, with Miller presiding alongside their teachers — the congregation's early reservations visibly lifting. By November the school had grown to sixty-seven enrolled, with seven teachers and a library of three hundred volumes.

He found the church much as it had been built — unplastered, unpainted, without chancel or vestry — and set about organising the improvements that his predecessors had not attempted. A committee was formed from among the congregation: George Yates, Thomas Dungey, John Mudge, and the Holly brothers, with a wider circle of helpers including Bosworth, the Mudge sons, T. G. Holmes, Furler, Castles, Adams, and a dozen other families of the district. The path was not always smooth. In October 1866, Miller and his churchwardens gave notice of dismissal to Mr Furler, the verger and Sunday school superintendent who had served the church for nine years. A special vestry meeting of more than twenty people was called, with G. Yates among those moving the resolution; the dismissal notice was reversed nem con, the congregation declaring no charges had been proved to warrant it. The meeting then turned, with notably better feeling, to the state of the building, and a committee was formed with power to recruit the help of the ladies in finishing the church.

By 1867 — the date of the earliest vestry records the church retained — the east wall had been partly removed and an arch inserted. A small chancel, sanctuary, and vestry had been added. The floor was covered with slate flagging. The roof was reslated. The windows, formerly covered with hessian, were glazed with lead lights. The porch, nave, chancel, and vestry were plastered, and a bell was procured and hung in the tower. The accounts for that year showed the improvements recovered through donations and a series of social events. A fundraising evening held in the wheat store of Mr Holmes — a lecture on the writings of Charles Lamb, with music by local performers — had raised £15 the previous year specifically for "plastering and ceiling the Church," with contributions from families scattered across the district from the horseshoe to the foothills.

The parish Miller served stretched across three churches: Noarlunga, Willunga — where the rectory was located — and Aldinga. On Sundays when he conducted services at Aldinga, Richard Bosworth would ride south to Willunga for morning service. For years Miller made the circuit on horseback, until the accumulated toll of riding across country in all weathers brought him close to stopping. His Noarlunga parishioners, unwilling to lose him, raised the money to buy him a new buggy. He stayed for a further eleven years.

Around 1870, Miller took a step the vestry had long resisted. He abolished the fixed pew-rent system at Noarlunga and Aldinga, replacing it with entirely voluntary contributions. When a person applied for sittings they were shown whatever seats were vacant and assigned as many as they required, in whatever position they chose; the warden's only question was whether they intended to subscribe. Nothing was insisted upon. Writing to the Register in April 1873, Miller set out what the change had meant in practice: "all distinction of place in the House of God as between rich and poor is abolished; the labourer with his family, whose scanty earnings preclude his pledging himself to any payment, sit immediately next or in front of his wealthier neighbour." Within three years the Noarlunga congregation had more than doubled. Most of the new members were from the labouring classes; the income per sitting remained about the same as before.

By Easter 1873 the vestry meeting records showed the church clear of all liabilities and carrying a small surplus. G. Yates served as minister's warden and W. Holly junior represented the congregation. The names that appear in these minutes — Yates, Holly, Dungey, Holmes, Mudge, Furler, Bosworth — are the same families whose members built the southern districts in the first decades of European settlement.

By 1881 the vestry was again preoccupied with maintenance. At the April vestry that year, members resolved to take the offertory at every service rather than fortnightly, specifically to fund cleaning and repairs. J. G. Holmes served as synodsman and J. E. Holmes as warden — almost certainly relatives of the Mr Holmes whose wheat store had hosted the fundraising soirées a decade before. T. Dungey, who had helped organise those evenings, was still active in the church, thanked that year for occasionally presiding at the harmonium.

In July 1887 the children of St Stephen's Sunday-school at Willunga came to the District Hall to perform an evening of songs, dances, and recitations in aid of the Noarlunga Sunday-school funds — a small illustration of how thoroughly the two congregations had grown together under Miller's long ministry.

By 1889, near the end of his long incumbency, the balance had fallen to £3 and the vestry was resolving to seek repair estimates. The accounts still found room for gratitude:

Thanks were voted to the outgoing officers, and to Miss Holly for her services at the harmonium.

Adelaide Observer, 11 May 1889

Miller left the parish in 1892. He served a further six years in the Yankalilla mission district — a circuit of some twenty-four miles each Sunday, with three services — before age and the toll of country riding finally forced him to stop. He settled at Semaphore, where he drove convalescent patients from the local Home out into the sea air, and once each month came into Adelaide to conduct a service at the Wright Street Deaf and Dumb Institute. When the Register's readers learned in 1904 that his horse had died, an appeal by the philanthropist C. H. Goode raised more than £10 to replace it. Miller was then in his eighty-fifth year. He died in May 1911, in his ninety-second year.

Into the New Century

Between Miller's departure in 1892 and the arrival of his successor, the Reverend F. H. Stokes served the parish for four years. Little of Stokes's tenure appears in the vestry records that survive.

The Reverend George Griffiths arrived in November 1896, inducted at an evening service conducted by Canon Andrews in the church. His second Easter vestry, in April 1898, returned the most optimistic report in decades: communion numbers were exceeding all previous years, new seating had been provided and every sitting in the church was taken, a ladies' sewing guild had been started, and Hymns Ancient and Modern had been brought into use. The wardens carried a small balance in hand. The free-pews reform that Miller had introduced nearly thirty years earlier had, it seemed, finally filled the building.

Griffiths also introduced a rule that only those who attended practice would sing on Sunday — a reminder that the choir, however full the pews, remained a perennial challenge.

By 1900 the chancel and vestry that Miller's committee had added were cracking badly. A new committee demolished the old arch and the walls around it and rebuilt the chancel and vestry on a wider plan. Bishop Harmer dedicated the new chancel on 20 December 1903. The choir found the space too dark, and a choir window was cut through.

The annual strawberry fete became one of the social fixtures of the church's year. In December 1905, the Chronicle's correspondent reported the event had been held in the District Hall on a Saturday afternoon and evening, with performances by musicians from Adelaide. The church building fund was the beneficiary.

Wooden flooring replaced the slate in 1906 or 1907. The walls were not painted until 1914. The east window — the church's most decorative interior feature — was installed in 1915.

The Reverend Thomas Wood took up the post in 1902 and spent the next decade noting, year by year, that the choir's state was still a cause of regret.

The Choir — still exists — no trouble with those who do belong — but they are so few.

Reverend Thomas Wood, vestry minutes, 1909

A motion in the 1910 vestry minutes records a problem of a different kind: "Proposed that Mr Oborn write to the Central Board of Health for advice regarding taking corpses inside the church." The reply the following year was — as the minutes put it — "entirely unsatisfactory," noting only that it should not be done if there was the least risk.

Wood was followed by the Reverend H. C. Thrush, who in turn gave way to the Reverend R. E. Saunders.

In 1929 a 'Back to Noarlunga' day drew former residents back to the old township, and the press ran a brief history of the church, recalling the names of those who had built and sustained it. The following year the church underwent its most substantial renovation since Miller's committee had worked in the 1860s, and on 7 December 1930 it was reopened with a service preached by Archdeacon Clampett. The work cost £254 in total; the catechism scholars of the congregation contributed a new font for a children's corner. The vestry noted afterwards "the pleasing appearance of the Church since its restoration."

The Church on the Hill

In May 1950, more than four hundred people gathered at a morning service to mark the centenary of the foundation stone. The Bishop of Adelaide, the Right Reverend B. P. Robin, preached; the Lieutenant Governor and Lady Napier were among the congregation. The occasion prompted a recounting of the succession from Burnett through Neville, Miller, Stokes, Griffiths, Wood, Thrush, and Saunders to the current rector, the Reverend H. J. Hughes — eight men across a century, each inheriting the ironstone building on the hill.

The church and cemetery were listed on the State Heritage Register in 1985. Four years later a restoration committee commissioned significant work — masonry, plastering, drainage, a new roof, window restoration. The ironstone walls that Davey and Shepard had built from river stone in 1850 required ongoing attention; the hilltop site, dramatic as it was, meant the building was exposed to weather on all sides. Electricity reached the church around 1992, donated by a parishioner; services by lamplight had been a feature of the congregation's life for years beforehand.

By 2019 the congregation had ceased to hold services at the church. It was offered for sale and passed into private ownership; the ironstone building still stands on Church Hill Road, now known as the Church on the Hill. The cemetery is still maintained. A nesting box placed on the tower by local birdwatchers has since attracted peregrine falcons.

The first burial in the yard preceded the church itself: William Wright of Noarlunga, killed falling from a dray in September 1850, was laid in the ground two months after the foundation stone had been laid and nearly two years before the building above him was dedicated. The churchyard holds the graves of families who arrived in the southern districts in the first decade of European colonisation — many from the English counties of Wiltshire and Cambridgeshire, a chance demography shaped by which emigration schemes were running in the 1840s. The congregation now worships at St Margaret's, McLaren Vale. The anchor stone that helped build the church sits in the old yard among the headstones, a piece of the Onkaparinga riverbank that the builders used and left, and that no one afterwards thought to move.

Sources

• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 27 June 1850 — Local Intelligence: subscribers' meeting for Noarlunga church; trustees elected (Bosworth, Hollins, J. S. Clark); £180 raised, £150 government grant expected, total target £400. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 14 March 1851 — "Sketches of the Present State of South Australia, No. IV: Noarlunga," noting the new stone church above the township. Trove
• Adelaide Observer (Adelaide), 26 June 1852 — editorial noting "the Church so long in course of erection at Noarlunga" and the intention to complete it forthwith. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 19 November 1852 — subscription list: £284 19s 9d raised from more than seventy donors, published ahead of the second completion meeting. Trove
• Adelaide Observer (Adelaide), 18 December 1852 — notice of meeting to elect a new trustee following J. S. Clark's resignation. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 29 January 1853 — Noarlunga church not opened "last Sunday"; trustees and congregation dispute; windows and interior fittings still incomplete. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 15 April 1853 — Noarlunga Church "soon to be reopened for public worship, workmen being at present engaged in the flooring and internal fittings." Trove
• South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide), 31 January 1863 — Noarlunga correspondent: congregational disunity, many members giving up pew sittings, Miller's appointment as Willunga minister; Noarlunga's approval still uncertain. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 10 February 1863 — Noarlunga correspondent: special vestry meeting (Mudge, churchwarden, in chair) resolves to ask Bishop to confirm Miller as incumbent. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 31 March 1863 — "Noarlunga" correspondent, Sunday school anniversary at St Philip and St James. Trove
• South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide), 30 November 1863 — Sunday school examination by Miller; school roll grown to 67 in first year, seven teachers, library of 300 volumes. Trove
• Southern Argus (Port Elliot), 14 April 1866 — Annual vestry meeting, St Philip and St James. Trove
• South Australian Weekly Chronicle (Adelaide), 27 October 1866 — Special vestry meeting: Furler dismissal overturned nem con; committee formed to complete the church. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 1 May 1873 — Vestry meetings: church clear of all liabilities, wardens appointed. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 3 May 1873 — Miller's letter to the editor on pew-rents: congregation doubled in three years under the voluntary system; building debt just extinguished; labouring classes now attending freely. Trove
• South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide), 7 May 1881 — Easter vestry: accounts audited; offertory increased to every service for repairs; Holmes family as warden and synodsman; Dungey thanked for harmonium. Trove
• South Australian Register (Adelaide), 18 July 1887 — St Stephen's Sunday-school, Willunga, performs songs and recitations at District Hall, Noarlunga, in aid of Noarlunga Sunday-school funds. Trove
• Adelaide Observer, 11 May 1889 — Vestry meeting: wardens reappointed, thanks to Miss Holly for harmonium, resolution to seek repair estimates. Trove
• Adelaide Observer (Adelaide), 28 November 1896 — Welcome social and induction service for Rev. George Griffiths at the District Hall; Canon Andrews represented the Bishop.
• Chronicle (Adelaide), 30 April 1898 — Easter vestry: every pew taken, communion records broken, ladies' sewing guild started, Hymns Ancient and Modern adopted. Trove
• Advertiser (Adelaide), 25 February 1902 — Death of Elizabeth Mudge, relict of John Mudge; obituary identifies him as one of the first wardens of Noarlunga Church, arrived 1839 on the Recovery from Torquay, Devonshire. Trove
• Register (Adelaide), 16 December 1903 — Bishop Harmer to dedicate new chancel at SS. Philip and James, Noarlunga, on 20 December 1903; church described as erected "about 1851"; rector Thomas Wood. Trove
• Register (Adelaide), 27 February 1904 — Miller enters his 85th year; biographical tribute: 29 years at Willunga, Yankalilla mission, Semaphore retirement, driving convalescents and monthly Deaf and Dumb Institute services. Trove
• Observer (Adelaide), 23 December 1905 — Myponga church reopening article: Noarlunga church "designed by Mr. Burnet after the model of a church in England"; Miller's circuit included Myponga; Noarlunga described as "perched on a hill, with the silver ribbon of the Onkaparinga winding in and out at its foot." Trove
• Chronicle (Adelaide), 23 December 1905 — Annual strawberry fete, District Hall, building fund. Trove
• Kelly Dyer, High on the Hill: The People of St Philip & St James Church, Old Noarlunga (City of Onkaparinga Libraries, 2019) — genealogies, biographies, and brief history of the church
• David J. Towler, A Fortunate Locality: A History of Noarlunga and District (1986), Chapter 9 — church history, vestry minutes, renovation committee members
• Lester Firth & Murton Pty. Ltd., Noarlunga Heritage Study (City of Noarlunga, 1979), ON02 — heritage significance and building description
• City of Onkaparinga Built Heritage Register, Heritage ID 12820 — state heritage listing details
• Evening Journal (Adelaide), 17 May 1911 — Death of Rev. E. K. Miller, in his 92nd year; career summary; memoir Forty-seven Years of Clerical Life in South Australia (published c. 1900) noted. Trove
• Register (Adelaide), 25 October 1915 — Interview with Daniel Le Poidevin: eyewitness to the 1850 foundation stone ceremony at Noarlunga church; background on early Morphett Vale district. Trove
• Register (Adelaide), 8 May 1924 — Letter from K. S. M. Dungey: Dungey family baptized at the Horseshoe Inn by Rev. Burnett before the church opened; corrections on Philip Hollins (innkeeper, not captain) and the Clark family. Trove
• Register (Adelaide), 5 May 1928 — Patronal festival note: Burnett arrived on the Derwent with Bishop Short; "literally pitched his tent at Willunga." Trove
• Advertiser (Adelaide), 28 October 1929 — "Early Noarlunga": Bosworth identified as lay reader, warden, and synodsman; renovation committee named; Burnett's lodgeroom services 1848–1853; renovation helpers listed. Trove
• News (Adelaide), 3 December 1930 — Renovation reopening announced: service 7 December 1930, Archdeacon Clampett preaching; font presented by catechism scholars; rector Rev. R. E. Saunders. Trove
• Advertiser (Adelaide), 15 May 1950 — Centenary of the foundation stone; more than 400 at morning service; Bishop Robin preached; Lt. Governor and Lady Napier attended; complete succession of rectors listed. Trove
• Rev. E. K. Miller, Forty-seven Years of Clerical Life in South Australia (c. 1900) — memoir including the 155-day voyage on the barque Hindoo and Miller's early South Australian ministry
• Southern Vales Anglican Parish — building history, tower height, dedication, east window, electricity