Saint John's Anglican Cathedral

St John's Cathedral is the cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane and the metropolitan cathedral of the ecclesiastical province of Queensland, Australia.

It is dedicated to St John the Evangelist. The cathedral is situated in Ann Street in the Brisbane central business district, and is the successor to an earlier pro-cathedral, which occupied part of the contemporary Queens Gardens on William Street, from 1854 to 1904. The cathedral is the second-oldest Anglican church in Brisbane, predated only by the extant All Saints church on Wickham Terrace (1862). It is also the only existing building with a stone vaulted ceiling in the southern hemisphere. The cathedral is listed on the Queensland Heritage Register.The cathedral is the centre for big diocesan events such as the ordinations of priests and deacons which attract large congregations; a parish church catering for a diverse congregation of worshipers from around the city of Brisbane; a major centre for the arts and music with its own orchestra, the Camerata of St John's, which holds several concerts in the cathedral each year; and an international centre of pilgrimage attracting over 20,000 visitors annually from around the world.The choir of men and boys sing the traditional Anglican repertoire as well as more adventurous fare. The cathedral also possesses a four manual pipe organ, the largest cathedral organ in Australia, which hosts many recitalists from across the world: Pearson's design (and stone-vaulting) creates a five-second reverberation making organ-music particularly resonant.St John's Cathedral is unique in Australia as the completion of the building design was achieved through collaboration between clergy, stonemasons and architects over a period of almost 100 years, as with Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals in the Middle Ages and, more recently, 20th-century cathedrals such as Liverpool Cathedral in England, St John the Divine in New York and Washington National Cathedral in Washington DC.

The cathedral was designed in the Gothic revival style by John Loughborough Pearson, one of England's leading church architects of the late 19th century and bears similarities to Truro Cathedral in Cornwall, also designed by Pearson, although the architecture of St John's is more decidedly French Gothic in inspiration. The external walls are of randomly arranged brown, pink and mauve Brisbane tuff stone from the O’Connelltown Quarry in the (now) suburb of Windsor, while the interior is primarily dressed sandstone (Helidon freestone) from Helidon near Toowoomba. The granite and basalt used in the foundations and at the base of the columns came from Harcourt and Footscray in Victoria and the sandstone for the window dressings, doorways and arcading came from Pyrmont, New South Wales.The initial architectural impact is achieved via its lofty ceilings, tall and delicately proportioned columns and low level lighting. The architects achieve a layering effect through the masking of external walls via colonnades (a colonnade denotes a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature which is the superstructure of mouldings and bands which lies horizontally above the columns) often free-standing. The interior (by Frank Loughborough Pearson) reflects liturgical arrangements favoured by the Oxford movement from the 1840s. The design of the central nave toward the east end was reworked by Frank Pearson (1898–1904). He lengthened the nave and exchanged the lancet windows in the north transept for a rose window, simplified the details of the east end and omitted much of the cathedral's internal decoration to meet financial constraints. The north and south aisles, representing a bird's folded wings, are separated from the nave, or body, by Pearson's slender piers. The nave terminates at the crossing. The central tower rests on four large piers and is directly above. The north and south transepts (the transverse part of a cruciform church, crossing the nave at right angles) representing outstretched arms are to the left and right and the most sacred part of the cathedral is ahead.

In many respects, the architecture of St John's resembles the great Cistercian abbey churches of 12th and 13th century Europe. The Cistercian monks believed that church architecture should be simple and utilitarian and also preferably made of stone, relying for its effects upon simple elegance of design, noble proportions and the natural qualities of the materials. This can be seen in St John's in the atmosphere of the building created by the mass of stone pillars, ceilings and arches, the quality of the sandstone and the basic simplicity of the design and, apart from the west front, minimal ornamentation. According to Cleary, Pearson's elevated choir symbolically marks the passage from the secular nave into the higher and more holy choir. Here the clergy are also accommodated in their "elaborately carved" stalls and the archbishop's throne or cathedra (symbolising the archbishop's authority and pastoral responsibilities) – designed by Pearson resides. The episcopal throne was carved in situ by Brisbane carver and cabinet maker Hedley Smith in the 1930s. Two statuettes by Smith were added in 1948. Beyond the choir is the presbytery and then the high altar and its surrounding sanctuary. The high altar is a free-standing structure with a great Byzantine-style stone baldacchino (a permanent ornamental canopy, as above a freestanding altar or throne), rather than a reredos, (a screen or a decorated part of the wall behind an altar in a church) supported on columns planned to rise high above it. Beneath the high altar lie the remains of Bishop Webber.However, as yet the baldacchino has not been constructed. In front of the altar in the sanctuary floor are two pieces of mosaic from the Holy Land, brought back after being uncovered during the First World War by the Australian Light Horse Regiment. One of these is part of the floor of a 6th-century synagogue at Jericho. The other is a fragment from the floor of a 6th-century Christian church at Gaza and is part of a larger mosaic now housed in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Beyond the high altar the cathedral ends in a semicircular apse and ambulatory (processional aisle), a link to the architecture's French-Norman past. Many features beyond the crossing including the altar, cross, candle sticks, pulpit, canopy, clergy stalls, pendant lights and litany desk were designed by Frank Pearson. He also designed the carved organ case and the rose window in the north transept.Many Brisbane architects were commissioned to design liturgical furniture for the cathedral's three chapels, the Lady Chapel, the Chapel of the Holy Spirit and the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament.The initial design called for a galvanised iron roof; this was changed to terracotta roof tiles in 1907. The resolution of unfinished design elements continues to pose challenges.Pews are being replaced by free-standing chairs. The baptismal font, previously in the north transept, has been moved to the west end of the nave.

The cathedral has a peal of 12 bells hung for full circle ringing with the tenor weighing 16 hundredweight. The first bells were made by John Warner & Sons in 1876 with funds raised by public subscription. Ringing takes place before the 9:30 am Sunday service, to mark special occasions, and for weddings. The bells are rung by members of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Bellringers. The bell tower is equipped with sound control and electronic simulator equipment which is utilised for Monday night ringing practice and to aid in the teaching of new ringers. The bells are named after deans and administrators of the cathedral since 1925 when the role was separated from that of the Bishop of Brisbane. Bell names, weights, and pitch are listed as follows:

Buildings associated with St John's include Webber House, Church House, The Deanery (formerly Adelaide House) and St Martin's House. These buildings provide the traditional experience of only having a full view of the cathedral when quite close (after having wound one's way through narrow medieval city streets) thus adding to the impact and feeling of grandeur.

The role of dean was separated from that of bishop in 1925.

Church of England. Diocese of Brisbane (1899), Need of a cathedral : reasons for helping to build it, The Diocese