The first Anglican churches of the Randwick and Waverley districts were St Judes and St Mary the Virgin respectively. However, both churches had their origins as small stone buildings on different sites to their present day ones, with the temporary St Judes church-schoolroom at Randwick being the earliest, and thus serving both district communities for a while. Prior to 1857, local private homes were used for services, including Blenheim House, Randwick, the home of Simeon Henry and Alice Isabella Pearce, that still stands in Blenheim Street. In 1854, Simeon Pearce had applied for a Crown grant of land large enough for a church, school and residence at Randwick, and in due course two separate grants of one acre and one half acre were gazetted on 27 June 1856. These were situated at the north western corner of the present day junction of Alison Road and Avoca Street, which, at that time, were little more than bush tracks.
In the south eastern corner of this land, in the area now occupied by the 1893 former Randwick Post Office (now the ‘Easts’ building), a small stone-built combined chapel and school house was constructed. Dedicated to St Jude, it was licenced for Anglican worship on 15 May 1857, and the Reverend William H McCormick was appointed to care for the parishioners of the district, including the villages of Waverley, Randwick and Coogee. His stipend was initially guaranteed by the income generated from 5 acres of land belonging to Simeon and James Pearce; and was supplemented, as was usual, by various other fees and donations.
This “beautiful little building”, as it was described in a contemporary newspaper report, became known as the ‘temporary’ St Judes church. At first it could not be fully consecrated, due to debts still outstanding on its building costs. A year later, on 23 May 1858, it was consecrated – but by then, the realisation that a larger church would eventually be needed had been accepted, and the ‘temporary’ prefix remained, even in the entries of the St Jude’s Parish Registers, which began in 1858.
