Moonta, SA - St Francis of Assisi Catholic

History and Architecture:

A solid building, with limestone walls and iron roof. The foundation stone for this Church was laid by Bishop Shiel on 11 July 1869 and the Church was opened on 12 December 1869. It remains as built, except for the addition of a vestry to the front of the building.

A contribution from Michael Freeman, portrays how the entrance porch was erected. It reads in part, "At some stage around the mid-1980s, Fr Pope, the then parish Priest based in Kadina, realized that the original drawings for the church was supposed to have an entrance porch protruding from the side of the actual budding but it had never been built. Fr Pope raised the issue with Ted Freeman, one of his participatory parishoners and Michael's father, and together they decided to construct the porch and complete the designed plan for the building.
 
The "new" porch was built some 120 years after the laying of the foundation stone. Mr Ted Freeman (my father) tried to match the older building but 120 years of weathering of the original walls shows how difficult that was. This was due in part because the church was under the guise of a State Heritage building.1 determination. In consultation with the National Trust, the porch would have to be built using materials reflecting the original materials
 
Mr Freeman built the porch using recycled bricks from Moonta Mines buildings for the base layers and calcrete (limestone) cobbles and boulders from the surrounding areas.