Percy From The Pews has a question on historical accuracy…
THE big effort to rejuvenate Hobart’s St David’s Cathedral (with considerable financial help from the State and Federal Governments) has had substantial media coverage. And this week in the Mercury we read a sidelight to the story – that the “mystery of Hobart’s first church has been unravelled by historians and brought back to life in a painting” (depicting what the church might have looked like).
The report added that the church was built “in a cemetery in Davey Street in 1810 over the burial plot of Hobart’s first Lieutenant-Governor, David Collins”. My question relates to the “over the burial plot” statement, because back in 2007, in a lecture titled “St David’s Cathedral: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”, noted historian Peter Boyce stated that the first St David’s was a “small wooden structure erected in St David’s Park in 1810 near the gravestone of the first Lieutenant-Governor, David Collins, after whom the church was named”.
If the church was built “near” Collins’ grave then that is not “over”.
To take things a bit further, the Dictionary of Australian Biography entry on Collins says he died on March 24, 1810, and was buried with fully military honours “on the spot intended for a church”.
