Edmund Blacket

Edmund Thomas Blacket (25 August 1817 – 9 February 1883) was an Australian architect, best known for his designs for the University of Sydney, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney and St. Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn.

Arriving in Sydney from England in 1842, at a time when the city was rapidly expanding and new suburbs and towns were being established, Blacket was to become a pioneer of the revival styles of architecture, in particular Victorian Gothic. He was the most favoured architect of the Church of England in New South Wales for much of his career, and between late 1849 and 1854 was the official "Colonial Architect to New South Wales".

While famous for his churches, and sometimes referred to as of "The Wren of Sydney", Blacket also built houses, ranging from small cottages to multi-storey terraces and large mansions; government buildings; bridges; and business premises of all sorts. Blacket's architectural practice was highly influential in the development of Australian architecture. He worked with a number of other architects of both Australian and international importance: James Barnet, William Wardell and John Horbury Hunt. Among his children, Arthur, Owen and Cyril followed him into the profession. The successful architect William Kemp also trained in his practice.

Edmund Blacket is regarded by descendants of the Blackett^c family as "a man of the strictest probity with a great love for his profession, who also studied the classics, and was considered the leading authority on Classical Greek in Sydney, loved music, playing the organ at the temporary wooden pro-Cathedral, was a competent wood-carver and an amateur mechanical engineer".

Edmund Blacket was born on 25 August 1817 at 85 St Margaret's Hill (later Borough High Street) Southwark, Surrey, England, the seventh child of James Blacket and Margaret Harriot née Ralph. His father was a prosperous draper or slopseller of Smithfield, London. The family were Nonconformists, and Edmund's grandfather Edward Ralph, a former clockmaker, had been minister of a Congregational church at Maidstone. Blacket was educated at Mill Hill School, near Barnet, and although he showed an early interest in architecture, spending his holidays sketching and measuring old buildings, his father opposed him taking up the profession.

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