Wesley Church, Perth

Wesley Church
Location	Corner of William Street and Hay Street, Perth, Western Australia
Country	Australia
History
Founded	1867
Architecture
Architect(s)	Richard Roach Jewell
Style	Gothic Revival architecture
Completed	1870

Wesley Church is a Uniting Church in Perth, Western Australia, located at the corner of William Street and Hay Street. It is one of the oldest church buildings and one of few remaining 19th-century colonial buildings in the City of Perth.

Wesley Church is built of load-bearing brick laid in Flemish bond in the Victorian academic gothic style and features a landmark spire, steeply pitched roofs, parapeted gables, label (hood) moulds and wall buttressing. The church has a strong verticality of form emphasised by tall lancet windows with plate tracery to the east facade. Angle buttresses divide the nave wall into five bays and the major windows have stucco label moulds above them. The bricks of the building, fired at uncertain temperatures in wood-burning kilns, show a range of mellow tones and, laid in Flemish bond, create a chequerboard effect on the walls, which provides a decorative element to the walls of the building. The spire is 35 metres high with a weathercock on top; it is surrounded by four smaller spires at its base which are capped by metal finials. The north-east tower replicates these smaller spires above the gable. The roof structure is of hand-sawn timber and the roof covering was originally shingles, but at some point the Church was re-roofed in clay tiles.

The first Methodists arrived in the Swan River Colony on 3 February 1830 aboard the Tranby, to found a small religious community at Tranby House, six kilometres (four miles) upstream along the Swan River from the newly established town of Perth (approximately on the site of the current suburb of Maylands). The group was led by Joseph Hardey and John Wall Hardey, and included a surgeon, preacher, bricklayer, blacksmith, shoemaker, surveyor, hatter, midshipman and several farmers.

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