St George's Anglican Church Lebuh Farquhar, George Town
The St George's Anglican Church along Farquhar Street is one of the loveliest heritage buildings in George Town, Penang. It is on the route of a walking tour I am establishing for Penang Travel Tips and AsiaExplorers. The formation of the St George's Church was credited to Reverend Robert Sparke Hutchings, the same person who founded the Penang Free School, the oldest English school in Southeast Asia, and who gave his name to Hutchings School nearby.
The St George's Church was built in 1816 using convict labour, when Colonel John Alexander Bannerman was the Governor of Penang. The cost of building it was 60,000 Spanish dollars. This was a princely sum, considering the British paid only 10,000 Spanish dollars per annum to Kedah for Penang, while they bought Singapore a few years later for also 60,000 Spanish dollars.
The church was designed by Captain Robert N. Smith of Madras Engineers. (Smith is also a gifted artist whose oil paintings of Penang landscape still grace the walls of the Penang State Museum nearby.) The church was designed in the Georgian Palladian style - that's a combination of the Georgian style, named after the reigns of King George I and IV, 1714-1830; and the Palladian style, named after the Grecian architecture of a Roman called Palladius. (Compare it to the St Andrew's Cathedral in Singapore). This calls for graceful Grecian columns along the front of the building. The original roof was flat. However, it was modified to its present gable shape in 1864, after the original flat roof was found to be unsuitable for the weather in Penang.
The first significant event to take place at the St George's Church was the marriage of Janet, daughter of Governor Bannerman, to William Edward Philips, in 1818. Philips was the man who took over the pepper estate belonging to Francis Light, on which stands Suffolk House, believed to also have been built by him. Incidentally, Philips was acting Governor of Penang in 1817, when the construction of the church building was started, and completed in 1818, buring Bannerman's term.
Services are still held at the St George's Church twice every Sunday, at 8.30am and 10.30am.
Address: 1, Lebuh Farquhar, 10200 Penang, Malaysia.
Telephone: 604 261 2739 o Fax: 604 264 2292
St George's Anglican Church Photo Gallery
The magnificent whitewashed St George's Anglican Church, with the Francis Light Memorial in its compound.
Blindingly white walls of the St George's Anglican Church.
The gable-shaped roof and Grecian columns on the front of St George's Anglican Church.
The church steeple as seen from the frangipanni in the compound.
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