Other Churches

St Mary’s Catholic Church

The Church has beautiful and historic stained glass windows.

St Mary’s Catholic Church, on the corner of Church and Market Street, is a beautiful historic church, attracting many tourists and historians to the area. The Church contains a school, behind on the block facing Lewis Street, St Matthew’s Catholic School.
Mudgee’s first Catholic priest lived at Hartley and serviced as far as Coonamble. He came to live in Mudgee in 1851 and returned to Sydney in 1868. He established the Mudgee parish and built a small stone presbytery (the front part of the present building) in 1857 with funds raised all over the North. He also built a school.
Rev John O’Donovan was the second priest, but the first official parish priest. He was then a Dean and later a Monsignor. Father O’Donovan began the Sisters of Mercy in Mudgee. In 1873 he extended the church and the steeple was added in 1911.
The Church is built from sandstone mined at Botobolar, and the off cuts from the blocks were used to build the Botobolar Catholic Church. Fr O’Donovan died, still serving the parish, in 1912.
 
Gulgong Catholic Church is a Flemish bonding on brickwork, built by Mr Turner. The Presbytery is Georgian style stone, built in the 1880s. The School is a Spanish Mission style building and the Convent was built in Federation style, its gables air vents. 

Methodist Church

The Rev. John Pennell rode on horseback from Rylstone to take Methodist services in the Court House in 1851, and later in a borrowed slab hut. Mudgee Methodists became a separate circuit in 1854.
A small church was built on the present site in Mortimer Street and later a parsonage. In 1861 a decision was made to build a more substantial church when Rev Thos Angwin was minister. The foundation stone was laid on May 26, 1863 and the church opened in April 1864. A memorial stone to Mr Angwin is in the front of the church. 

Salvation Army

Brigadier Hammond came to Mudgee in 1885 to ‘spy out the land’, and later that year Captain and Mrs Owens began the Salvation Army ministry with a drum and timbrels band incorporating a miniature concertina section. The Perry Street Citadel foundation stone was laid in 1889.

Cooyal Churches

Cooyal was a great Catholic area in early days, but now the Catholic church is a private residence. The Methodist Church was near the Lindburn Road, with graves behind, but this is now the Anglican Church, the Anglicans having bought it in the 1930s. The graveyard has been recently fenced and done up. Before taking over the Methodist Church, Anglicans held services in Mahon’s hall or in private homes, particularly the Nurden family’s home at Botobolar. The three Miss Nurdens lived there with their two brothers and the ladies were famed for serving plates of cold plum pudding. The minister at the time was always served in a separate room, not with the general congregation.

Botobolar Catholic Church

St Matthew's Catholic Church at Botobolar celebrated its 100th anniversary of the laying of its foundation stone in 2000.

The sandstone church is made from off cuts trimmed off sandstone blocks, mined at Botobolar and used to build St Mary's Catholic Church in Mudgee,  and the ceiling in the church is New Zealand pine.

The little church holds about 60 people. It was built by Tom Lonsdale, an old stonemason, with two other old and skilled stonemasons helping him, Ned the Dutchman and Mark Saddington. The building cost about 400 pounds and the fittings about 100 pounds.

The foundation stone was laid by Rev John Dunne, who became the 3rd Catholic bishop of Bathurst. Dr Byrne, the bishop at the time was unable to come to the celebration because of ill health, so John Dunne was the man.

The little church battled to pay its bills in the days of the 1902 drought, but paid for the building by 1904. The Church was open and blessed in 1901 by Mr Long, followed by a huge banquet prepared by the community.

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