Runnymede Church

By the 1850s Runnymede had a large community of farmers settling in the area. Mr. Theophilus Quested called a meeting to discuss the erection of a church, Mr. Askin Morrison ... promised a gift of £2 for every £1 subscribed by other church people/donors.

The church began in 1860 by Mr. John Lovell a stonemason from Wiltshire, England. Mr Lovell was a tenant farmer of Askin Morrison.

The following notice appeared in The Hobart Town Advertised on Thursday 28th June 1860:

CHURCH AT RUNNYMEDE

We have been requested to publish the following correspondence for the information of the subscribers to the Church now being built at Runnymede : -

Hobart Town , May 17, 1860

REV AND DEAR SIR, - I beg to inform you that I visited Runnymede last week, and was glad to see the pretty little edifice so far erected, but it gave me great pain to see no covering [roof] to preserve the walls against the ensuring winter, and you have my charges also of the Church, and having been informed some collections have been made, will you have the goodness to render as account of what has been done, so as to enable me to satisfy those that took an interest at the time I called the meeting some few years ago. I am &c &c

Theophilus Quested

Walch's Guide for 1871

… Here is the shell of a church built of stone, which has been left unfinished for so many years that it would be an act of grace to plant ivy round it, and so give it some of the beauty as well as the desolate aspect of a ruin, which it already possesses; that is, failing the completion of its original higher destiny…

Mrs. Laura Balsely of Brookdale recalled there was a slate roof, but this was blown off and that the stonework was demolished and used in house foundations in the Runnymede area.

A one room schoolhouse was built sometime after 1900, it was also used for church services.