The historic St Joseph's Church is a piece of South Coast history in picturesque Nelligen. The first church building on this site was of wood and the total cost including altar and furnishings was about 200 in the old money. The official opening took place on Sunday 24 November 1872 with the Right Reverend The Vicar General (Sheehy) conducting the opening ceremony. The Very Reverend Dean White of Braidwood was in attendance; the incumbent priest, the Reverend J J Garvey, delivered the sermon.
In late 1894 a tender was let to Mr William Isley of Braidwood to construct a new brick church for the growing congregation. The clay for the bricks was donated by Mr Charles McCauley and was dug from the "Racecourse Paddock". The records show that a working bee of sixteen woodcutters was formed from the congregation to cut wood for the firing of the bricks. The wood was donated by Mr Stephen Richardson, the Nelligen butcher. Some of the woodcutters were: Pat Egan, Mick Byrne, Dave Roughley, and Ben, Jim, Pat, Bob and Vincent McCauley. The cornerstone was laid on 24 October 1895 and the new church was opened in 1896.
Socially the Church served its local Catholic congregation for more than three quarters of a century and, being of local significance, has been on the State Heritage Register since 1997. Aesthetically the building, designed in a late Victorian Gothic, has an unusually slender tower and spire, and the building has the potential to reveal information about the stature of the local Catholic church at the end of the 19th century and about the size of the local congregation at that time and the availability of skilled tradesmen.
The Church withstood the many bushfires that have swept the area over the past 90 years and still stands today. Restoration work on the Church was commenced in 1976. A 'damp course' was installed and the majority of the interior plasterwork removed, having been degraded by 'rising damp'. The Church authorities decided that no further services were to be held in Nelligen and restoration work was stopped. The last official service held in the Church was the funeral Mass for Horst Jagow in April 1976.
The building was sold sometime in the late 1990 and converted to an art gallery. It was sold again in 2006 for $475,000 to people from Canberra who had intended to convert the building into a residence - see sketches below:
Circumstances changed and the new owners put the building back on the market for $565,000. Eventually it sold in early 2012 for $450,000 and Sharon, the new owner, has since turned it into a beautiful residence by adding two Gothic-looking side doors and a mezzanine floor and filling it with beautiful antiques and exotic furniture.
Sharon asked us and several other Nelligen residents to come over on Sunday afternoon for a bit of a tipple around the altar. After much breaking of bread and imbibing a great deal of 'altar wine' we departed well after nightfall. It wasn't exactly 'High Church' but I was high enough to forget to take any photographs which I will do next time.
