Haileybury Chapel, Melbourne

The Haileybury Chapel, Melbourne is the chapel of Haileybury College and Haileybury Girls' College, located at the College's Keysborough campus in south-eastern Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The chapel is located on the eastern side of Springvale Road, just south of the intersection with Cheltenham Road, in Keysborough. Architecturally and artistically the Haileybury Chapel is one of the finest and most distinctive Australasian sacred buildings from the last quarter of the 20th century. Designed by the noted Australian architect Philip Cox, the Haileybury Chapel features extensive artwork, including over fifty stained glass mosaic windows by the celebrated Australian artist Leonard French. The chapel is also noted for its fine acoustic, which is especially suited to musical performance.

The chapel was officially opened by the Governor of Victoria, His Excellency Davis McCaughey, on 18 October 1987. The Chapel was named the David Bradshaw Chapel on 13 August 2000, after David M. Bradshaw, the Headmaster of Haileybury from 1954 to 1973.

The Haileybury Chapel was designed by Philip Cox, a leading Australian architect. At the time of completing the project, Cox wrote:

"There are moments in everybody's life when contemplation can take place. This may be in the form of a prescribed service with people or it may be a solitary experience. Generally it takes place within an architectural setting. In both cases the architectural space can remove the individual from the trials and tribulations of everyday life and give opportunity to dwell on aspects of philosophy - ecclesiastical or secular. Such a space must respond to the celebration of life and mankind's endeavours, which include the visual arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, stained glass and craft, or the audio arts such as instrumental music, speech, song or symphony as well as producing opportunities for the performing arts of theatre and ceremony. The vocabulary of the building is in humble brick and timber and glass. However, wherever you look you will see the exuberance of the mason, the carpenter or the artist in his contribution to the art of life.

Haileybury Chapel addresses some philosophical issues. We hope the staff and students who use this building will constantly seek new understanding and meaning of life within these walls and through the architecture and its allied arts be assisted in its interpretation." The design features four large independent brick walls, each three storeys high, joined with large glass panels and a high timber ceiling with exposed trusses. These walls each feature specific elements of the building: the Ante-chapel and Vestry (northern), Sanctuary (western), Pipe Organ (southern) and Choir with Bell Tower (eastern). Externally, each wall is progressively higher than the other; the northern is the lowest and the eastern, featuring the Bell Tower, the highest. The building also pays subtle homage to traditional sacred architectural forms with the inclusion of features such as blind arcading and a double-storey Ante-chapel in the northern wall. Symbolism can be read throughout Cox's architectural design; the Sanctuary wall, for example, has twelve small windows symbolic of the Twelve Apostles. The sanctuary is both raised and recessed, indicating the importance of the communion table, lectern and pulpit. Clear glass above the sanctuary recess, invisible from the nave, floods the wall above the reredos with natural light; this is symbolic of humankind's continual search for the "higher things". The nave, or main seating area of the Chapel, features a high timber ceiling with exposed trusses symbolic of the upturned keel of a ship. The word nave, from the Latin 'navis' (ship), was historically suggested by the keel shape of the vaulting found

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