Mt Crawford Cemetery

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Mount Crawford. The ruins of the Murray Vale Presbyterian Church prboably erected in 1849. It was ravished by fire in 1869 and closed. It was stabilised in 2018 to preserve the ruins.
Mount Crawford Presbyterian Church.

Newspapers reported on 15th August 1850 that the Established Kirk of Scotland had received a government grant to religion of 20 acres of glebe lands between Mt Crawford and John Warren’s Springfield estate for the erection of a church. But it also stated that the United Presbyterians had already erected their church and roofed it over at Mt Crawford. This latter reference would be to the Mt Crawford Presbyterian Church which is smaller in scale than the Presbyterian Church later erected near John Warrens Springfield estates. The ruins of the Mt Crawford Church which have recently been stabilised from further ruination was built extremely well and was mainly the work of volunteers but probably not done in 1843.

Although the first Presbyterian Church services were held in South Australia from 1838 the first church was not erected for some years. The foundation stone was laid by Reverend Drummond on 2nd December 1840 on land in Gouger Street Adelaide. It opened on 27th February 1842 but interior work was still being completed in 1845. Other Presbyterian churches including one in Grenfell Street opened in the city of Adelaide the period of 1842 to 1845 so it seems unlikely that a Presbyterian Church would have been erected at Mt Crawford as early as 1843. The congregation was probably formed at that time and the cemetery opened two years later in 1845. The church may have been built around that time or a bit later. Work started on a Presbyterian Church at Mount Barker in 1847 and that was a district with many settlers unlike Mt Crawford with just a few pastoral families. It was completed in 1849. Work then began on a Presbyterian Church in “the thickly populated “district of Morphett Vale in 1848. On the 25th November 1848 Presbyterians met at Mt Crawford and decided by a vote of 12 to 6 that they should apply for a government grant to religion for the erection of a church instead of adhering to the United Presbyterian church group of Mt Crawford which opposed state aid to religion. £70 had already been raised for the erection of a Presbyterian Church at Mt Crawford. As noted above the first Presbyterian Church at Mt Crawford was completed before 15th August 1850 so it was probably erected in 1849 and not 1843 as the Barossa Council sign says at the church site.

The first settler or squatter in this area was James Crawford who erected a hut here in 1840 for his shepherd to watch his sheep. The shepherd was held up by three bushrangers who took his rations and supplies. They were caught soon after in Gawler where they held up a bank and they were hanged in Adelaide in 1840. Crawford soon left for NZ but he had established pastoralism in the district. One of the first occupiers of the land around Mt Crawford was Alexander Borthwick Murray who arrived in SA from Scotland in 1839.His nearest neighbour at that time was John Bowden on his property at Kersbrook.
John Murray and John Warren of Mt Crawford and their families financially assisted with the construction of the Presbyterian Church at Murray Vale at Mt Crawford in the late 1840s. The first Presbyterian minister was Reverend Roddick. But in 1864 a new Presbyterian Church was built nearby at South Rhine (Springton) and some local families started attending services there. Then in the following year a Presbyterian Church was opened in Mt Pleasant and the Reverend Roddick moved there. The Murray Vale church began to rapidly decline and it had major cracks in the walls by 1869 after it had been ravished by a major bushfire. Services stopped at this time. The attached cemetery includes the graves of Alexander Borthwick Murray’s first wife Charlotte who died in 1853 and an infant son who died in 1845. It also contains the graves of many of John Murray’s children and grandchildren. Also buried in the cemetery are three who died at Glen Para (later Corryton Park) between 1858-60. It was these three deaths which caused the Randalls to sell Glen Para to the Rounsevell family in 1860. The first death was Mr Bain who was killed in a tree felling accident in 1858, next was Mr Sinclair a stockman who fell from his horse and the third was William Walter Randall, aged just 20 years.
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