William Grant Broughton - Legacy

First Anglican bishop of Sydney, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, and was ordained in 1818, ministering in Hampshire before accepting an invitation from the Duke of Wellington to become the second archdeacon of New South Wales. He arrived in Sydney in 1829, and became Bishop of Australia in 1836. With the division into more manageable dioceses (1847), he was restyled Bishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of Australia.

William Grant Broughton (22 May 1788 – 20 February 1853) was the first (and only) Bishop of Australia of the Church of England. (The diocese was later structured into many smaller sees.)

He was born at Westminster and educated well for his day, including at The King's School, Canterbury, where he was a King's scholar.

Broughton arrived in Sydney on 13 September 1829, succeeding Thomas Scott as Archdeacon of New South Wales (that at the time substantially encompassed what is now the states of New South Wales plus Queensland to the north and Victoria to the south.) At this time, the colony was ecclesiastically an Archdeaconry of the Diocese of the Bishop of Calcutta.

He was granted a leave of absence and returned to England in 1834, there championing the cause of the church.

Broughton had a controversy with Charles Beaumont Howard over Howard's juristiction in South Australia.

He travelled to England in late 1852 and was involved in administration and missionary fund raising.

Legacy

In 1842 the Diocese of Tasmania was created;

He is widely accepted as the founder of the King's School at Parramatta, then a town at a distance of a day's ride from Sydney.

Broughton made many journeys around the fledgling colony and is credited as instigating the building of many churches in places such as Newcastle and the Hunter Valley north of Sydney and in the Monaro region inland to the south-west.

He championed the Newcastle case, and forfeited 500 pounds Sterling from his salary to partly fund the development of a new diocese.

St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, was commenced during the late 1840s.

On 12 March 1845 he consecrated St John the Baptist Church at what later became the site of the federal capital of Australia, Canberra.

The Broughton River and Port Broughton in South Australia are both named after him.

Bishop Broughten also consecrated Saint Mary on Allyn, Allynbrooke, in the Hunter Valley.