St James' Anglican Church, Morpeth
St James' Anglican Church was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 27 January 2017 having satisfied the following criteria.
St James' Anglican Church, Morpeth
The first subdivision (1834) of the township of Morpeth, situated on an east-west ridge overlooking the river, allowed Close to donate land on both sides of the intersection of High Street and Tank Street. Here would eventually be built a church, rectory (in those days often called a parsonage), stone-built parish schoolhouse and schoolteacher's house. The church and parish schoolhouse, sited so as to form a focal point and entry for the embryonic township when viewed from the approach roads from all four cardinal directions, and no doubt to enable the identification of the township much in the style of an English village, were paid for by Close, while the rectory was partly paid for by him. Conrad Martens' 1841 sketch of Morpeth demonstrates the success of Close's vision. Close was himself a capable artist whose paintings and sketches, once attributed to Sophia Campbell, are held in the National Library of Australia. By way of preparation, Close had built a two-storied temporary schoolhouse-cum-chapel some little distance to the east. Not long after the establishment in 1862 of the government-sponsored Morpeth National School, the parish school closed; the building was then used as the parish hall.