Gunning & District Historical Society

Gunning Uniting Church today, Warrataw Street, Gunning. Photo by  Mattinbgn  /  CC BY 3.0 Guest article by Garry Norman Smith At three o’clock on Wednesday 16 January 1849, Dr Benjamin Clayton JP laid the foundation stone for the “New Wesleyan Chapel” in Gunning. A sermon was preached on the occasion by the Reverend W.B. Boyce, General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Missions in Australia and Van Diemen’s Land. From the Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser , 13 January 1849, via Trove. Gunning Uniting Church, Built by Coates & Sons , Parramatta. Photo by Garry Smith. Despite the official opening of the chapel taking place in July 1849, the gazetting of the land grant to the church did not appear until December 1849; the bureaucracy lagged well behind. The Colonial Secretary’s Office in Sydney announced that land had been granted at the intersection of Warrataw and Cullavin Streets, Gunning for a Wesleyan Chapel, a Wesleyan School a...

Graves of Robert Bayley and Lucy Jane Bayley, Dalton Methodist Cemetery (Photo by Garry Smith) Ann Bayley (nee Alchin) died at Leichhardt, Sydney on 4 July 1914. She was born in Staplehurst, Kent and baptised on 7 July 1832. She came to the colony of New South Wales with her family of Bounty Immigrants in 1838 aboard the Palmyra. The Sun (Sydney), Sunday 5 July 1914, p. 4. Ambrose and Ann Alchin brought their family to the Gunning District in the late 1840s. They settled at Jerrawa. In 1855 at the age of 23 years Ann Alchin married Thomas Bayley at Gunning. Their son, Robert Bayley, was born in 1857; he married Lucy Jane Waters at Gunning in 1883. Window dedicated to Robert and Lucy Bayley The Uniting Church in Gunning features a window dedicated to Robert and Lucy Bayley. Their graves in the Methodist Section of the Dalton Cemetery are part of a cluster of graves of the Bayley and Waters families. The headstones and general grave presentations are within a ...