St Andrews Presbyterian Church, Esk 1.81

St Andrews Presbyterian Church is a heritage-listed former church building at Ipswich Street, Esk, Somerset Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1876 to 1929. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 11 June 2003.HistoryThe former St Andrews Presbyterian Church is a simple timber building located on the south bank of Sandy Creek and was built in 1876 on the first site of the new settlement at Esk. The church site also contains a timber church hall and a manse.The town of Esk stands on the former Mount Esk pastoral run which was taken up in 1842 by Gideon Scot and purchased by the Bigges of Mt Brisbane run in 1849. European settlement began with a teamsters' camp at the crossing of Sandy (or Esk) Creek and the coach road north. This road became the main North Road from Ipswich to the Burnett. A township site was surveyed in 1872 on land excised from Mount Esk run and the first building known to have been constructed there was a hotel.In 1873, stimulated by a copper mining boom at nearby Biarra, plans for a township were lodged and a postal receiving office opened. The township was officially named "Gallanani", though more commonly called Sandy Creek or Mount Esk, and quickly developed to include a range of government and commercial buildings and houses. David and Mary McConnel of Cressbrook, two of the first European settlers in the Brisbane Valley, donated 20 acres of land for the construction of a Presbyterian Church to mark their silver wedding anniversary. They purchased, cleared and fenced the land. Mary McConnel, in particular, was a staunch Presbyterian and she and her family encouraged the establishment and support of other churches in the Valley. Alexander Raff, Bigge's financial manager, and other local graziers donated money towards the building of St Andrews. The gift of land and capital for the establishment of a church by local pastoralists reflects the relationship between early pastoral stations and the local settlements that served and traded with them reflecting a landowner and village pattern inherited from Europe.