St Francis Xavier's Cathedral is a Gothic Revival building. The original design by Charles Hansom (an English Catholic architect) was in the Decorated Gothic style. The plans were too ambitious for a very poor diocese and so Bishop Murphy shelved them.

Richard Lambeth then won the design competition for the building. Before his designs were exposed as a plagiarised version of the Hansom plans the foundations were laid (1851). Lambeth joined the gold-rush to Victoria and never returned.

In 1854 Bishop Murphy sent the Lambeth foundations diagrams to Hansom who produced drawings for a cathedral to be built in three stages as money became available. The style was Early English rather than Decorated Gothic Revival.

Cathedral west wall

Archbishop Reynolds, a friend of the Pugin family, abandoned the remaining Hansom plans and in 1880 asked Peter Paul Pugin to design alterations and additions to the cathedral. Further modifications by local architects Woods then Bagot led to the present appearance of the building.

The cathedral architects have been Richard Lambeth, Charles Francis Hansom, Peter Paul Pugin, Edward John Woods, Walter Hervey Bagot, Herbert Harrold Jory and Lynton Jury.

Symbolism in the Cathedral Architecture
For Catholics seven is the number of the sacraments of the Church. There are also seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and seven fruits of the Spirit.

The architect CH Bagot described how he incorporated the number seven into his design for the 1923-26 extensions.

The exterior of the building

1. In the façade between the tower and side porch there are seven groups of openings:
   • the doors;
   • all the windows above the doors;
   • the niche on top;
   • four groups of windows - two groups on either side of the front piers.
2. Seven doors open to the weather.
3. There are seven small gables on the roof.

The interior of the building

1. Seven creamy freestone arches separate the nave from the aisles.
2. Amber light is admitted through seven pairs of slender Gothic windows.
3. Seven recurs through the clerestory.
4. Seven recurs in the timbered roof and its arched trusses and braces.
5. Standing near the altar and looking towards the rose-window one sees seven beams of light from the rose-window and the the six mullioned windows in the row beneath it.

Bagot described the circular beam of light that comes through the rose-window on to the altar as representing the Sacred Host.