Saint Hyacinth’s – Yalgoo

St Hyacinth’s Convent Chapel – Yalgoo

The Convent Chapel of St Hyacinth in Henty St Yalgoo,  is the smallest church building designed by Hawes.  Built in 1922, it is a small and simple structure in Inter-War Romanesque style and is all that remains of a larger complex of buildings.

Hawes was given the responsibility of not only organizing the buildings for the Dominican Sisters to enable them to establish a school in Yalgoo, but he was also required to assist with procuring the land, raising the funds, designing the buildings and working with  the contractor Hendry Jermy on the construction.  He was at the time, the Parish priest in Mullewa and he would travel to Yalgoo on Mondays, sometimes on his horse Stella, work on the buildings for the rest of the week and then return to Mullewa for Sunday Mass.

The convent building consisted mostly of  materials salvaged from another now disused convent in the Goldfields town of Day Dawn. While Jermy was constructing the convent, Hawes worked on the chapel beside it.

All that remains is the chapel with a terracotta roof and masonry and timber framed bell tower. The chapel contains examples of Hawes’s handmade arts and crafts influenced artworks.