Master Craftsman Completes 50-Year Career Restoring Churches

For almost 50 years, Gavin Merrington has been bringing light back into Tasmania's oldest buildings, one piece of stained glass at a time.

Now 64, the master craftsman is completing what he expects will be his last major restoration project. The Brickhill Memorial Church in Campbell Town, a 146-year-old treasure in Tasmania's midlands, needed its original main window restored after decades of decay.

The window's soft lead frame had deteriorated after nearly 150 years. Water damage had broken countless pieces, though the full extent only became clear once Merrington began pulling sections apart.

He tracked down the exact type of glass used in the original construction. Then he hand-painted and fired intricate pieces in a kiln, repeating the process multiple times to achieve the perfect color and effect for about 90 individual pieces.

The painstaking work took ten weeks in his South Hobart studio. Transporting the completed window was its own challenge, with the heavy glass secured in a wooden crate and carefully levered five meters off the ground by multiple pairs of hands.

Merrington's journey started at 16 when he responded to a newspaper ad. That single decision launched a career working on churches around Tasmania and eventually around the world.

In 2014, a Churchill Fellowship sent him to Europe to study with global experts in glazing and glass preservation. He returned confident that Australia's conservation skills matched world standards.

Why This Inspires

Heritage craftspeople in Tasmania form a tight-knit community where relationships span decades. Peter Evans, a fifth-generation Campbell Town local and heritage building specialist, first met Merrington 20 years ago on another church restoration.

The region's Victorian farmhouses and churches from the 1830s building boom keep this small community busy. They see it as their duty to preserve these structures and hand them over to future generations in sound condition.

Matt Collins, the Ohio-born owner of Brickhill who moved to Australia in 2017, understands that responsibility. He says owning a heritage property comes with a duty to preserve its rich history and significance for the local community.

While Merrington is stepping back from major restoration work, he's not disappearing entirely. He'll continue smaller jobs and consultancy work, confident that he's trained the next generation to carry on the craft.

The restored windows at Brickhill now flood the 146-year-old space with vivid colors, a fitting capstone to a career spent preserving Tasmania's luminous history.