Biography

The first church in the St. Leonard's area was a brick building, St. Paul's, White Hills, opened in 1842. It had a relatively short life due to poor foundations, and was deemed unsafe for services by the late 1870s. It is uncertain whether it fell down, or was demolished.

By the 1840s, Revd. Henry Plow Kane was ministering in the area, alongside his duties as headmaster of Launceston Church Grammar School.
The original St. Peter's Church was opened for service in 1847, and the first rector of Paterson's Plains and White Hills was Revd. John Mereweather, who served for only a few months in 1850. The building was poorly constructed, and replaced in 1869 by the present building, which continued as an Anglican centre of worship for a little over 150 years.

Bush Church Aid Society, supported the ministry of Revd Irfon Griffiths in the mid 2000s, during which time there was a substantial redevelopment of the church site, including a modern addition with a large space for children's ministry, kitchen and amenities, the viability of the parish was still doubtful, and the building and rectory followed the way of many other historic Anglican church buildings, and was sold in 2022, along with All Souls Church, Patersonia – which had begun life as a Methodist church in the late 19th century, but was bought by the Anglican Church in 1957. Again, Duncan Grant’s comprehensive series is our source, as also for All Saints, Ravenswood, also part of the St. Leonard’s parish, built in 1956 and sold in 2014. The sale of church properties was largely the result of financial pressures on the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania, to fund redress for the victims of abuse exposed by Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse from 2013 onwards.

An ongoing congregation of Anglicans in the St. Leonards area is the South-East Centre of All Saints Anglican Network. It has no building, but has at times held Sunday services in the local primary school, at Worldview Centre and even “pub church” in St. Leonards Village Inn every month or so.

St. Peter's Church building was sold to Lethborg Family Funerals for use as a funeral parlour.