Pro-forma - not yet complete entry and not public

This sign indicates the direction to pews 1 to 31, and would date back into the era of pew rents. Lettering is gilt on what is likely a cedar panel.
Better located pews were highly prized, and disputes arose from time to time about entitlement. Using a pew rented by someone else could also lead to acrimony, as evidenced by letters from angry pew holders in our records.
The reverse of the sign features an advertisement for services in which “Crowdy’s new Free Chant will be sung and their peculiarities explained -  at St. John’s church on Tuesday evening next at 7:30. All members of the Church of England are invited to attend dated July the 29^th R Harris, Printer, Launceston 

Musical Standard (1862-71) (gives some information about Crowdy’s Free Chant system – likely developed in the 1870s.) Robert Harris, who came to Van Diemen’s Land as a 2 year old child of a convict woman, and spent his childhood at the Orphan School, was a Launceston printer from 1864 to about 1875, so this handbill likely dates to that period. After some years in Victoria and New Zealand, he returned to Tasmania in 1883, establishing the Wellington Times, a precursor of The Advocate, of which he and his family were proprietors.
Robert Harris - More Than Our Childhoods

[noted #39 marked on this item – perhaps a reference to Jenny Gill’s earlier catalogue work]