William Wardell, Melbourne's foremost ecclesiastical architect was commissioned to prepare plans for a cathedral, but the project was delayed by severe labour shortages during the Gold Rush of 1851, which drew almost every able-bodied man in the colony to the goldfields, and the foundation stone was not laid until 1858. An earlier building by stonemason David Mitchell (father of Nellie Melba and later partner of John Monash) was demolished for the cathedral. The cathedral was designed in the Gothic style of late Thirteenth Century, based on the great medieval cathedrals of England, in response to the revival of Gothic architecture as promoted by Augustus Welby Pugin and others as the most appropriate for the building of churches. The style is specifically Geometric Decorated Gothic, showing this style at its most complex in the large west window of the nave. The eastern arm with its chevet of radiating chapels in the French manner is still principally in the English late Thirteenth Century style, giving the most complete essay attempted in that style during the Nineteenth Century. William Wardell was a remarkably ambitious and capable architect; he went on to design the second St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney in a similar style, even larger than St Patrick's, but with a completely English square East End.