Donovan’s World

‘Church is crammed on to a small section surrounded by houses. The glebe land has been sold off. Difficult angles; hard to appreciate the church because it’s so concealed. Doesn’t matter, the steeple is glorious! Never heard such noisy blackbirds singing so sweetly.’ (SKETCHBOOK NOTE 30/10/01)

In 1889, twelve years after the church was built, it blew down because the builder hadn’t anchored the ground plates of the nave. The town fathers probably revised their ideas about the necessity of employing building inspectors at that point, while the church elders promptly rebuilt the church to J. C. Maddison’s design - this time with additional cross-bracing.

The 1880 tower, a landmark for this north Canterbury farming town, had been secured to the foundations and is thus the oldest part of the church.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

EX-METHODIST CHURCH, WAIKUKU

 
I carefully ignored its sterile carpark and the traffic on State Highway One that passes within metres of its front door, and concentrated hard on the mischievous curves of its barge boards and the sweet proportions of the front porch of the ex-Methodist church at Waikuku, north of Christchurch.

The foundation stone is dated 7 December 1899. The church opened for service on 8 February 1900. It was both designed and built by J. Withers of Southbrook for £179.

The front porch, with its side gables and paired Gothic windows, is an inspired addition - they rarely work so well as this one.

A notice board outside proclaims, ‘Gospel Way Outreach … An Old Fashioned Full Gospel Church’. While it has relinquished Methodism, since 1984 it has had proud owners who obviously give it lots of tender, loving care.

© DON DONOVAN  

donovan@ihug.co.nz

 
I met a man from Shrewsbury in St Oswald’s on the Kaikoura to Blenheim road, who was cycling his way around the world. To him the church, an outstanding feature of this sparsely populated coast, was a brief sanctuary from boisterous head winds.

It was built in 1927 by the parents of Charles Hector Heaton Murray who had died in Geneva, three years earlier, aged 20.

It was designed by W. Haulkner of Nelson and constructed of local stone by W. R. Vass.

Inside there’s a tiny gallery at the west end from where one can look down on an intimate nave whose stained-glass windows commemorate local families: Parsons, Murray, Westenra and Thomas.

Outside, the wind carried the bleats of sheep in nearby yards waiting for spring shearing. A few gravestones surround the church. Beyond, clouds of yellow lupins billowed down to an empty sea.

© DON DONOVAN
 
donovan@ihug.co.nz

On the saddest day of the year it seemed that all of Hanmer Springs had gone to the funeral of two young girls who had drowned in a local North Canterbury river on 26 October 2001. Everywhere, including my subject church, was deserted. A solemn stillness lay over the sunlit town and even the leaves in the trees refrained from rustling as mourners gathered in and around another church along the road.

The intimate Church of the Epiphany has a particularly handsome apsidal sanctuary lit by three stained-glass memorial windows.

It opened in November 1901 and was consecrated the following January by the Bishop of Nelson.

It was built in five months by a Mr Berry of Blenheim and is said to look no different from when it was built - even after 100 years in an alpine climate that can often bring extremes of baking sun and deep snow. I have not been able to find the architect’s name. A pity, he should not have gone unrecorded.

© DON DONOVAN 
 
donovan@ihug.co.nz

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

St John’s, Arrowtown door.

I toured the South Island clockwise; down the east to Southland, a roam through Central Otago then up Westland and into the Nelson area. The first church I illustrated was at Koromiko, south of Picton, the last a not too distant neighbour at Havelock.

In trying to determine whether there might be essential differences between North and South Island country churches I concluded that they were influenced by their origins. There was far more of the ‘missionary’ up north, whereas in the founding provinces of the south, religion - Anglican and Presbyterian in particular - had been imported with the setttlers as part of their well-established social mosaic.

In view of the pre-European distribution of population, it is only to be expected that, with notable exceptions, Maori churches are far less evident than in Northland or the East Coast, for example.

I’m not sure to what extent those differences affect the external appearance of the churches although I’m sure that they do in subtle ways. But the characteristics of building materials certainly provide distinctions. There’s far more stone in the South Island - scoria, limestone, schist - each has its own special colour and texture. And the architecture itself is different; there are fewer of those elegant belfries with their de Jersey Clere flèches. The works of architects such as Benjamin Mountfort seem more serious and authoritarian.

ST JOHN IN THE WILDERNESS, KOROMIKO

‘Built 1871, first service 4 April. No graves in churchyard but large ankle-breaking Wellingtonia roots lie along surface because of stony substrate. A photograph in the church of it just built shows it surrounded by a hideous wilderness of shattered tree stumps. Inside, nave is bone-dry kahikatea (borer evident) with rimu trusses.’ (SKETCHBOOK NOTE 30/10/01)

Koromiko is south of Picton where the land starts to open out into the old Waitohi Valley. St John in the Wilderness was designed by a Mr Alexander; the builder was Mr Pugh of Picton who had quoted £132.

Mill owner Captain Dalton, an early settler, gave most of the timber for the building. It is said that all of his employees gave a week’s wages to the building fund - how willingly is a matter for speculation.

Here a swarm of bees interrupted the baptism of future Governor General the Right Reverend Sir Paul Reeves. Several generations later bees continue to be a problem. They seem to inhabit many of the churches I’ve visited - I wonder what attracts them?

© DON DONOVAN  

donovan@ihug.co.nz

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

Christ Church is now sadly marooned in a graffiti-scrawled factory suburb. It was, when it was built in 1853, a typical country church even though only a short trip from Wellington.

In the late 1940s the new railway line laid along the eastern Hutt Valley divided Taita’s Anglican community from its church and precipitated its decline through isolation.

Its design was probably the work of Octavius Bousefield, a draughtsman in the Government Surveyor’s office. Careful restoration inside and out followed a serious fire in 1989.

In the churchyard I discovered the grave of Frederick de Jersey Clere, whose works feature so prominently in this book. His severe gravestone hardly celebrates his talent, but, of course, his many churches do. It seems ironic that he is not within the precinct of one of his own creations.

© DON DONOVAN  

donovan@ihug.co.nz

‘The body of the building is pretty dull but porch and be!fry are excellent. It’s another Frederick de Jersey Clere - one of the best of his belfries I’ve come across.’ (SKETCHBOOK NOTE 26/3/01)

St Mary Magdalene’s was dedicated on 26 November 1897.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

While the huge cross in the west wall seemed to me a bit ‘over the top’, the porch and apse of All Saints, Foxton, reminded me of St Thomas’s at Sanson. It, like St Thomas’s, is a nicely proportioned building and was designed by the same architect, Charles Tringham. (A chancel enlargement of 1899 is the work of de Jersey Clere.)

It was built in 1876 on land purchased from Maori for 100 gold sovereigns by Capt Francis Robinson, the first European to take up residence in the area.

The original shingle roofs were replaced in 1908, and the baptistery was added in 1967. Inside there are lots of memorial stained-glass windows of the saints, and a reredos, which I think is unusual for a New Zealand country church.

© DON DONOVAN  

donovan@ihug.co.nz