Donovan’s World

In distinct contrast to Whitikaupeka whare karakia is this forlorn church on a lonely hill at Opaea. Its tottering belfry and flaking roof speak of better days.

I’ve drawn it at a distance. I tried to get closer but found no apparent approach road. I saw nobody nearby who might have given me permission to cross its surrounding fields. I have been unable to get any information about it.

I can only hope that it might one day benefit as much from zealous restoration as its near neighbour at Moawhango.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL, JUDGES BAY

I make no apology for including the minuscule St Stephen’s Chapel, Judges Bay, in a book of country churches. Although it stands in an inner suburb of Auckland it has the rural look, and the feel and setting of its origins.

Built in 1857 to plans by Frederick Thatcher, it replaced a short-lived stone affair that fell down in a storm in 1845. The graveyard stones are a roll call of early Auckland identities among whose lichened memorials I sat and sketched while talking with a couple of visitors from Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, who had seen the chapel from their cruise liner and made a bee-line for it.

On the skyline beyond the quiet churchyard looms the Auckland Sky Tower. I left it out. Artists are allowed to do things like that.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

I sketched St John the Baptist, Waimate North, on a perfect autumn day. A warm sun was on my back, and the only sound on the still air was coming from somebody sweeping the drive of the adjacent Mission House.

It’s the third church to be built here; the first finished in 1831 on St John the Baptist’s Day; the second, built in 1839, was much larger in order to accommodate a congregation that had embraced Anglicanism with enthusiasm. After Hone Heke’s war of the mid-1840s, devotional numbers shrank, leaving an over-sized church which was also in a state of disrepair. So they commissioned Marsden Clarke to design a new, smaller one and built it with the timbers of the old church at a total cost of £374. It was dedicated on 19 April 1871 and still stands today, neo-Gothic and finely proportioned.

© DON DONOVAN   

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Te Whare Karakia o Mikaera, Ngawha*, dedicated on 21 April 1871, was built on the site of Pene Taui’s pa where the Battle of Ohaeawai was fought on 1 July 1845.

Scoria walls around the church are remnants of the outer fortifications of the pa. It’s a nice, neat church that oozes history.

The builders were Neilson and Cook. The cost was £300 and the plans were ‘from Auckland’. There’s an old saying that the devil is in the detail - not true.

The artistic homage to the god of the artisan is in the detail; you see it around the world in pew ends, gargoyles, wrought iron work, and here in the elegant lancet windows of St Michael’s with their quatrefoil decorations picked out in unabashed scarlet.

© DON DONOVAN  
donovan@ihug.co.nz