Donovan’s World

Our Lady of the Snows, Franz Josef, is designed like a Swiss church with a steep-pitched roof to shed snow.

Having been dedicated, opened and blessed on 23 December 1951 it’s not old, but it is different. Small and intimate, it has the atmosphere of an appropriate place in which to consign one’s fate to one’s maker before taking to the mountains.

In the porch are two St. Bernard windows, one depicts crossed skis and a shield containing a loaf of bread and a flask of brandy, the other has a ski pole and ice pick crossed, and a coiled rope.

© 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.

Many’s the time I’ve passed St. Peter’s on my way to visit friends in Gebbies Valley at the head of Lyttelton Harbour. But I have never seen it looking so fresh as it was on the spring day in 2001 when I illustrated it.

At only 52 square metres, it is the smallest of Benjamin Mountfort’s country churches.

It was built on land given by William Gebbie, an early settler, and opened for worship in April 1871 (although it was not consecrated until 7 January 1885). Apart from having its shingles replaced by iron in 1895, it is very much in its original form.

© 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.

It’s hard to believe that this imposing and well-presented church, almost too large for my collection, serves a congregation of rarely more than twenty parishioners. It’s a sign of the times.

My old friend de Jersey Clere caught some flack in 1885 when he gave St George’s, Patea an unusual A-frame design. The critics failed to appreciate that it was a deliberate decision to make use of timber for timber’s sake rather than to try to replicate stone in wood.

© DON DONOVAN
 
donovan@ihug.co.nz

My painting gives no clue to how small a section Christ Church, occupies, it is only slightly bigger than the building. Yet it is a fine church, built in 1894, and a credit to its architect, Robert Lamb of Napier.
 
It has special significance for me because a man I knew many years ago in England, the Reverend Baden Powell Herbert Ball, must have worshipped here.
 
In 1926, at the request of the Diocese of Waiapu, the Church Army in England sent Captain B P H Ball to help in ministering to men and their families in public works camps around Poverty Bay. He spent most of his time at the Tuai power project and Christ Church would have been the nearest established Anglican church to his ministry. (He was succeeded, incidentally, by Harry Squires of Wellington City Mission fame.)

© 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.

I especially liked the way somebody has picked out the detail of the west gable in Disneyland colours. Otherwise St Andrew’s, Tolaga Bay, built in 1913, is an unassuming Anglican church standing in a row of ordinary houses.

Through the magic of artist’s licence I have omitted an ugly concrete power pole that stands in front of the church, placed there by an insensitive electricity company.

© DON DONOVAN   

donovan@ihug.co.nz

St Andrew’s stands on a slight eminence beside the busy Kawakawa to Opua road near Tirohanga Stream. It started life as the fourth church to be built on the site of the Paihia Mission Station (established in 1823 by Henry Williams) and was originally dedicated as St Paul’s.

At Paihia it served all races, mainly Maori, for fifty years but attendance flagged and it fell into disrepair. In 1903 William Henry Bedggood, a lay reader from Waimate North, arrived in Paihia and set about reviving attendance. In 1904-5 he had the church re-shingled and upgraded. But in 1926 it was dismantled and the following year was barged in sections via the Veronica Channel and Kawakawa River to the nearby Tirohanga riverbank, then transported by bullock team to its present position and re-named St Andrew’s.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

Holy Trinity, Mehopa, on western Northland’s Whangape Harbour must be the most remote of North Island churches. I tried twice to find it until the driver of a road metal truck told me where it was.

Beyond a private gate at the end of the shingle road a faintly discernible 4WD track ran through scrub past a run down farm littered with rusting wrecks of cars and machinery, and other discarded items. The surrounding paddocks were mostly unfenced, the remains of old posts sticking up like abandoned wharf piles. Young manuka, about 60cm high, scraped the underside of the car and I feared I might be bogged down forever. The Anglican church eventually revealed itself in well kept grounds, where many graves had fresh flowers.

The main gate leads down to mud flats on the side of Whangape Harbour and I’ve since been told that the best access is by boat. Built for £120 by Paul Lingaard, a Scandinavian, who is said to have ‘jumped ship’ at Whangape, it was opened in March 1922. It is the third church on this site.

© DON DONOVAN   
donovan@ihug.co.nz

RATANA CHURCH AHIPARA

The charming and distinctive Ratana Church at Ahipara was something of a surprise when, as I was about to head south, I came across it by the roadside. It is spick and span and, like all Ratana churches, is a consistently patterned reminder of the principal temple at Ratana in the Rangitikei.

The powerful Christianity based Maori Ratana faith started with a vision received by Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana on 18 November 1918.

© DON DONOVAN   
donovan@ihug.co.nz