Donovan’s World

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

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.

My painting gives no hint of the passing showers on that day when, outside St Martin’s, Greatford, I met the great grandson of Major William Jarvis Willis who donated the land and retained the designer, Frederick de Jersey Clere.

J. and A. Broadbelt built the church.

It opened on 30 July 1882, but it wasn’t consecrated until 1885 as Bishop Hadfield had refused his blessing because Willis had married Eliza Piddiford, sister of his deceased wife, Amelia. (Such a union was against New Zealand law so they’d done the deed in Australia.)

Only after Willis’s death in 1884 did the Bishop, having given his pique with the Major precedence over the spiritual needs of the rest of its congregation, sanctify the building.

© 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.

‘Windy; weather deteriorating. Chilly; rain spots. Agapanthus past their best, seed heads flinching in the breeze. Inside, many brasses but two major behind altar: one for privates and troopers who died in 1914-18, the other to a Flt. Lt. (DFC) of Bomber Command killed over Germany in 1943. Five great heroes from this tiny community; what on earth were they doing fighting wars 20,000 km away from home?’ (SKETCHBOOK NOTE)

St Mary’s, Beaconsfield, is eighteen kilometres from Feilding. It was built in 1912 and is another Frederick de Jersey Clere; he was busy in these parts.

Relatively expensive for those days, it cost £400 to build. Transepts take it beyond the utterly simple but it will only hold 40 souls which is just as well as, despite its upkeep being provided by local people, its congregation shrinks as it approaches its centenary.

© DON DONOVAN
 
donovan@ihug.co.nz

St Michael and All Angels typifies the honest wooden churches of the Rangitikei country. Frederick de Jersey Clere himself wrote: ’I made no attempt to copy a stone building but used my ideas of what a wooden building should be.’
 
Started in January 1895 and finished by early April (no such plagues as Resource Management Acts in those days) it was designed to serve a community not only much larger than eventuated but also more devout; at its first service on 14 April nobody attended!

It’s one of my favourites from this collection; I think because of its proportions and that steep, heaven-bent roof.

‘Good at a distance across dried grasses dancing on a dull, windy day. Locked. In the graveyard new tombstones all neatly lined up on concrete strips like a lawn cemetery - so unnecessary. Behind them are the few old stones and a lonely angel. Cabbage trees rattle in the screen of native shrubbery: flax, macrocarpa, lemonwoods, manuka…’
(SKETCHBOOK NOTE 27/3/01)

© 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

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.

 
Built in 1902, St Columba’s now stands confidently cosseted in the grounds of Solway College, Masterton.
 
It was, until 1996, at Mangamahoe near Eketahuna.

The girls’ college - Presbyterian but not exclusively so - had wanted a chapel since its foundation in 1916 but it took 80 years to achieve the dream. In doing so, they serendipitously saved a fine little de Jersey Clere jewel that might otherwise have died of neglect.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

 St Andrew’s, Whareama, is another ‘Clere’ church near Tinui in the eastern Wairarapa. It was designed by John Swan of the Clere & Swan architectural practice while Frederick de Jersey Clere was overseas.

As I caught a glimpse of the landscape through one window I wondered how many small boys’ eyes had hungered for the sunlight while trapped by a long sermon.

© DON DONOVAN  

donovan@ihug.co.nz