Donovan’s World

It was a long, long journey from Arrowtown (see 132) to my next subject. I crossed to Westland by way of Haast Pass and then round steep bluffs and through mossy forests to Jacobs River, about 80 km north of Haast township.

There, all alone in a paddock beside the highway, is a humble little church which is now called Our Lady of the River. It was paid for by landowner Bob Ritchie and built by Bert Weenick and Harry Bush in 1928 for the Church of England as St. Peter’s but since the late 1970s has been used by both Anglicans and Catholics.

It appears to be part of what marketing executives might call a ‘branding exercise’, there being other ‘Our Lady of…’ churches at Haast, Whataroa, Fox Glacier and Franz Josef.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

Despite a continuous tourist onslaught, Arrowtown, unlike Queenstown, is unspoilt.

Two uniquely paintable churches survive enhanced from its gold town origins. The first, St. Paul’s, is a plain porch and nave Anglican affair in timber built in 1871, just nine years after the first gold was found in the Arrow River.

Stained-glass memorial windows were added in 1973 and 1992 apart from which the pretty church is unchanged from the day it opened.

Across Berkshire Street is the Presbyterian St John’s. This is the note I made in my sketchbook: ‘Superb! Framed between enormous wellingtonias and mellowly glowing from sunlight reflected off the forecourt. If there were nothing else in Arrowtown those wellingtonias, planted around 1880, would be worth coming to see; and they allowed me to render a special emphasis of contrast to the intriguing 1873 stone church. The stones of St. John’s were dressed and laid by Chinese miners and its timbers came from near Glenorchy at the alpine end of Lake Wakatipu.’

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

For hoteliers and restaurateurs tourism has blessed Queenstown (where the second language is Japanese).

For historians its gems lie buried in a sea of gift shops, bistros, bars, tour coaches, motels, banks and bureaux de change.

I am therefore not contrite for leaving out everything around St Peter’s to show it as it must, in essence, have looked on the day it opened in 1932.

Redolent of the archetypal English Gothic parish church, it was designed by J. McDowall Smith of Dunedin.

Its random rubble walls are stones from the beaches of Lake Wakatipu. It replaced an 1863 wooden church that was removed to Omakau, north of Alexandra.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

Like the Curate’s Egg parts of Cromwell are interesting; other parts, like the old main road, disappear into newly formed Lake Dunstan, victims of the Clyde Dam hydroelectric project of 1992.

From the lookout above the town at the northern end of Cromwell Gorge the pink tiled roof of the handsome Church of Mary Immaculate and the Irish Martyrs is very distinctive among those higher buildings that survived.

It has the longest name of all the churches in this book and I can add little more than to quote from the board outside the church: ‘…The foundation stone … was laid on March 17th 1908 … The church was built by Patrick Thomas and the stonemason was William Gair … cost £2400. The church was blessed and opened by Bishop Verdon on April 18th 1909. Father Hunt gave the church its unusual title to gain the support of the many Catholic Irish miners in Cromwell at that time…’

© 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 like the simple symmetry of St. Dunstan’s Catholic Church at Clyde, and somehow the unassuming wire gate that guards the narrow, rose-lined path adds to its appeal.

The schist stones are sandier than those of St. James’s’ Roxburgh (see 123) and mimic the surrounding hills.

Dunstan was Clyde’s first name. Its oldest buildings date from the aftermath of a huge storm in 1863 that destroyed the canvas town and the earlier Catholic church that had grown in this rich roughhouse of a goldfield.

This St. Dunstan’s, with its Marseilles-tiled roof, was designed by Francis William Petre (see also 117, St Patrick’s, Lawrence) and built by Thomas Wilkinson and stonemason John Holloway. It was opened on Sunday 18 October 1903, by which time Clyde was thoroughly respectable.

© 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. Mary’s, Stirling (near Balclutha) is almost as original now as it was in 1869, with its pit-sawn heart totara boards and fancy bargeboards.

Simply Gothic, it was designed by William Ferguson ‘a farmer with some training in carpentry’ and stood on Inch Clutha Island until 1904 when it was dismantled, taken across the Clutha River to Stirling, and re-erected with a new iron roof.

In the mid-1960s this inscription was found above the altar: ‘This church was built in August 1869 on Inch Clutha by Robert McKinlay. Shifted to Stirling and rebuilt by John Agnew in January 1905…’

© 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. BARNABAS, WARRINGTON 

On the Otago coast north of Dunedin, St Barnabas, built in 1872, is another archetypal country church.

It has a pleasant, leafy churchyard where tui and fat kereru perch safely in old trees above mossy tombstones that range downhill into long grasses and deep shadows.

The church is beside the main railway but hidden from it and so a mournful hoot from a passing train is startling.

Inside, it has beautiful stained glass, especially the west window which is crafted by C.E. Tute of London. The window is dated 1870 - it pre-dates the church by two years.

© 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. DAVID’S, CAVE, South Canterbury

I’ve photographed St. David’s Memorial Church, Cave, 35 km west of Timaru, many times but this was the first time I had painted it. It’s a difficult subject, the riverbed stones in its walls demand artistic trickery!

It was built in 1930, very much for the same reason as the Church of the Good Shepherd at Tekapo (see 101): to honour the pioneers of its district, particularly the Burnett family.

As with the Tekapo church, in a thousand years when archaeologists and pilgrims go in search of ancient relics, St. David’s will still be there. It has the lasting qualities of the Celtic and Saxon churches of Britain. Its design, not surprisingly, won for Herbert Hall the New Zealand Institute of Architects Gold Medal for 1934.

Inside, I was moved by its simplicity, intimacy and stillness: the warm nutty tones of the timberwork, the jewel-like brilliance of the stained glass, and the subtle greys and tans of the stones, so dryly redolent of Canterbury’s summertime riverbeds.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

 
‘Wet day. Tourists’ coach pulls up; a man and woman get out while others watch them from windows. They run to church, pan and tilt with video cameras, nod to each other and run back to coach which roars away leaving a blue cloud of exhaust. Five minutes flat! Another tick on the schedule.’ (SKETCHBOOK NOTE 2/11/01)

Built from locally quarried stone, and standing with great dignity in its garden of old English trees and emerald lawns, St Paul’s complements the quiet comfort of Tai Tapu perfectly.

It was built in 1930 on the site of an 1876 wooden church. The base of the sundial on the lawn in front is the font from that old church and stands on the spot it originally occupied.

The ‘new’ church, designed by Cecil Wood of Christchurch (who was responsible for the original designs of Wellington Cathedral), was erected by Sir Robert Heaton-Rhodes in memory of his wife Jessie and presented as a gift to the people of the district.

© 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