The Living City — 25

Press, 6 February 1982, Page 13

The Living City — 25

Church of St Andrew

Pencil drawing by OWEN R. LEE Text by DERRICK ROONEY

Though the greater of the building, and all its most prominent features, date from late Victorian times, the Church of St Andrew, in the triangle bounded by Tuam Street, Antigua Street, and Oxford Terrace, retains tangible links with the earliest days of settlement in Canterbury. It stands on a site which has been used for a church for more than a century and a quarter, and parts of the existing building date back the full 125 years.

Like other surviving ecclesiastical and educational buildings of its era, St Andrew’s Church .has dominant Gothic elements in its architecture, but these are balanced by a touch of austerity which gives the building a character of its own.

Heavy, shaped timber buttresses which are a prominent external feature give the building an air of ruggedness, which is lightened by the intricately leadlighted and coloured windows and by the ornate bargeboards and brackets. ■ • Essentially, it is a building designed with a sharp eye for detail and balance. An attractive and unusual wheel window surmounts and complements the main entrance porch — facing the hospital and unfortunately diminished by the addition of iron gates — and

the ornamentation of the bargeboards above the entrance is repeated on the gables. Throughout, the church is constructed of wood, on foundations of stone and concrete, the former, at the east end (here illustrated) presumably being part of the original building of 1857. St Andrew’s is therefore well entitled to take its place, alongside the Church of St Michael and All Angels a short distance away in Oxford Terrace, among the few permanent reminders of the religious faith of the pioneers. It was, in fact, the “mother church” in Canterbury bf the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The site was bought by the Presbyterian Church in 1855, and a church built of timber from Banks Peninsula opened there in 1857. As the colony grew in the next few decades the Presbyterian congregation, too, outgrew the original church, and in 1889, after alterations had been made several times, the Presbyterians considered a proposal to rebuild. However, they decided to keep the old building, and to enlarge and reconstruct it. An architect named England was commissioned, and work was completed in 1892. Corrugated iron has replaced the shingled roof, but otherwise the building is substantially unchanged since then.