DOMINION ITEMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 October 1945, Page 2

DOMINION ITEMS

CLOSING OF SHOPS. WELLINGTON, October G. Commenting on an Auckland message regarding the closing of butchers’ and grocers’ shops on Saturdays, Mr. W. J. Mountjoy, Secretary to the Wellington Employers’ Association, said that no such suggestion had been made at Wellington by any retailers’ sections connected with hi? organisation. “It is all very well for people like the Auckland butchers to talk about closing their shops on Saturdays, because they know they will sell their full coupon value of rationed meat anyway, but rationing will not be with us for always. Many peonle cannot shop on Fridays, because the children are still at school and they themselves are working. Such a move would cause serious inconvenience.” , CHURCH CENTENARY. WELLINGTON, October 5., The oldest existing church in Wellington diocese, Christ Church, at Taita, Lower Hutt, will officially become 100 years old to-morrow. To commemorate the event a special service at which an address will be given by the Bishop of Wellington, will be held in the church. The building, with a steeply pitched roof and quaint belfry, is a picturesque old English element, and, built of pit-sawn heart of totara, is as sound as when first constructed. A prayer-book, donated in 1857 by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, is still in use, and altar book presented to the church in the same year is still used periodically. Oil lamps are still atxached to the walls, but provide a strange contrast to electric light, with which the building is now equipped. Surrounding the church is a traditional graveyard, the gravestones supplying a record of some of the earliest Anglican families m Wellington, though most of the graves dating before 1860 are unrecognisable, because the totara headpieces have rotted away. There is a common grave in which were buried 14 victims of a flood which swept the Hutt Valley about a year after the opening of the church. It is probable that the church’s long period of service will end within a few years. With increasing, population of the area, the building is not large enough and the parish vestry has decided to construct a larger church.