OLD CHURCH IN WELLINGTON

Southland Times, Issue 25796, 6 October 1945, Page 4

OLD CHURCH IN WELLINGTON

CENTENARY FALLS DUE TODAY (P.A.) WELLINGTON, October 5. The oldest existing church in the Wellington diocese, Christ Church at Taita, Lower Hut, will officially become 100 years old tomorrow. 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 its steeply-pitched roof and quaint belfry, is a picturesque old English element, and being built of pit-sawn heart of totara, is as sound as when it was first constructed.

A prayer book, donated in 1857 by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, is still in use, and an altar book, presented to the church in the same year, is still used periodically. Oil lamps are still attached to the walls, but provide a strange contrast to the electric light with which the building is now equipped. Surrounding the church is the traditional graveyard, the gravestones supplying a record of some of the earliest Anglican families in Wellington. Though most of the graves dating before 1860 are unrecognizable because the totara headpieces have rotted away, there is a common grave in which were buried 14 victims of the 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 the increasing population of area, as the building is not large enough, and the parish vestry has decided to construct a larger church.