PIONEERS ERECTED MANY SUBSTANTIAL BUILDINGS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18946, 17 December 1929, Page 15 (Supplement)

PIONEERS ERECTED MANY SUBSTANTIAL BUILDINGS.

CHURCHES WERE BUILT SOON AFTER SETTLEMENT TOOK PLACE

The pioneers of Canterbury were not slow to establish permanent buildings at Lyttelton. In the following article, the story is told of the early churches, the Moorhouse tunnel and the introduction of the electric telegraph.

(Written for the “ Star “ by

A. Selwyn Bruce).

I have been fortunate enough to come across a photograph of the port in the year 1867, showing the harbour reclamation works in progress, and it is reproduced with these notes for the benefit of old Lyttelton residents, who will be able to live again in childhood’s memories when every resident was personally acquainted with his fellow townsman and all were associated in a communal life which elicited the fraternal civic characteristics inseparable from such a fine body of British colonisers. ’

It was a pity that the barracks erected by Captain Thomas for the reception of the Canterbury colonists was not preserved intact, but suffered demolition at so early a stage. It ought to have been an historic link for many years with the inception of the settlement at Lyttelton. We who are the children of those colonising pioneers owe a debt of gratitude to them for the “atmosphere” which they infused into everything associated with the founding of the province. No colony of Britain was ever enveloped in a happier set of circumstances than ours and our forebears brought with them the best traditions of the Home Land in the mid-Victor-ian days. Fine Churches.

This was reflected in the ecclesiastical edifices which were erected in Lyttelton so soon after its settlement, the Anglican members dedicating their first church to St Thomas, ranking as the cathedral church of the diocese. This original church unfortunately proved unequal to the strains of southerly gales and seismic disturbances with which the infant town was visited, and in 1860 was replaced by the present Holy Trinity Church, a handsome little Gothic stone structure, of which the parishioners are so justifiably proud, standing, after seventy years’ buffeting by the elements, a monument to the stonemason’s craft. The original St Thomas’s Church was attended regularly by Mr Godley, who with Mr Fitz Gerald rendered service as

its first wardens, the Rev B. W. Dudley being the first incumbent in charge, his successor being the Rev Francis Knowles.

The schoolroom connected with Holy Trinity Church stands out in the photograph between the Presbyterian and Wesleyan Churches. St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, which is opposite the Anglican Church, in Winchester Street, dates back to the early sixties, having been erected on the site presented by Sir Frederick Weld.

The Presbyterian Church—a typically ecclesiastical stone structure, with tower and spire, stands at the west end of Winchester Street, and was built in 1865 to replace the original wooden church, which had occupied the site since 1859, and was moved bodily to the back of the section on the opposite side of the street, to be used as the Presbyterian High School, under the direction of Mr Ross and Miss Stout. A glance at the photograph discloses the fact that neither the Oddfellows’ Hall nor the Cambridge Hotel (now used as a general store) had been built in 1867. I The Oddfellows’ Ilall was erected through the enthusiasm of Mr T. Abrahams, the bricklayer and stonemason of Winchester Street, whose memory is revered by the fraternity as the father, in New Zealand, of the Independent Order of Oddfellows, Manchester Unity. Mr Abrahams’s daughter, who afterwards became the wife of Henry Sawtell, one of Christchurch’s earliest councillors and mayors, kept a boys’ school for some years in Winchester Street. The Masonic Hall.

The Wesleyan Church, on the east side of the Scotch Church, originally occupied the hillside site at the west end of Norwich Quay, and was moved to Winchester Street in 1866. The Rev John Aldred, whose name is today a household word among the families of the pioneer Wesleyan settlers, was the first regular minister in that denomination, he having landed about 1854.

The Masonic craft was introduced in 1851, and a charter was granted by the Grand Lodge of England for Lodge Unanimity, No. 879, the stone lodge room being erected some time after the brethren had conducted their ceremonial in the upper room of one of the business premises. Most of the prominent townsmen became associated with the craft, the Grand Lodge numbering among its most worshipful and very worshipful brethren such names as Watts Russell, Archdeacon Mathias, Dr Donald, Guise Brittan, John Ollivier, Charles Wellington Bishop, the two Alports, Crosbie Ward, William Sefton Moorhouse, Dr Turnbull, Lancelot Walker, Thomas Cass, A. F. N. Blakiston, and C. E. Fooks. Mr A. J. Alport was the first installed Worshipful Master of Unanimity Lodge, and was succeeded by many of the prominent business and professional men of Lyttelton. From the birth of the settlement it became evident that the range of hills cutting off direct access to the plains was going to militate against the successful development of both Lyttelton and the rich agricultural and pastoral country in the vicinity of which the Christchurch town had been placed, and it was a day to be gladly acclaimed when on September 29, 1862, Mrs Moorhouse laid the first stone of the tunnel front in IJeathcote Valley, the contract for which had been commenced in July of the previous year. Moorhouse Tunnel. Canterbury owes a debt of gratitude to W. S. Moorhouse for his dogged pertinacity in convincing the tax- ‘ payers that their destiny was indis- : solubly bound up in the gigantic task ’ of blasting and boring a means of communication from the port to Ileathcote Valley, and it is to be hoped r that his memory will always remain ' enshrined in the title assigned to the 1 work in its inception as the “ Moor- , house Tunnel.” ; Lyttelton also rejoiced when, in * July, 1862, the Port and Christchurch telegraph line—the first electric telee graph connection in the colony—was opened. The records of that period e refer to “ this event of great import " ance in the annals of Canterbury, the 1_ benefits of which are becoming more ® apparent every, day to the mercantile , community.” “It is proposed to extend the telegraph to the Nelson and e Otago frontiers,” writes a correspondent in the early sixties, “ when we shall see Christchurch en rapport with Nelson and Dunedin.” ;t The material prosperity which has y characterised the province since its in;t ception has been due in no small d degree to the facilities afforded by Lvte telton in handling the enormous im- > port and export trade, and we sons e and daughters of the pioneer settlers t- realise the debt of gratitude we owe n | to them for the solid foundation upon d which their hopes and aspirations were built.