TCDC Theme 4 Building Communities 11-6-10
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4. Building Communities 1 4.1 Religious institutions Having been visited by Cook and subsequently frequented by British ships seeking timber for spars, the Thames-Coromandel area became an early focus for the efforts of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in New Zealand. CMS missionaries, who were Anglican, and those from other Christian denominations travelled about the district ministering to Maori and European settlers from the early 19th century. The Rev Samuel Marsden was aboard the HMS Coromandel when it sailed up the Firth of Thames in 1820. Some years later a mission party from the Bay of Islands, led by the Rev Henry Williams and catechist William Fairburn, visited the area in October 1833. After briefly inspecting the small settlement of European traders established at Kopu, Williams proceeded south along the Waihou River. Religious services were conducted at the Ngāti Maru village at Puriri, before the party proceeded inland as far as Matamata. On his return journey north Williams held a second service at Puriri and decided that a mission station should be established there. Unfortunately the site of the Hauraki Mission Station subsequently proved swampy and mosquito ridden. This fact, combined with the threat posed by increasing inter-tribal tensions, led the CMS to move the station north to Parawai in 1837. A mission chapel was constructed at Parawai in 1863 and later replaced by the Maori Church of the Holy Trinity, which was consecrated by Bishop Cowie in 1886. The former is no longer extant but the latter still stands on Parawai Road, clearly showing its Gothic Revival style in its pointed lancet windows and five-sided apse in which the altar is located. 1 Victoria Reserve, Thames c. 1910 Price Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library ½-001548-G 78 Fig. 1: Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Parawai, built 1886. http://www.thetreasury.org.nz/HaurakiMission/HaurakiMission.htm With the opening of the Thames goldfield there was a rapid growth in the district’s European population. Initially the religious needs of the newcomers were attended to on an ad hoc basis, when and wherever services could be arranged. But by early 1868 the Thames Anglican community had begun to work towards the building of a church, led in their efforts by the Venerable Archdeacon Lloyd. Land Commissioner James Mackay was involved from the first committee meeting (as Treasurer), as was the Rev Maunsell, Dr Hooper and other local worthies, including (most significantly for the subsequent success of the project), the prominent Ngāti Maru leader Wirope Taipari.2 Taipari’s gift of land for the construction of the church gave an immediate boost to the enterprise, as did other gifts of land for community purposes by both Taipari and Ngāti Hape rangitira Te Hoterini.3 Funds raised by subscription and donation began to grow and within a few months the committee felt sufficiently confident to call for tenders. That offered by a Mr Craig, valued at £165, was accepted and by May, a little over four months after the committee was first established, the first St George’s Anglican Church was opened in Rolleston Street. 2 ‘Taipari, Eruini Heina 1889/1890? – 1956’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, /www.dnzb.govt.nz/ accessed 16/6/09. 3 ‘History of Saint George's Church Thames Anglican Parish Tikanga Pakeha 1872 – 1997’, www.thamesanglicanchurch.co.nz accessed 16/6/09. 79 Fig. 2: Portrait of Wirope Hotereni Taipari. Foy Brothers carte de visite Alexander Turnbull Library PA1-o-249-17-1. Anglicanism in Thames gained a further boost in 1868 with the appointment of the Rev Vicesimus Lush as the resident minister. He held the post until 1882, right through the peak of the gold rush and the rapid growth in population that accompanied it. The Rolleston Street church was soon unable to cope with the large number of parishioners seeking to worship under its roof. Under the guidance of Rev Lush a new church was commissioned and in 1871 work began on a flat site in Mackay Street. After some unavoidable setbacks, the first service was held in the new St George’s Church in January 1872. The church has been in continuous use ever since, whilst the original church was moved on to the Mackay Street site in 1909 for use as the church hall. Rev Lush was also instrumental in establishing a church at Tararu on the coast north of Thames. Working with lay reader Henry Lawlor, a former Resident Magistrate and Warden at Coromandel, Lush persuaded Robert Graham to donate a suitable block of land for the site of what became St John the Evangelist. Funded by private donation, the church was opened in December 1880. It was deconsecrated in 2006 and is now in private ownership. 80 Fig. 3: Former St John the Evangelist Church, Tararu © Anne Challinor 2009 Further north on the peninsula Anglicanism was established in Coromandel through the ministrations of visiting clergy and CMS missionaries from Auckland. Lay missionary James Preece visited Coromandel in 1839 and bought a large block of land on which he was to retire in 1854. Here he continued to preach to Maori and act as a Justice of the Peace for the local community. During the 1870s services were conducted by Vicesimus Lush whenever he was able to visit from Thames, usually in the Upper Town schoolroom, and by 1883 CMS missionaries had settled at Manaia.4 The first resident minister for Coromandel was Thomas Scott, ordained in 1870 after being appointed to Coromandel in the late 1860s as the Receiver of Gold Revenue. Despite poor health, he also served congregations at Tokatea Hill, Cabbage Bay (Colville), Waikawau, Hastings (Tapu), Onehoe, Port Charles, Kennedy Bay, Whangapoua, Mercury Bay and Tairua.5 He was minister during the construction of Christ Church in Coromandel, built with locally milled kauri on land donated by Wiremu Pita Taurua. The church was in use by March 1872, with the stone font consecrated by Bishop Cowie at a confirmation service in late 1873. A vestry was added in 1876, an organ purchased in 1908 and the roof re-shingled in 1919. The interior is decorated with works by contemporary artists including John Trimmer, Deirdre Airey, Anna Casselberg, Ian Drury and Barry Brickell. 4 R. B. Farquhar ‘Romance of Coromandel’ New Zealand Railways Magazine June 1940, p. 63, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 17/6/09. 5 Claire Stewart ‘Anglican Church’ In Search of the Rainbow: The Coromandel Story ([Auckland]: Wendy Pye [2002]) pp. 84-95. 81 The Catholic Church had a presence in Coromandel as early as 1840, with the visit that year of Bishop Pompallier. Pompallier conducted services in the home of local Catholic William Webster. Local Europeans and Maori, who had been converted to Catholicism during earlier missionary visits, were subsequently promised that Marist priests would travel regularly across the Hauraki Gulf from Auckland to serve their spiritual needs. The demand for such services increased with the arrival of miners in the area, a good number of whom were Irish Catholics. From around 1865 Manaia became a focus for Catholic services, with catechist William Mamange conducting services supported by visiting priests. From 1876 a priest was permanently stationed at the Upper Town (Driving Creek) and soon after the government made a grant of land that was used for the construction of a chapel and schoolhouse. St Colman’s Church was built on Kapanga Road in 1871 and later rebuilt in 1954. It remains the centre of Catholic worship in the district and was named for the Irish home parish of Auckland’s second Catholic Bishop, Thomas Croke. In 1880 a presbytery was built at 475 Kapanga Rd and moved to its present site in 1983. Fig. 4: Catholic Presbytery, 465 Kapanga Road, Coromandel. Coromandel Heritage Study: Item no. 39 www.tcdc.govt.nz/ Thames’ first Catholic Church of St Francis of Assisi was established in 1868, in association with a convent school of the same name. Its first priest was Father Nivard Jourdan. The church was subsequently replaced in 1958. Bishop Croke dedicated the Church of St Bridget, Grahamstown in October 1871.6 Both St Francis’ and St Bridget’s had convents and convent schools associated with them, administered from 1874 by the Sisters of Mercy and from 1912 by the Sisters of St Joseph.7 St Thomas Aquinas’ School for Boys, known as the Beach School, was closed in 1913 and merged with St Brigid’s Girls’ School to form St Francis’ (co-educational) School, which was 6 Daily Southern Cross 17 October 1871, p. 2, http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ accessed 17/09/09. 7 L.P. O'Neill (ed.) Thames Borough Centenary Souvenir (Thames: Thames Star, 1973) pp. 112-114. 82 rebuilt in 1923.8 The Catholic Convent in Willoughby Street, which dates from c.1937-8, replaced an earlier building that also dated from the township’s foundation period (c.1872).9 In the eastern sector of the district Catholics were served by the Church of St Columcille, which was named for an Irish saint and dedicated in 1893 at Kuaotunu. The church building was relocated to Tairua in 1954 and was itself replaced by a new church, St Mary’s in 1997. St Patrick’s Catholic Church was opened in Whitianga by Bishop Lenihan in 1889. That building was replaced in 1979. Primitive Methodist Minister the Rev G.S. Harper ‘preached his first sermon from a beer barrel at Shortland on Christmas Day,’ 1867.10 By November 1868 money was being raised to build a house for Rev Harper in Mackay Street, Grahamstown. A church followed, built across the road from the minister’s house.