Bishopspark Main Building and Chapel

100 Park Terrace, CHRISTCHURCH

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This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1980. The following text is the original citation considered by the NZHPT Board at the time of registration. Bishopscourt was designed in 1926 by the eminent Christchurch architect Cecil Walter Wood and is regarded by many as his masterpiece. It replaced an earlier bishops' residence on the same site, a wooden building by B.W. Mountfort erected in 1858 and destroyed by fire in 1924. The present Bishopscourt is in the Colonial Georgian style and shows the influence of American architecture particularly strong in the area of domestic design in New Zealand in the 1920s and 30s. It is a large house with over twenty rooms contained in its three storeys. It has stuccoed walls and a slate hipped roof with square-headed dormer windows in traditional Georgian fashion. The building is L-shaped in plan with the main entrance leading off a courtyard enclosed on two sides within the L. The garden façade of the house is particularly attractive with balcony porches located at each end on the ground floor and shuttered French doors opening out onto a terrace in between. To the left of the elegant and relatively informally designed garden façade is a small Georgian chapel joined to the house by a covered way. This chapel is probably the only Georgian styled building of its type in New Zealand. The imposing entrance ways and large expanse of lawn and trees around the house have for many years considerably enhanced the building's character. This relationship between the house and its site has recently been changed with the construction of thirty four units around the house, the first stage of a retirement complex known as Bishopspark. The building has very considerable historical significance as the traditional residence of the Bishops of Christchurch, an influential body of men in a city founded as an Anglican settlement. It remains as an excellent example of the work of Cecil Wood and one of the finest Colonial Georgian houses in New Zealand.

Bishopspark Main Building, Christchurch | Alan Wylde | www.dayout.co.nz

Location

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List Entry Information

Overview

Detailed List Entry

Status

Listed

List Entry Status

Historic Place Category 1

Access

Private/No Public Access

List Number

296

Date Entered

11th November 1983

Date of Effect

11th November 1983

City/District Council

Christchurch City

Region

Canterbury Region

Extent of List Entry

Extent includes the land described as Lot 1 DP 46511, Lot 1 DP 46369, Lot 2 DP 13073 and Pt Sec 23 Town of Christchurch (RT CB28F/1159), Canterbury Land District, and the buildings known as the Bishopspark Main Building and Chapel and their fittings and fixtures thereon. [The main Bishopspark residence was demolished in 2015 following the Canterbury earthquakes. The Chapel survives.]

Legal description

Lot 1 DP 46369, Lot 1 DP 46511, Lot 2 DP 13073, Pt Sec 23 Town of Christchurch (RT CB28F/1159), Canterbury Land District

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