St Pauls Church, in what is now the Christchurch suburb of Papanui, is a notable landmark feature because of its Gothic character, prominent location and extensive churchyard surrounds. Papanui village first developed beside the 28 hectare (70 acre) stand of bush in this area. In the 1851 allocation of land, Miss Ann Bowan and William Guise Brittan selected the blocks that included the bush containing Totara, Rimu and kahikatia. The timber available from the two remnants of bush near Christchurch at Papanui and Riccarton was in high demand for building and firewood in the settlement's otherwise treeless vicinity. By the end of the decade the Papanui block, first referred to as the Papanui "Wood", was virtually cleared by pit-sawyers while a section of the Riccarton stand has been retained and conserved. Just a year after the arrival of the Canterbury "pilgrims" in December 1850 there were some 200 residents around the bush, the males being chiefly sawyers. It was the Canterbury Association's intent that the new settlement should be provided with Anglican churches and schools and land was set aside for this purpose. However, it has been suggested by local historians that the land here was donated by William Guise Brittan who then provided pit sawn timber from his section of the bush for the construction of a small, simple "shed" like church. A sketch dated 9th December, 1852 by Dr. A.C. Barker shows the Papanui area with the apparently completed church the focal point in the foreground. Dr. Barker's photographic and sketched records of early Canterbury were meticulously dated. This date could give St Paul's original building (1852) the title of the "first church built on the Canterbury plains", ahead of St Michael and All Angels, which opened 8th January, 1853. The precise date of the first service conducted in St Paul's Church (1852) is not known. The first appointed vicar was Rev. George Dunnage whose ill health prevented him taking up the position. He was the first person buried in the Churchyard in 1853. In 1859 Rev. J. James of England donated ten acres of adjoining land for the church and in 1868 the five acre reserve for church purposes at Papanui was formally designated by a conveyance from the Canterbury Superintendent to the Church Property Trustees. This original 15 acre (6 hectares) church site included what is now St James Park on the other side of the railway line. St Paul's Church served a large parish extending north from Merivale to Marshland and Harewood and from its earliest years many people were buried in its surrounding churchyard. The small basic church originally had a very small capacity and soon required the addition of a chancel and side aisles, enabling it to serve for 25 years. By the 1870s the area extending to Papanui from the city was home to greater numbers, including more prosperous citizens able to provide better financial support to the parish. In 1871 a separate parish was established at Merivale but there was still a large population to be served around Papanui and in 1876 it was decided that a new, more substantial church must be built. Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort (1825-1898) was the architect chosen to design the new building. His training in England was in the office of Richard Cromwell Carpenter, an architect whose work was much favoured by the Ecclesiologists, so Mountfort was well grounded in church design. He arrived in Canterbury in 1850 as one of the initial group of pilgrims, serving as the first provincial architect and undertaking most of the work for the Anglican Diocese. He worked almost exclusively in the Gothic Revival idiom and is recognised as New Zealand's pre-eminent exponent of this style. He employed it with great skill in the Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings (1858-65), the Canterbury Museum (1869-82), and at the Canterbury College's Clock Tower Block (1876-77) and Great Hall (1882). It was in the stone tower of the Provincial Council Buildings (1859) that he introduced the High Victorian element of constructional polychromy to New Zealand architecture. Despite his usual focus on Gothic Revival architecture, Mountfort was able to demonstrate his capabilities in other styles with equal skill, for example in his use of the Italianate style at the Christchurch Club (1862). Although he was not appointed to design Christ Church Cathedral, Mountfort was its supervising architect and he was also responsible for many churches and their associated vicarages throughout Canterbury. He was the logical choice as the architect for the new St Paul's Church at Papanui which was constructed of timber, the building material most commonly used in pioneering Canterbury. The new Church, sited slightly west of the first building, was opened on 21st December 1877, cost £1,856 and provided accommodation for 350 people. The old church served as a Sunday School. In 1880 all debts had been cleared and St Paul's was consecrated. The vicar during this period of growth and change was Rev. F.G. Brittan, son of William Guise Brittan, the earlier benefactor. Local resident J. T. Matson ordered and paid for a peal of five bells from Warner Brothers of London, but these were lost when the ship in which they were being transported was wrecked off South Africa. Insurance covered the replacement cost and the new set was hung in 1880 after the bell tower was strengthened to cope with the bells' total weight of 26 cwt (1.32 tonnes). The tenor bell is inscribed , "We sing the Lord's song in a strange land" (Psalm 137.4). Concern over the tower's stability followed this generous and treasured special gift with the bells only cautiously chimed for some years until the tower was replaced in 1912. In appearance the new tower closely followed Mountfort's original design. Two years later this tower was also declared unsafe and pealing was restricted again until 1926 when heavy internal bracing and external buttresses were added. Mr. Henry Matson, brother of the bells' original donor, paid for this work and the redecoration of the Church itself. The bells have remained an important feature of St Paul's Church. Although the skills of the bell-ringers have varied over the decades, many impressive and lengthy peals have been rung to mark special occasions. By the 1960s the need was recognised for a further treble bell to provide a full octave. The parish began fund raising which successfully concluded with the purchase of a new bell cast by John Taylor and Company of Loughborough. This was installed with due ceremony on 1st February, 1970. In 1983 steel members were added to the tower's interior to provide additional strength. The NZHPT provided a grant in 1988-9 that supplemented a bequest allowing the Church to be given major structural repairs to take it into its second century of use. In the first decades many of Christchurch's most significant pioneering settlers were buried here. Among the more notable were: William Brittan, the Church's early benefactor and distinguished founding settler; Sir Heaton Rhodes, cabinet minister and member of the pioneering Rhodes family who settled beside Lyttelton Harbour in 1847, and Edward Dobson, engineer of the Lyttelton tunnel. As the settlement around the church developed the names given to the district's streets repeated those seen on the headstones. More recently Charles Upham, World War II veteran and recipient of the Victoria Cross and bar, was buried here. Overall, the burials reflect the history of the settlement, with the cross section of society represented by sawyers, local small farmers, tradesmen and business men as well as the more prominent men associated with civic affairs lying here together. As in other cemeteries, the inscriptions on the tombstones in St Paul's Churchyard provide an insight into the lives of the families who have lived in the area. For some 20 years no new plots have been available for burials so that the churchyard is now closed except for the use of existing plots. The parish has proudly celebrated St Paul's centenary and also its 150th anniversary. This Church and the surrounding Churchyard, have followed the role of the original church as the central focus of the Papanui village.

Designed by Benjamin Mountfort, the pre-eminent colonial architect in Canterbury, St Paul's Church is a very good example of his interpretation of Gothic forms in timber. The Church is planned according to the accepted nineteenth century principles for Anglican churches as established by the Ecclesiologists and Pugin. It is sited to orientate the sanctuary at the eastern end and the entrance opening to the north aisle near the western end. The open roofed nave is flanked by side aisles and crossed by wide transepts. At the eastern junction of the northern transept stands the bell tower. The separate sections of the steeply pitched roof articulate the various elements of the structure to provide a lively external silhouette. Exterior cladding is of vertical board and batten emphasising the building's verticality. A balancing horizontal element is provided by the string-course which has in part been lost. No longer painted to contrast with the colour of the main body of the building, the string-course motif has less emphasis than in many of Mountfort's timber church designs. When the original bell tower was replaced in 1912 the new tower closely followed the original design with its steeple crowned by a tall cross, repeating the smaller crosses which formerly sat at the apex of each gable. Internally, the timber braced and lined open roof structure and the dado are dark stained while the plaster walls are painted white. Diamond paned groups of lancet windows light the interior. These are of simple rectangular shape, while on the exterior a timber frame provides the traditional Gothic form, thus eliminating the need for the complex cutting of glass to fit the shapes. In the sanctuary at the eastern end a large trefoil window is surmounted by a rose window. Here is the church's only example of stained glass with the full height figure of St Paul taking the central position. At the western end of the nave are two pairs of tall lancets with smaller versions at the end of each aisle. Groups of three lancets are arranged along the nave and the clerestory and the transepts have large angle headed windows where the plain diamond paned glass has been recently over painted to illustrate fauna and flora. The Churchyard surrounding the Church features lawns, shrubs and a variety of mature trees. The entrance-way is flanked by carefully maintained flower beds and the World War I memorial plaque, originally placed on a gate, is located here. Closer to the Papanui Road intersection a pathway enters the Churchyard from Harewood Road. A pleasant rest area has been provided alongside this entrance, with seating and an information board which recounts the history of the Church and the site. The nature of the tombstones vary according to their age, with many imposing examples of Victorian styles and forms included. A large plot with small individual plaques commemorates the many members of the Matson family who have been buried here over the years.