Michael King, in his book God's Farthest Outpost - A History of Catholics in New Zealand, discusses the demographic and cultural consequences of the discovery of gold in the 1860s and the intensive immigration programmes of the 1870s that transformed the Catholic Church in New Zealand. Mining men brought out wives, partners and children, resulting in a proper community that needed schools and permanent churches. Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Reefton was created as a result of the influx of Catholic gold miners and their families in Reefton.
The Inangahua district, of which Reefton forms part, was first prospected in 1866 during the first wave of alluvial gold mining on the West Coast. Settlement did not take off however until 1870, when gold-bearing quartz reefs were located in the Murray Creek system in the Inangahua Gorge. Further quartz reef discoveries quickly followed, allowing for the development of a stable and prosperous gold mining industry in the district. In the wake of these discoveries, a number of service and distribution settlements grew up. Chief among them was Reefton, founded in 1871 on a flat at the Inangahua Gorge mouth. The new town grew rapidly, and by 1873 it could boast a newspaper, two banks, and telegraphic communication with Westport and Greymouth.
In common with other raw goldfields settlements, Reefton attracted a large Catholic community. At first Reefton's Catholics were attended by priests from Ahaura or Greymouth, who paid occasional visits to the district. In 1873 however, a building was erected in Walsh Street to serve both as chapel and schoolroom for the nascent congregation. The school fell initially under the supervision of Fr Pertius of Ahaura. The following year, 1874, Reefton was constituted a parish of the Wellington Diocese, under the pastoral care of Fr Cummins. Cummins was a Marist Father, and the parish was to remain a Marist charge until 1935.
In August 1875, Fr Cummins initiated a meeting to consider the erection of a new church. Cummins left Reefton in 1876, but his successor Fr Carew enthusiastically took up the cause. Parishioners apparently subscribed the large sum of ₤1,400 in a single day, and construction of a building on a new site in Walsh Street commenced in early 1878. Designed by Wellington architect Charles Gordon O'Neill (1828-1900), Sacred Heart Church was completed a year later at a cost of £2,400. The church was blessed by the Bishop Moran, Bishop of Wellington, on Easter Sunday 1879. The lofty building was designed to seat about 500, but in spite of this, was 'usually taxed to its utmost capacity'.
Although the parish was keen to retain Fr Carew, he moved to Greymouth in 1883, and was replaced the following year by Fr Jean Baptist Rolland (1834-1903), who had earlier been resident in Reefton in 1873-74. A very popular priest, the French-born Rolland became a legend in his own lifetime. He arrived in New Zealand in 1864, and proceeded to fill a number of capacities throughout the country. Accompanying troops in Taranaki during the New Zealand ('Land') Wars, Rolland attended the wounded and dying of both sides on the battlefield. He visited the West Coast for the first time in 1869, then returned in late 1872 or early 1873 until 1874 as resident priest there prior to Reefton becoming a parish in its own right. .. About 1877 he returned for a third and final time to be stationed at Ahaura, where he also ran a school. After eight years at Ahaura, Rolland became Reefton's parish priest in 1884. A good horseman, he was a constant traveller throughout his parish, which extended up to Murchison. During his incumbency, a new presbytery was built in 1885, the Sister's of Mercy arrived to run the parish's two schools in 1891, and a fine new convent building was opened in 1898. After thirteen years devoted service to his parish, Rolland gave up his charge in 1897, but remained as assistant priest until his death in 1903. His funeral was the largest seen in Reefton up till that time.
After Sacred Heart Church was slightly damaged by the Murchison earthquake in 1929, the then incumbent Fr Seymour took the opportunity to undertake a general renovation of the church's fabric, funded in part by a successful Queen Carnival. The focus of the renovation, completed in 1934 by carpenter Jack Switzer, was a complete refurbishment of the sanctuary, side altars and screen. This area was extensively plastered, incised, and new plaster capitals, corbels, niches and other mouldings were applied. Faux rafters, marbled pillar sleeves and oak ply dado panelling were fitted. Furnishings and fittings including the main and subsidiary altars, crucifix, Stations of the Cross (at ₤10 each) and some devotional statuary were also replaced at this time.
Other work carried out on the church interior during the 1930s included the re-graining of the woodwork by Bill Pennington, the fitting of leadlight screen doors and the installation of four of the five stained glass windows. Until the 1930s, Sacred Heart had only a single stained glass window, donated in memory of Timothy McLaughlan in 1898. As part of the general refurbishment however, Reefton's medical practitioner Dr William Conlon donated two stained glass windows in memory of his wife to light the side altars, and two further windows on the north wall in memory of the priests and nuns of the parish. All five of the windows (including the 1898 one) were manufactured by Zeitler of Munich and are stylistically similar.. At some point during the late 1930s, a group of carpenters from Greymouth were carrying out a contract in the town, and Fr Seymour's successor, Fr Fletcher, had them re-clad the tongue-in-groove walls of the nave with the then novel material of Pinex.
Other work executed on the exterior of the church around this time included the replacement of the buttresses, demolition of the free-standing timber bell tower (and its replacement with a metal structure), and re-roofing. The church roof had originally been shingled, and was re-roofed about 1940 with new white pine shingles by carpenters Jim Paton and George Lockington. These however lasted only a short time before buckling and splitting, and within a few years the building was again re-roofed - this time with corrugated iron. The ventilator gables were probably removed at this time.
The refurbishment of the 1930s secured the church for the next twenty years, but with the winds of change blowing through the Catholic Church in the early 1960s, a further set of changes were made. To accommodate the liturgical innovations of Vatican Two, the altar was altered, and the altar rails removed to storage in the choir loft - where they remain today. A new foyer was constructed under the choir loft, and the leadlight screen doors replaced. A second confessional at the rear of the church was probably removed at this point, leaving only the one set into the southern wall. The exterior of Sacred Heart was re-clad with Fibrolite tiles, a luminescent cross was applied to the west elevation, and the roof crosses were replaced in simplified form. As it had in 1929, the church again suffered a small amount of damage in the 1968 Inangahua earthquake.
After Reefton's Sisters' of Mercy convent closed in 1981, two stained glass windows were removed from the building and installed in Sacred Heart's sacristy in place of the original frosted glass windows. Around the same time, the steel bell tower dating from the 1930s was demolished. During the 1980s it was discovered that the structural integrity of Sacred Heart was threatened because of the failure of the buttresses. The stepped enclosed buttresses of the 1930s were no longer performing the function for which they were intended, so were largely replaced with simple timber props in 1993. To augment the new buttresses, a steel box beam was also placed across the nave. The same year, the nave was carpeted. Between 1996 and 1998 a further programme of repair and renovation was undertaken. At this time, Sacred Heart's original 1878 pews were replaced with those from the demolished St Patrick's Church in Greymouth.
The size of Sacred Heart's congregation has fluctuated in recent decades as the fortunes of the traditional drivers of the local economy - gold, coal and timber - have waxed and waned. The church however has a small but faithful core of parishioners and a resident priest, and after a long period of stasis, Reefton's economy and population are again growing thanks to a new gold mining boom.
