Maori History
Ancient stories tell the origins of southern Maori, with the waka of Aoraki becoming Te Wai Pounamu (the South Island), and its sternpost, Te Taurapa a Te Waka o Aoraki becoming Bluff Hill (also known as Motupohue). The Maui traditions are told in the south, with Maui arriving in his waka Maahunui, and pulling up the stone to be used as an anchor - Te Puka o Te Waka a Maui (Rakiura). Maui's achievements are recognised in place names in the south, including Omaui near Bluff, and Te Tapuwae o Maui and Te Rereka o Maui in Fiordland (Maui's footstep and Maui's leap).
Stories of the original explorers of the south are also told. The explorer Rakaihautu journeyed through the south with place names recalling his journey.
After Rakaihautu came the Takitimu waka with Tamatea Pokai Whenua. The waka was overcome by three waves O-te-wao, O-roko and O-kaka, coming to rest near the mouth of the Waiau (Waimeha). The three waves continued across the low lying lands and ended up as features of the landscape.
The early generations learnt about the land and its resources: stone sources were found, and stone (especially pounamu) became an important trading item. Kaika were established close to resources. Rights and resources and places were established, and traditions established which protected the manawhenua.
When traditions were written down Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu dominate the history after Waitaha, with stories of war and peace, and intermarriage that spread through the south. In the early 1820s there was further fighting, with muskets first being used at this time, with major sieges in the more northern area of the South Island leading a retreat to the south. Ruapuke Island became the centre of leadership in the south, its isolation giving a measure of security. The final fight with the northern taua of Te Puoho and his followers at Tuturau in 1835-1836, where Te Puoho was defeated, saw the end of warfare in the region.
According to the Ngai Tahu Statutory acknowledgments in the settlement important villages along the south coast included: Te Wae Wae (Waiau), Taunoa (Orepuki), Kawakaputaputa (Wakapatu), Oraka (Colac bay), Aparima, Turangiteuaru, Awarua (Bluff), Te Whera, Toe Toe (mouth of the Mataura River) and Waikawa. Mokamoka (also known as Mokemoke or Mokomoko) was a settlement at the Invercargill estuary sustained by the rich resources found there. Tauranga waka occur up and down the coast linking land and sea trails with mahinga kai resources. Whaling boats plied the waters from the 1820s leading to changes in settlement patterns and resource use.
1853 saw the Murihiku purchase which left Maori south of the Waitaki (excluding the Otakou Block) with only 4,630 acres, the start of a long quest by southern Maori for justice questioning the legality of the purchase as well as the inadequacy of the land reserved. It was soon after these land purchases that Invercargill township was laid out by Otago Province Chief Surveyor John Turnbull Thomson (1821-1884) in 1856.
Southland religion and St Paul’s Church
The Otago Province originally encompassed Southland, and within this the first planned European settlement was at Dunedin in 1848. Being established by disaffected Presbyterians from the Free Church of Scotland, it is not surprising that Presbyterian churches were among the first to be constructed in Southland. However, despite the strong Presbyterian settler influence, it is important to note that Southland, and its capital Invercargill, was not a religious colony like Dunedin, and in the 1860s Presbyterians only nominally outnumbered Anglicans. By 1921 the Invercargill census clearly showed the dominance of Scottish Presbyterian heritage in the wider region, with 44 per cent of people reporting Presbyterian affiliation, compared with the next largest group, the Anglicans at 25 per cent.
The Presbytery of Otago was the first established in New Zealand in 1854, and within a few years Auckland, Wellington, and Canterbury provinces followed. Therefore, it was not long after Thomson started his survey of Invercargill that the first Presbyterian clergyman arrived in the burgeoning settlement, and Rev. Alexander Bethune (1812-1893) is attributed with preaching the first Christian sermon in Invercargill in late 1856. Prior to this a Christian presence had been introduced in the general area by Maori Anglican missionaries from the North Island, and there were also early Methodist missionaries active in Southland in the 1840s. By the late 1850s it appears that most of the major Christian denominations had established a presence in Southland, but it was not until the early 1860s that the first purpose-built churches were constructed.
Invercargill’s First Presbyterian Church received its founding minister, Andrew Hamilton Stobo (1832-1898) in 1860. At this stage no church had been constructed and services were held in a variety of locations, such as shops, the Courthouse, and the school on Tay Street. However, like elsewhere in New Zealand, the construction of a church building was a high priority among the congregation and work towards this soon began. The result of this effort was completion of the timber First Church in 1863, on the site currently occupied by its much grander circa 1913-15 replacement.
By the 1860s Invercargill’s population numbered around 1000. The town continued to flourish reaching 2400 over the next 15 year period, by which time Invercargill had overtaken Riverton as the main town in Southland. As such, in late 1875 it was recognised that the capacity of First Church was not great enough to cater for the burgeoning population. Soon after, the Presbytery of Southland granted permission for the enterprise of constructing a second Presbyterian church in the town, and a building committee was immediately formed. Once it had been decided to branch off from the First Church congregation, the new community of St Paul’s Church made a clean start, even holding separate services in the Exchange Hall on Dee Street while their church was being constructed. However, the connection with the parent church was not severed and its congregation were generous donors towards the new church project.
The building committee engaged up-and-coming architect, Frederick William Burwell (1846-1915) to design St Paul’s Church, which was the area’s first church building constructed from permanent materials. Lured by the prospect of numerous lucrative contracts in the flourishing town, Burwell quickly established himself in Invercargill after he moved there from Queenstown in 1874. Burwell is intimately linked with the conversion of Invercargill from a frontier town to a ‘city of magnificent edifices’ over the subsequent 12 year period. Until Burwell began to assert his architectural influence it was said that Invercargill, was a ‘standing joke at Dunedin and elsewhere in New Zealand,’ hardly living up to the expectation of the southern capital because it was characterised, among other negative aspects, as being ‘the ugliest and the worst built in the colony.’ It appears that Burwell had a vision of Invercargill’s potential and contributed greatly to cohesive commercial streetscapes, such as the impressive buildings which made up the concave of The Crescent. It was the profound effect that Burwell had in Invercargill by 1880 which led to him being elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, at the age of just 34.
Aside from commercial and public buildings, Burwell also designed many Southland ecclesiastical buildings. St Paul’s Church seems to have been his first and largest local foray into this sphere, and this was followed with other commissions for all the major Christian denominations around Southland. Among his other Presbyterian churches were those in Roxburgh and Cromwell in 1879, and Riverton (1881); Anglican churches included All Saints’ Church (1877-78) in the north Invercargill suburb of Gladstone, as well as in Gore (1881) and Thornbury (1882-83); and Burwell also designed a Methodist church in Invercargill (1881) and an early Catholic church in Gore (1882).
The construction of the Gothic Revival-influenced St Paul’s Church, by local builder John Ramsay, was begun in March 1876 with the laying of the foundation stone. The ceremony, led by the First Church’s Reverend Stobo, was well attended with approximately 150 people present to witness it. While a time-capsule consisting of coins, local newspapers, and an account of the events determining the construction of the building, was being imbedded in the foundation stone, Stobo gave a lengthy address regarding the history of Invercargill and its Presbyterian community. Stobo finished his speech by noting that he had every confidence that when St Paul’s Church was completed it would be ‘a credit to the church, the town, and the architect.’
St Paul’s Church was eventually preached open by Professor William Salmond (1835-1917) in December 1876. At the foundation stone ceremony a member of the building committee had made the, some thought, rash comment that he hoped that the church would be debt-free when it opened. Support for the project was such that a few months into construction only ten per cent of the £3000 was outstanding. Just two weeks after opening, the church became known as St Paul’s Church. Up until this time it had been referred to as the Second Presbyterian Church. The building was the centre of northern Invercargill’s parish which initially encompassed West Plains, Collingwood, Grasmere, Gladstone, and the northern portion of the town proper.
Churches are generally constructed as a result of intense fundraising by their potential congregations and wider community, and often reflect the absolute maximum can be afforded at the time. However, like his smaller church in Gladstone a few years later, Burwell seems to have been conscious of the potential future demands on capacity of St Paul’s Church based on the foreseen on-going growth of the surrounding area. Therefore, both St Paul’s Church and All Saints’ Church were designed to fit within the contemporary budgets of the church building committees, with the possibility of future expansion as congregations increased and finances became available to allow expansion. In the case of St Paul’s Church this meant that it could originally accommodate 360 people and was minus its planned spire. However, this capacity could be increased to a possible 750 seats at a later date through pre-planned additions. Indeed, the building momentum at St Paul’s Church continued with the gallery being added in 1878, and the transepts in 1881, which were built by F. Smith with Burwell again involved as architect.
Because of the difficult economic circumstances of the last few decades of the nineteenth century, it was not until the early twentieth century that another significant building programme was launched, this time in the section next to the church on the corner of Dee and Leet Streets. By the early twentieth century, the Sunday School teachers were finding it difficult to conduct classes within the church, and as such the Deacon’s Court was asked to consider building a separate facility for this important aspect of the church’s operations. After being deferred because of lack of funds, in 1907 the building project was begun, and was completed in 1908. The Sunday School Hall was designed by leading Invercargill architect, Edmund Richardson Wilson (1871-1941) who had previously been engaged by St Paul’s Church to accommodate their new organ into the church in 1900.
Some of the young men who attended the Sunday School in its first years were soon called upon to serve their King and country during World War One. The impact on the congregation and wider community was considerable and in 1919 a Roll of Honour was unveiled in the porch of St Paul’s Church. Several decades later this painful situation was repeated with the advent of World War Two, and a total of 101 members of the St Paul’s congregation took part in active service. No doubt an anxious time, the church was open daily for prayer and is reported to have been widely used for those seeking solace. At the conclusion of the war a further Roll of Honour was constructed in the porch of St Paul’s Church, which also commemorated the 13 members who had died during the conflict.
As St Paul’s Church approached its fifttieth anniversary it was decided to progress the completion of the bell tower, a slight diversion from the spire that Burwell had envisioned. The church’s original architect had left Invercargill in 1887, and had died by the time the tower was being planned in 1925. Therefore, another local architect, N. R. Lightbody, was asked to undertake the project. The tower was completed in September 1926. The following year saw the installation of bells into the tower. Like the World War One memorial, the bells had special significance as they related to that dark period in history, being forged in Italy from the bronze of a captured Austrian Mountain Gun. Dedicated on 5 June 1927, the peal of nine bells was operated from a keyboard, making H. P. Weston the first carillonneur of the first carillon in New Zealand.
Although some interior alterations were undertaken in 1935 with Wilson again employed as architect, the next significant addition to St Paul’s Church was the building of Hardie Hall. Plans to build the hall had originated before the end of World War Two, however, war and post-war building restriction meant that it was delayed several years. Eventually constructed in 1951, this social hall was dedicated to the memory of George Hardie, who had been a longstanding Superintendent of the North Invercargill Branch of St Paul’s Sunday School. Earlier in the twentieth century Hardie had died after a brief illness leaving vacant the position of Session Clerk which he held between 1888 and 1909. The building of the social hall was mostly funded by a generous legacy from Hardie’s daughter. The congregation, which is said to have numbered approximately 500 people, was particularly strong at this time and the hall quickly became a valuable asset within the social life of the church, being an important meeting place, and one where events such as the church’s ninetieth anniversary celebration lunch was held in 1966.
In the 1970s a variety of social and economic changes impacted on Southland’s religious life, no matter which denomination. Country churches were among the hardest hit by the economic recession, whose effects continued into the 1980s. A similar situation existed in larger towns and many parishes were also merged. Therefore, when St Paul’s Church was faced with the prospect of a considerable building strengthening project and the expense that this entailed, serious consideration was give to the demolition of the church and reintegrating with First Church. However, the necessary $80,000 was raised through donations, grants, and loans, and the contract was undertaken by A. D. Geiseg. It was also during this period that a new organ was installed in the south transept of the church.
In the early twenty-first century the Sunday School Hall was sold to a developer. The sale was initiated as a means of raising funds to support the on-going maintenance of the church. When the Sunday School Hall was demolished in 2007 it brought to an end the century long history of the St Paul’s Church complex, and the location of the former Sunday School Hall is currently used as a car park. In 2011 St Paul’s Church remains the place of worship for its congregation and a landmark building on Dee Street in Invercargill.
