The substantial St Luke’s Vicarage, built in 1908-1909, has architectural significance in its design by Oamaru architectural partnership Forrester and Lemon. Along with the Sunday School (which includes the Parish Office) and St Luke’s Anglican Church (List Entry No. 4365), it has historical significance, through telling the story of Anglican worship in Oamaru.

Anglican services were held in Oamaru from the early 1860s, in a variety of makeshift venues such as the Oamaru goods shed, the Greta Street School and the courthouse. Oamaru became a parish in 1864. In July 1862, the Reverend Algernon Gifford was licensed to the township and pastoral district of Oamaru, and the parish set to work raising funds for a church. Dunedin architects Edward Rumsey and Adam Jackson won the competition to design the church, with William Armson as supervising architect, and James Bruce as the contractor. Right Reverend Lord Bishop of Christchurch laid the foundation stone and dedicated the cornerstone on 20 June 1865. The first service was held on 29 October, but the church was not consecrated until 13 May 1866.

A residence for the vicar was also an early concern, but it was not until 1909 that the current vicarage was built. The Parish sold the earlier vicarage on Hull Street to finance a new vicarage next to St Luke’s Church. With the arrival of the new vicar, Reverend J.G.S. Bartlett the church wardens moved a motion for the construction of a new vicarage, at a cost not more than £1700. The current vicarage was built around 1909, on the site below the Sunday School, which had been built in 1897, and to the west of the church. Oamaru architect John Megget Forrester designed the substantial residence. Forrester advertised for tenders in May 1908. With his wife, Bartlett moved in on 20 March 1909.

The substantial two storey residence is built of Oamaru stone, with a tile roof, in a ‘mock Tudor’ style. Not everyone thought this was a good site for the vicarage. Hadden Dennison, at the rating Assessment Court, stated that the vicarage ‘was fit only for a clergyman to live in’, explaining that ‘no one but a man of calm, even temperament, such as a clergyman, could endure the noises and nuisances of the site.’

The prominent house still looks over the busy main streets of Oamaru, and in 2015, remains the home to the incumbent vicar the Reverend Timothy Hurd.