The Anglican Church of St Bartholomew's in Kaiapoi is the oldest surviving church in Canterbury. Described by its vicar in 1953 as that 'queer little "inverted V" ' building, it was designed by Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort, the pre-eminent Canterbury architect of the Victorian era, for the growing Anglican community of the 1850s.

Kaiapoi had long been a major Maori settlement. It was the site of Ngai Tahu's largest fortified pa, and a major centre for the trade in pounamu (greenstone). From 1851 a few Pakeha began to settle around Kaiapoi. Henry Fletcher, a lay teacher associated with the Church of England, was sent to Kaiapoi to work with Ngai Tahu. Fletcher preached and established a school for Ngai Tahu children, but only stayed for about two years. The major Pakeha settlement of Kaiapoi took place in 1853, with the arrival of the 'Gladstone' colonists. This group of immigrants wished to establish a second settlement in Canterbury, and hoped that among other things, their settlement would become an 'outpost of the Anglican church in..."a heathen land" '. The Gladstone scheme failed, but a town was established at Kaiapoi by January 1854, and for a time it looked to rival Christchurch as a potential capital of Canterbury.

Before the construction of St Bartholomew's in 1855, Anglican services were held in local colonists' homes. The Reverend John Raven (1821-?), one of the original 'Gladstone' colonists, was appointed the first Anglican vicar to the area and the history of the church states that when he arrived at Kaiapoi, he brought with him plans for a church, which had been given to him by James Edward FitzGerald (1818-1896), the first Superintendent of Canterbury. However it appears that these plans were discarded in favour of those drawn up by Mountfort. The site selected for St Bartholomew's was a sandhill, well above the flood level of the river, in what is now Darnly Square, and the first service was held in the church on Christmas Day, 1855.

Mountfort's design for St Bartholomew's was influenced by his own interest in the ideals of the Ecclesiological Society. The Ecclesiological Society linked architecture and religion, and believed that a return to the Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages would assist the church regain its spiritual authority. Along with this went an emphasis on the importance of ritualism and the sacraments, and thus on the need for the different parts of the church to be architecturally differentiated from one another. Verticality and the expression of the structure of the building was also seen as an important part of the Gothic style, both of which are visible in the structure of St Bartholomew's, albeit in the vernacular material of colonial New Zealand, wood.

Mountfort was also influenced by his earlier, unfortunate, experience with Holy Trinity Church in Lyttelton. This was the first church he designed in New Zealand and it proved unable to handle the strong nor-westerlies characteristic of Canterbury. In 1857 it was demolished. As a consequence, when Mountfort designed St Bartholomew's, he continued the roof trusses down to the ground and bolted them onto the bottom plate, thus forming a series of external buttresses which strengthened the building against gales and earthquakes. This method of strengthening was approved of by Bishop Selwyn (1809 - 1878) the first bishop of New Zealand, whose St John's College Chapel, designed in 1847 by Frederick Thatcher, had a similar structure. This method of construction had been conceived by Selwyn before he left England. In 1841 he wrote of 'a new style of building suitable to New Zealand. A log house but of a different description. The ribs of the roof and walls being the same and resting on the ground'. No clear connection has been established between Selwyn and Mountfort but it is thought likely that they were able to discuss church architecture during Selwyn's visit to Lyttelton in 1851.

At St Bartholomew's the triangular pattern established by the roof trusses is repeated in the cross-bracing of the exterior walls of the nave. The church, in the Gothic Revival style, has relatively low walls and a high, steeply pitched roof. Around 1859 it was decided to move the church to its present site in Cass Street, as the sandhill on which it had been built was disappearing fast. The move was completed by the end of May 1860. Two years later transepts, a bell tower and a chancel were added. While these extensions follow the lines of the original building their exterior skin is plain board-and-batten.

As well as being the oldest surviving church in Canterbury, St Bartholomew's is significant as an example of the adaptation of the Ecclesiological Society ideals to colonial conditions. The structural design of the church is unique within Mountfort's oeuvre, and the connection to the Selwyn churches of Auckland places this church within the history of a wider architectural movement. It is the earliest of Mountfort's buildings still extant. Spiritually it continues to be a place of Anglican worship.