Country Churches of NZ 100. St. Anne's, Pleasant Valley, South Canterbury

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

ST. ANNE’S, PLEASANT VALLEY

I have always loved the country around Geraldine, and Pleasant Valley - so well named - is some of the best of it.
St Anne's, with its lichen-stoned graveyard is the archetypal New Zealand country church. Its interior is tiny and intimate with a 'primitive-style' east window.
The church was built in 1863 by John Huffey (a Methodist) and WilliamYoung, to the design of Lieutenant Belfield Woollcombe of Timaru.
Pleasant Valley was native bush then but its timber was largely worked out by 1885, leaving a shrunken congregation and a church in a sorry state. Its history since then has been one of successive disrepair, despair and repair but thankfully it has survived and is now protected by the Historic Places Trust. The Trust rates it as the most important of the early churches in the local area because it is the only example left of pit-sawn or adzed timber and cob construction.
© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz