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.
I make no apology for including the minuscule St Stephen's Chapel, Judges Bay, in a book of country churches. Although it stands in an inner suburb of Auckland it has the rural look, and the feel and setting of its origins.
Built in 1857 to plans by Frederick Thatcher, it replaced a short-lived stone affair that fell down in a storm in 1845. The graveyard stones are a roll call of early Auckland identities among whose lichened memorials I sat and sketched while talking with a couple of visitors from Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, who had seen the chapel from their cruise liner and made a bee-line for it.
On the skyline beyond the quiet churchyard looms the Auckland Sky Tower. I left it out. Artists are allowed to do things like that.
© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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