Business South November 2021

90 | COMMUNITY Chaplin Crooks Architects Hugh de Lacy The quake-damaged St Mark’s Anglican Church in the Christchurch suburb of Opawa is being lovingly restored. History restored for future generations C elebrating Easter 2022 in their re-built historic church, after doing it by Zoom in 2020 and in a school hall this year, is the ambition of the parishioners of the quake-damaged St Mark’s Anglican Church in the Christchurch suburb of Opawa. St Mark’s Church Opawa, built in stone in 1954 on the site of a wooden predecessor that burned down five years earlier, stood up surprisingly well to the earthquakes that hit Christchurch in February, 2011. It remained standing, albeit with a serious hump in the floor of the nave, and some dan- gerously loosened mortar in the stonework. Considering that it was stone buildings, several churches among them, that suffered some of the worst damage in the quake, St Mark’s survival nearly intact was remarkable, but can be put down to the partial use of rein- forced concrete in its building. The destruction of the original wooden St Mark’s Church, in December 1949, was thought to be the work of arsonists, but it had a galvanising impact on the parishioners who rallied round and fund-raised vigorously to build the new stone church at a cost of £17,000 ($34,000). The subsequent damage in the Christchurch quake had a similar effect on parishioners as did the destruction of the first church, with planning and fund-raising getting under way soon after the earth stopped shaking. In some respects the old church had be- come unsuited to the demands of the modern Anglican Church, so the parish took the oppor- tunity to modify the structure in the course of the re-building. The most significant change is the extension of the north transept to create a new space for worship, called St Anne’s Chapel. Capable of accommodating around 30 peo- ple, the new chapel entrenches the memory of the former St Anne’s church in the suburb of St Martins that was sold along with its vicarage in 2019. The Opawa and St Martins parishes had merged in 2007, and services continued at both St Anne’s and St Mark’s until the quake limited Sunday services to St Anne’s. The new chapel “provides a more intimate worshipping space for smaller congregations, like our mid-week Eucharist, our morning prayer and our 8am Sunday service,” Rev’d Canon Ben Truman says. “It also offers a space for young children and parents to use during larger services that allows them to still be part of the worshipping community, while giving some of the privacy and freedom of movement they need.” A major interior alteration was to the chan- cel which previously accounted for a third of St Mark’s Church footprint. “While this made sense when we had a large choir, it was no longer a useful layout for modern worship,” Canon Truman says. The former five different floor levels of the chancel have been reduced to two, “giving us a more flexible nave and more freedom in the way we use the space.” No date has been set for the re-opening of St Mark’s Church, but the parishioners are already planning for a memorable Easter in it next year. 0210 241 7851 E-MAIL: HOLCROFTROOFING OUTLOOK.CO.NZ WWW.HOLCROFTROOFING.CO.NZ 9>7FB?D 9HEEAI úhY^ _ j[Yj i :[b_û^j[Z je úii_ij m_j^ h[fú_hi h[delúj_edi je Ij$ ÷úhüÊi 9^ýhY^