Contractors have finished strengthening the St Andrew’s Church bell tower in Cambridge, but church officials have revealed they need to raise more than $100,000 to complete other work discovered as a result.
Repairs completed by Steve Greig to the vestry room of St Andrew’s Church. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Vestry committee members Paul Phillips and treasurer Leonie Austin say it became a voyage of discovery after one of the four 300mm x 300mm kauri beam pillars holding up the bell tower was found to be rotten at the base.
The committee approved a fix up but once builder Steve Greig – an expert on working in churches – got into the vestry, it became clear the pillar was just one symptom of an over-riding problem.
Pigeon poo compromised the guttering – generations of pigeons found nooks and crannies to nest in – and rainwater seeped into the building.
Repairs being completed by Steve Greig to the vestry room of St Andrew’s Church. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Phillips points to an interior wall where water has been regularly seen running down between the vestry room in the Bell Tower and the eastern end of the church – at the altar end closest to the roundabout.
“This building is very important to the town, and we are hoping that people will want to support us and get on board,” said Austin of the need to raise a six-figure sum to complete it all.
Strengthening of the Bell Tower beam involved installing steel lintels – a type of horizontal structure that spans openings – including a new one over the external vestry door.
Vicar Jennie Savage can now move back into the vestry to change into ceremonial clothes and prepare communion for services.
But because of the other damage, the six cast steel bells in the church belfry will remain silenced over Christmas.
“I’m very sad about that,” said Tokoroa-born Austin who joined the church 30 years ago when she and her husband Steve Gray moved to Cambridge.
“We have missed the bells a lot.”
These were the same bells used to ring in the new Millennium on January 1, 2000 – the most easterly set in the world.
“They’re in recess. Obviously, we need to regroup and move on and hopefully not too far into the new year,” she said.
“There’s a tonne and a half of bells sitting up there,” said Phillips, a more recent member of the church who joined when he moved to the town a decade ago.
Both he and Austin are passionate about getting the church right – they consider themselves custodians for the next generation of church admirers – and abiding by the church’s historic classification.
Strengthening of the rotten kauri pillar is complete in St Andrew’s Church vestry but further problems were found. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
The church entered Heritage New Zealand’s historic place category one register in November 1984.
Strengthening of the rotten kauri pillar is complete in St Andrew’s Church vestry but further problems were found. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
“We’re doing what they would want which is to preserve the building and do what they would want.
“We’re not able to replace that rotten pillar with pure kauri so we have to use other material. But that’s not visible, that’s inside the structure, we must use modern material,” said Austin.
“It’s an investment for the future,” said Phillips, a former senior staffer at Affco and originally from Porirua.
“We take it very seriously the responsibility of making sure the repairs make good what had happened, and we preserve the building,” she said.
“I love this place. My daughter was baptised here, she went to Sunday School here. This place is very special.”
St Andrew’s Church was built in 1881 by William G Connolly, from the plans of Thomas Mahoney, for £1570. Rev William Willis checked each piece of timber, rejecting anything that was not heart kauri.
The bells were installed three years later for £360.
Committee members Paul Phillips, left, and Leonie Austin inside the vestry room where the kauri pillar has been strengthened in the eastern end of St Andrew’s Church. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
A drone shot of Cambridge’s historic St Andrew’s Anglican Church with the tip of its spire at 33 metres (107 feet) the highest point in the town. Photo: Brian Holden.
