St David's Pioneer Memorial Church

A little church I haven't visited for quite some time.  I had a day off today, so a good day for a trip out there.

The following was found on the Heritage New Zealand website:

St David's Pioneer Memorial Church at Cave is one of a number of memorial churches built throughout South Canterbury to commemorate the first Pakeha to settle in the area. Specifically, St David's was erected in 1930 in memory of Andrew Burnett (1838-1927) and his wife Catherine (1837-1914), as well as to commemorate the other runholders, shepherds and station hands who developed the Mackenzie district into one of the major pastoral areas of New Zealand.


For St David's, Hall designed a small church in the Norman style with a simple nave and a square castellated tower. It was built from reinforced concrete and faced with local boulders. The main entrance is through a small stone porch built onto one side of the church. Inside the nave is dominated by the stone and plaster walls and the hand-adzed timber of the floor, pews and open roof. Hall won the New Zealand Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1934 for his design of St David's. The church also has a significant collection of stained glass windows, which includes a set of twelve lancet windows that depict the names and symbols of the twelve Apostles. Three windows are dedicated to the memory of the pioneer women of the district, 'who, through Arctic winters and in the wilderness maintained their homes and kept the faith...'.



St David's Pioneer Memorial Church at Cave was initially conceived as a place of worship for all denominations, but it is now used exclusively by the Presbyterians. It proudly celebrates, in both architecture and words, the British ancestry of the early runholders and the landscape they chose to settle in. It was built as a memorial to Andrew and Catherine Burnett and other pioneers of the district, by the Burnetts' son, Thomas, who was a notable local member of Parliament. The church also commemorates pioneer women and is included in a book of places and memorials associated with women in New Zealand, published to celebrate the centennial of women's suffrage.