St Barnabas

Location: Riwaka
Denomination: Anglican
Built: 1863?

Not much is known about this church in Riwaka. According to the current signage, this church has had regular services since 1912, however it is unclear exactly when this church was built. After a quick walk around the building, we couldn’t find the usual foundation stone with the establishment date. It is known that one acre of land was set aside for the church building on the 23rd of Mary in 1863 by one Reverend Henry Francis Butt. Apparently, the locals at Riwaka were initially quite unimpressed with the Anglican Church. It seems that this may have been to do with an “inefficient” schoolteacher (who presumably had some connection with the church) and the fact that a chapel still hadn’t been built in Motueka.

Reference: Rigg, E. M. (1944). History of the Anglican Church in Nelson from the coming of the white man to the establishment of the West Coast goldmines (Master's thesis). November https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10092/8338/rigg_thesis.pdf;sequence=1