St Paul’s Church

Location: Tai Tapu
Denomination: Anglican
Built: 1932

St. Paul’s Church at Tai Tapu was funded and commissioned by Sir Robert Heaton Rhodes, designed by local architect Cecil Wood and built in the memory of Sir Rhodes’s wife, Jessie Cooper Clark. Sir Rhodes was a prominent landowner and politician in Tai Tapu, and his wife Lady Rhodes was also involved in various community organisations such as Nurse Maude’s District Nursing Association, Plunket and the Canterbury Girl Guides. When Lady Rhodes died of a stroke in 1929, she left £250 in her will to go towards a new church.

The church itself is mostly built from stone sourced from Banks Peninsula. The red stone visible in the facings and quoins (stone blocks that appear at the corners of the building) was quarried from Sir Rhodes own property in Otahuna. Amazingly, the foundation stone is made from granite that was shipped all the way from Lady Rhode’s family home in Australia. Construction of St Paul’s Church was fully completed in 1932.