St James Harewood

The Anglican parish of Harewood/Burnside has an historic home in this chapel, picturesque and serene in increasingly frantic surrounds.

Once a rural township, Harewood is a city limits suburb almost swallowed whole by Christchurch International Airport and the burgeoning support services it has spawned. The first St James was built on a government sponsored five acre site here in 1862, a place for the new and flourishing Canterbury farming families to meet, and avoid the three mile dirt track Sunday journey to Papanui. It even served as the local school for the first decade. The cemetery here dates back to those days with names of many early Cantabrians visible on headstones. One of the well-known Stanley family buried here is said to have brought the cuttings of Canterbury's favourite apple tree, the cox's orange, from England.

The wooden church building was replaced with this solid Arts and Crafts chapel in 1935 and it still serves the parish today, accompanied by a large hall. The City Council has seen fit to acknowledge the site and the church with a statement of significance. Of interest is that the designer of this church, RSD Harman, also designed the famed stone Church of the Good Shepherd in Tekapo and Waiapu Cathedral Napier, and the impressive Cashmere Hills Presbyterian Church.

Harman was constrained here by budget and conditions relating to the government grant that contributed to the build, and had to keep it simple, building in concrete, as was the trend of the times. He managed to include the cedar shingles he chose for the roof, and a carved lectern he designed. The church bell is a heritage item, rumoured to have come from the settler ship the Cressy, via another parish. With these details and other architectural features intact, including the large triangular plot of land it is on, St James provides a social landmark in present day Harewood.