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A Gothic Soul

20 November 2023
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Early Christchurch was essentially a village of wooden cottages and shops, which would have seemed desolate to newly arrived colonists. According to one settler it was “an odd, straggling place. Small wooden buildings dotted about with little pretension to regularity, rough wooden palings for enclosures..."

With the appearance of grander stone buildings from the 1860s onwards, locals could begin to feel reassured and proud that their city would indeed become a small slice of ‘home’. By 1886 buildings like those of the Cathedral, the Museum, and the College enabled the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia to claim “Two features at once arrest the attention of the travelled visitor. The first is the thoroughly English look of the place… Nothing is here to suggest pronounced colonial peculiarities.”

Colombo Street in 1870, as shown in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand, 1903.
Benjamin Mountfort's design for the Clock Tower, 1876.

The original overall vision for Canterbury College was for it to be reassuringly European, based on the best traditions of Oxbridge. The Gothic Revival style in vogue at the time ensured that new buildings in Christchurch emulated those being built in Europe. More than that, the Gothic style encapsulated many of the Christian ideals upon which the new province was founded, and was extolled as being the only appropriate style for churches and places of learning by leading commentators such as Augustus Pugin. It was for this reason that C.R.H. Taylor was able to write in 1929, when considering the gothic beauties of Christchurch, that "The love of change means a free will, and as this epitomizes the Gothic Soul, so does it symbolize the spirit of the early pioneers of Canterbury.”

Beyond the desire to reproduce Oxford or Cambridge in the new college, there seems to have been little overall forward planning for how the campus would develop and expand to meet the practical needs of its staff and students over time. In fact development was rather piecemeal, and in many cases the potential increases in demand were severely underestimated.

 William Armson declared in 1881 after designing the Boys' High School for the College site, that his original building would serve for all time. That same building would have additions made to it in 1891, 1896 and 1913, before the Boys' High grew to such an extent it moved to a completely new site. It is not surprising that it was a common complaint of students that their practical needs were often overlooked. O.T.J. Alpers describes in Cheerful Yesterdays how “Chemical and physical laboratories and additional lecture rooms were urgently needed. But the Governors, many of them English public-school men, and several of them Graduates of English Universities, had ideals that soared beyond the mere utilities of the moment."

A more thorough overview of how the College might be developed was eventually proposed by the architect Samuel Hurst Seager in 1913, whose scheme noted the new buildings required and how they could be incorporated over time into the existing site. Seager considered that the College should be arranged around quadrangles, with a library forming the intellectual heart of the institution. Amongst others, he listed as necessary a library that could hold 20,000 volumes, a lecture room for 230 people, two smaller lecture rooms for up to 30 people each, and accommodation for lady students’ bicycles. Having consulted with the Professorial staff, Hurst Seager claimed that "…the scheme provides for the rooms they need, and in addition provides for all buildings likely to be required."

Although buildings were generally added in response to need as and when funds became available, the Gothic style established by the College's first architect Benjamin Mountfort was more or less maintained over time.

Suggestions for Completion of Canterbury College, by Samuel Hurst Seager, c.1913.

 With some planning and much good fortune, the many architects involved in constructing the site managed to create a harmonious and intimate environment with overall architectural unity. When Canterbury College celebrated its 50th Jubilee in 1923, T.W. Cane was proud to note “A great college is not, we well know, a thing of stone, bricks and mortar. But it is very desirable that the outward and visible beauty of the House of Learning should harmonise with the intellectual life it harbours."

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