History of the Methodist Church Hastings – Dennis Coon

Joyce Barry: Good evening everyone. Our last one for the year. You’ve been a wonderful audience and thank you on behalf of Landmarks for just coming along. This is Dennis Coon, who’s a lay preacher at the Hastings Methodist Church. The first Methodist established in Hastings in 1883, and the history of the church has been very up and down like any earthquake-prone area. So over to Dennis. Thank you very much.

Dennis Coon: Thank you, Joyce. [Applause] I’m used to standing in a thing like this, but normally it’s a bit higher. [Chuckles] Just a bit about my background before I get into the history of the Methodist Church here in Hastings. I was born in Wanganui on the 23rd December some years ago. [Laughter] I was brought up a Methodist in Wanganui. My parents were not religious at all, but my mother would take us to Sunday School, and then she’d be there when we came out of Sunday School. We moved to Hawke’s Bay in 1964 to Napier where I attended Napier Boys’ High School. I left there in 1967 to start my apprenticeship as a baker.

In 1980 I had a transformation where I left the Methodist Church, which concerned a lot of Methodists, and became a Roman Catholic. Later on, through the early eighties, I became a monk for the St John of God Brothers and entered religious life in Christchurch, and was there for about a year and then I was moved to Sydney, Australia, where I started doing some training as a nurse.

Halfway through my time there it was decided that I needed to go to Rome. I was sent to Papua-New Guinea first. I was sent to Papua-New Guinea in the mid-eighties, and I was really shell-shocked to know how Papua-New Guineans actually lived. I was in the villages; we lived behind high wire-netting fences, we had security guards, and I spent every night with a bush knife under my bed. It was quite sad to see those Papua-New Guineans, and it was a very hard three months in Papua-New Guinea.

I then returned to Sydney; three years later it was decided I was to go to Rome for three months. So I was sent to Rome with twenty-five other students from around the world; couldn’t speak a word of Italian, but three months over there was a great experience. I met the Pope, and [it was] quite interesting that the other twenty-five that were with me in the course that I attended were there with me, of course. We had to be there two hours before the actual ceremony started. When it came to our time to go up to the Pope, we had to kneel in front of the Pope; had a Monsignor on the side with a large tray of rosary beads. So every time a student went up, a rosary was given. When I went up … ‘cause you had to hold your hands out and he’d put his hands either side of yours … [he] asked me where I was from, and I said I was from New Zealand. Monsignor came over to hand the tray and he pushed the Monsignor aside, reached into his pocket and brought out some rosary beads that belonged to him, and gave to me, which I’ve still got today.

In the probably mid-nineties, I left religious life and returned to New Zealand, and started working for the Hawke’s Bay DHB [District Hospital Board] as a drug and alcohol counsellor, until about four or five years ago. I’ve now retired and trying to live the quiet life, which is a bit impossible at the moment with my work within the Church.

Last Sunday our Samoan minister called a meeting with the palagi, or the English-speaking congregation, asking if he could talk with us. And I was quite worried [as] to what it was going to be about. He announced that our English-speaking minister was going to retire, and asked what we wanted to do. The response from our very small congregation was, “We want to continue.” Being the lay-preacher of that Methodist Church, that’s now on my shoulders to look after the English-speaking congregation. The Samoan minister said I had a very strong back; “I’m sure you can carry your congregation through”.

Which brings me to the history of the Methodist Church, which is on the corner of Hastings Street and Heretaunga Street. We’re not quite sure, but some of the records tell us it used to be a rugby field in the early days, and it was bought for £49 back in 1883. The first church was built of wood and you’ll see the church there, in the background there. [Showing slides] This parish hall here was built by the young men of the congregation, and then later on … that church has been moved right down towards Eastbourne Street. It was further up towards Heretaunga Street; it was moved down, and then the church proved to be too small so they added to it. Then it proved to be too small again.

One of the early ministers; [further slides shown] there’s some of the very early ministers starting from 1907, going right through. Reverend Carr was … quite a bit of history about Reverend Carr; Copeland, which [who] is a local person; some more of the local ministers. [New slide] One of those ministers has now passed on; Edgar’s [Hornblow] just returned to Hawke’s Bay. He went away from the Methodist Church and formed the Wesleyan Church, which is a break-away from the Methodist Church; so there was that break. So he’s a Wesleyan; slightly different to us Methodists, but he’s returned to Hawke’s Bay; wants to have an interview with me. I’m sure he’s going to ask me about my preaching. See, his preaching’s totally different to my preaching, so I’ll agree to meet with him.

[New slide] The 1912 church which was built of brick. And in front of that church facing the New World Supermarket, there were four brick shops built. With the Methodist churches in New Zealand and all over the world – mainly within New Zealand – whatever they did, when they bought a piece of land to build a church, they made sure it was a large piece of land where they could build buildings like offices or shops, and the reason why they did that was for income to maintain the church.

So in 1914 there were four shops built across the front of the church. And those four shops were a confectioner’s shop, which was on the corner of Hastings Street and Heretaunga Street, owned by a Mr Cohen. The next shop was a grocer’s shop owned by Mr Beale. There was a draper’s shop, which I haven’t got the name for, and then there was a tailor, owned by Mr Hurst. Those four shops came down in the earthquake and unfortunately they were never rebuilt, so that land now has become a car park. The 1912 church came down in the earthquake, and there might be one of the destroyed church, 1912. What happened was that the front of the church is here; back here was the organ … the pipe organ, which went in in … I think it was in 2012 [1912] that went in, just after the church was built. That was in sort of a recess. That survived the earthquake … [a] few pipes fell out but it survived the earthquake.

So then in 1932 we built the current church that’s on that site now. And the reason why we built so quickly is because we had a large insurance on the brick church, and that means we had the money there with [from] the insurance to rebuild the 1932 church which is on that site now, today. The 1932 church was built – looking at the Municipal Theatre, you’ll see it’s Art Deco – some of the features that the Municipal Theatre has, the Wesley Methodist Church has as well. If you go into the Methodist Church, it has the sloping floor the same as the Municipal Theatre does across the road, and that was specially built for sound reasons.

The congregation at Wesley Methodist Church was a very strong congregation. Today the palagi, or the English-speaking congregation is now down to about twelve. Normally, if a congregation of that size dropped like that the church would be closed down, but because we have a large Samoan congregation, about a hundred and sixty worshippers who joined us in 1974 the church will never close. So the English speaking congregation … we still meet; we meet every Sunday. So it’s hard to preach to twelve people, ‘cause you can spend three hours preparing a service and there’s twelve people sitting in front of you. But the thing is that I’m there for a reason, and I continue to go.

Just a bit about the current Methodist Church; now I’ve just been told tonight that the daughter of one of the architects – Mr Phillips was the name of the architect – and his daughter’s here with us tonight. So the architects were Davies, Garnett & Phillips; they were the ones that built the current church. So I’m really pleased to be able to meet you, and I’ll be able to write that down and that will go to the history in Christchurch – knowing that someone who’s still around the designing of the new church.

The current church in 2013 became what we thought was an earthquake risk. I didn’t think it was but the powers that be thought it was, so the church was closed down in 2013 to be strengthened at a cost of $389,000. I’ll just talk about that church at the moment, go back in history … when it came to the strengthening of the church it was decided to have all the strengthening on the outside of the church. I’m not sure if there’s any Presbyterians here, but if you look at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church now, they’ve got the strengthening on the outside of the church; they wanted to do that at Wesley, and I put my foot down and said, “No way. If you want to strengthen this church you’ll do it from the inside.” So the architects and contractors came back and said to me, “But how do we do this?” “The concept you had of putting the strength on the outside of the church, you can put into the inside of the church.” So if you go into the church there’s pillars all around the church, which is twenty-eight pillars altogether. They’ve all been covered in; you wouldn’t know behind that they’re steel girders. So the contractor was quite impressed; he said, “Well it looks quite good, doesn’t it?” “Well yes, it does; because I don’t want those things on the outside of the church.” So the church has been strengthened. We were told to strengthen to sixty-four percent; I took it a wee bit higher, to sixty-seven percent. I contacted the Secretary-General in Christchurch – he’s the head of the Methodist Church – told him, “We’ve strengthened our church to sixty-seven [percent].” An email went out to all the Methodist churches in New Zealand saying, “You now have to strengthen your church to sixty-seven percent.” [Chuckles] I went to the Synod meeting in Palmerston North a few weeks after that was announced, and it was said, “Who has said that we have to go to sixty-seven percent?” And I stood up and said, “I did, and it’s for a reason”, and sat down again. So the current church is there to stand for many, many, many years to come.

Are there any questions anyone wants to ask me? [I] don’t want to stand here just pontificating.

When we took the church to be strengthened, the contractors, who were Stead Contractors, took some lining off the back of the church inside wall, and in it they found two time capsules. This one here from the 1912 church, and it had all the local newspapers inside it. And then they found another one which is copper, and inside that it had the two books: before the earthquake and after the earthquake. This was built from the copper off the roof of the 1912 church and this was made by a Mr Loach who was a Methodist – Loach & Price, who were plumbers, electricians, sheet metal workers. Mr Loach was the man who made this from the roof of the 1912 church. And inside that there were some coins; I think there was a penny, a thrupenny [threepenny] piece, and a few other coins as well, and they were in that time capsule. We had no idea, and there’s no record written down anywhere at all to say about these time capsules. Nothing was ever recorded. So when they rang me up and said, “We’ve found something inside the wall of your church”, I said, “Is it money?” [Chuckles] And they said, “No, no, but it’s of great value.” So I went down to the church and this is what we found. So we have to decide whether we’re going to put those back into the wall of the church, or do we put them in a display cabinet within the church. I’m not quite sure at this stage of what we’re going to do, but I think they should be put on display so that people can see what was around.

Also, on the table over there you’ll see a small trowel which is very, very small, which was used to lay the foundation stone of the 1932 church. Also, if you know where the Opera Kitchen is in Hastings, that cafeteria [cafe] which was the Electricity building – there’s a photo of it here. We were the first building in Hastings to be switched onto power when that came into being; we were the first building in Hastings to be switched onto power. So that’s some history as well.

The pipe organ. I’m very passionate about our pipe organ which was probably put into the church in probably 1914. It was built in 1913. It’s still currently played … not [as] often as it should be. I do play, but I can’t read music so therefore my timing’s all out; but the pipe organ itself is of great value to that church, and I’m trying to work out how I can put some protection on it so it can never be taken out. The organ when it was built was what we call a ‘tracker’, meaning that the console or the keyboard was right … directly in front of the pipes. Then someone in their wisdom in the 1960s decided to make it electronic, so they removed the console and put it to the side of the organ pipes, and it was all done by electronics; so there was a slight delay between console and pipes. I think there’s only about one or two tracker pipe organs left in Hawke’s Bay now – one’s at our Trinity Methodist Church in Napier, which will never ever be made electrified.

2013 the organ was getting very, very tired; the old console with its levers very hard to play, so I decided to raise [$]35,000 to have another console put in. St Andrew’s College in Christchurch decided to remove their pipe organ so we purchased their console, which is in the current church now. The organ is two manuals … meaning two keyboards; there is two ranks of pipes, meaning sets of pipes. There were six on either side, which have disappeared. If we go into some of the photos there we may see one … the pipe organ. [Indicating on slide] Now that’s when it was the tracker; the console was up here. These sets of pipes – there were six pipes on either side – in 1963 an organ builder was employed to electrify the organ. Strangely enough, six pipes on either side of the organ disappeared … no one knows where they went to.

Then we had a minister come; the Reverend Edgar Hornblow, who’s here in Hastings now, decided that he wanted to cover all the pipes in, so there’s big louvres put all the way down in front of the pipes and blocked the pipes off altogether. So when I was deciding to do the organ up, I thought, ‘How can I get all these louvres out?’ So I rang Probation Services, who I was working with during my time as a drug and alcohol counsellor for the DHB; asked if we could borrow six of their young guys to remove these louvres. So these six guys came down and they took these huge big oregon beam louvres out, and we found these pipes. On the Sunday morning I was so excited that when the congregation came in they’d say, “Ooh, the organ pipes!” No-one said a word! [Chuckles] So I thought, ‘How can I get them to look?’ So I decided to say to them, “Instead of playing the hymn on the tape, I’ll play the organ.” [As] soon as I got on the organ they looked up and said, “Ooh – the organ pipes!” So they’re now left as they are; they will never be covered up again. The organ’s valued at a very high expense [price] because they are very expensive to maintain.

The church you see there now, that’s the 1932 church. The same man that covered up the organ pipes decided to take the end of every single pew; cut them so it was on a [an] angle, so the church would be like this. So in the old church there were three aisles – side aisle, middle aisle, another side aisle. He decided that we’d have an angled church, so he had all the pews cut, had all the ends taken off. When it came to put it together, it didn’t work. So he put all the pews back minus their ends, so some of the pews have got a sort of cut angle on the end. I was trying to work out ‘How can I get the pew end[s] back to where they were’, but the expense of doing that would be through the roof. So sadly, we had to do away with the ends of the pews. Now each end of these pews … actually there’s [there are] legs as well … so we had all these new legs made – different kind of wood, different kind of stain; it was [an] absolute mess. During our 125th anniversary this particular minister, and I’m [?] he’s not here tonight, [chuckles] decided to come to the celebrations. And he walked into the church and the first thing he said: “What’s happened to the organ?” And I said, “We’ve put the organ back to what it was.”

Moving along … the choir. Methodists are very, very strong on music. Charles Wesley wrote nine hundred and eighty-nine thousand hymns. Charles Wesley and John Wesley were Anglican vicars; were never ever ordained in the Methodist Church. They didn’t like the set-up in the Anglican Church, and decided they wanted to set up a church where there was some method involved. They formed the Methodist Church, so that’s how the Methodists came about. But as I mentioned, Methodists have always been very, very strong in their choirs. Wesley Methodist Church had a very strong palagi choir. When I first went there in 2000 there were six rows of choir; then it dwindled down to five, four, three, and then there was a last row of four in the choir, and they’ve since passed on. [The] Samoan choir is very, very strong; very good singers, so they make up the choir today.

So the church has changed a lot, but it will still continue, and the thing is that what we’re going to do next is build a new parish hall. [It] was built in 1953; it’s past its use-by date. It’s really tired; it’s run down; in parts of the hall the ceiling’s fallen in; and it’s very tired. So we have decided we’re going to build a new centre, and I’ve been asked to be the project manager for that which I wasn’t overly keen about, because I oversaw the strengthening of the church, but it’s decided I’d take it on. But, I just said to the congregation, “If we build this new centre it’s not going to be called ‘The Wesley Methodist Church Hall’. It’s going to be called the ‘Wesley Community Centre.’” Some of the olders [elders] in the congregation got a bit upset with me, but [they] said, “It’s our parish hall.” But I said, “A lot of funding for this building is coming from the community; therefore it will be the ‘Community Hall.’” So there was a lot of toing and froing and things like that. Also, one member of the congregation who’s on the same project committee as me, sacked me because he thought I was too out of place; I’d make things too difficult. So he came up to me one Sunday at church and said, “You’re sacked.” So I thanked him very much, and said, “That’s fine with me”; went home, rang the Samoan minister and said, “Thank you for allowing me to do that job for such a short time, but I’ve been sacked.” [Chuckles] And he said to me, “By whom?” And I won’t use the person’s name. He said, “No, no – you’re reinstated.” [Chuckles] He said, “We can’t go ahead unless you do this for us.” So I’ve been reinstated.

The funding is going to be really good. The Hastings District Council have [has] been very, very generous to us to help towards this. And the reason why we’ve done that, we want the Hastings District Council and the wider community to be part of this project. It can no longer be called ’The Wesley Parish Hall’. Those days have gone. To use a hall on a Saturday and a Sunday is not enough. We’re building a centre that’s going to cost probably $2½ plus million. We want something that’s going to be used for the wider community. Some of those olders [elders] in the congregation have sort of come around now, because I just said to them, “If you don’t like it, well maybe you need to move on.” I got reprimanded for saying that, but … the thing is we need to make sure that this community centre is going to be used for the wider community, and I’ve just got something on here I need to read out:

‘I’d like the opportunity to update the community about the exciting development of the church and facilities. The parish hall on the corner of Hastings and Eastbourne Street[s] was built in 1953. It is now well past its use by date. It no longer meets the needs of the community. The Church has a vision to redevelop the hall as a modern, fit [for] purpose community and conference centre. We are working closely with the Hastings District Council and local fund-raising Giblin Group to process our vision. The proposed building will include a two hundred and forty seat auditorium; there’ll be three meeting rooms to accommodate existing users as well as new users.’

Now those years I’m talking about: Alcoholics Anonymous who’ve been going there for thirty years; Country Women’s Institute for thirty-two years; Highland Dancing; Stamp people; Forest & Bird Society; the Sikh Temple next door are using that to practice some of their things in the hall. So it’s used by about twelve different people; we want to bring it up to even more.

‘This redevelopment will enable the church to continue our mission of service to the community and provide a new home for our community programmes. The modern design will be sympathetic to existing Spanish Mission streetscape.’

Now, we employed an architect who I’m not going to name; came up with a design that was completely against what I wanted. And it might sound, “I want, I want”, but the thing is that I felt that if we’re going to build this new building we need to be sympathetic to the area, meaning the Opera House next door and the Spanish Mission Church. So the development he came up with had nothing at all to do with Spanish Mission, so I said to him, “I’m not happy with this – I want changes.” In the current hall there’s a very large stained-glass window of two men who died overseas, and it was given by the parents. When we took him into the hall, he said, “That old thing will have to go.” [Audience murmurs] And I said, “Well, that ‘old thing’ is going into the new building.” So he came to a meeting and he said to me, “To make you happy, I’ve included your window.” It was as high as you could go in the new hall – you couldn’t see it. And I said, “I’m not happy with it being there.” [I said], “I want it by the main entrance coming into the church.” So he did that. After our third meeting with him he called me aside, and he said, “Dennis, I’ve worked with a lot of people all the years I’ve been an architect”, and he pointed his finger at me, and he said, “I’ve never ever in all my life come across someone who’s so difficult as you.” And I reminded him that we were paying him to do a job; he wasn’t paying us, we were paying him. So one thing led to another and a couple of weeks ago we had to terminate him … well his contract with us, I shouldn’t say ‘terminate him’ … [chuckles] terminate his contract with us; which is a great relief to me, ‘cause it means that we can start again.

With the Methodist Church, whatever we do we must get three quotes. Now when this architect was employed it was done when I was away on that particular weekend; the contract was signed and everything. And I came back to be told, “We’ve employed this architect; contract’s been signed.” And I said, “But where’s [where’re] the other two quotes from architects?” “Too late now – we’ve signed the contract!” So I contacted Christchurch and said, “Look, things are out of hand here.” So Christchurch rang up and said, “You’ve got to get things back on track.” So because we’ve had him we’ve got to get two more architects involved, which we will do. The current design is this [new slide] – nothing Art Deco at all about this building. Nothing at all. So what I’ve asked is that we change it completely, and that we have something that sort of incorporates the whole area – the Opera House, the current church. So that’s our next mega-project. I said to our Samoan minister, “This is the last project I’m going to do.” And he said to me, “Oh, we’ve got something else in mind out at Flaxmere.” At Flaxmere the Methodist Church have [has] what we call a Samoan pre-school, run by the Samoan people, funded by the Samoan people, and funding from the Church. So that’s been set up by the Methodist Church as well, out at Flaxmere. They want to build another big building out at Flaxmere and they’ve asked me if I’d be interested in being behind that project. I’m not overly keen, but if push comes to shove I probably will.

The history of the Methodist Church in Hastings will never ever go away. We’ve got a Samoan congregation there now; a lot of young people in that Samoan congregation, so the future of the Methodist Church in Hastings will always be strong. As for the palagi, or the English speaking congregation, we are getting smaller and smaller, but we’ll continue to do as best we can.

In order to keep the palagi congregation going, I’ve approached two other churches in Hastings … two Presbyterian churches who have similar small congregations as well. So what we’re going to do … there’s a meeting coming up next Tuesday … we’re going to come together and alternate services between Presbyterians and Methodists. There’s [there’re] some things that the Presbyterians do that the Methodists don’t do, and some things that the Methodists do that Presbyterians don’t do. But that’s what we’re going to continue, to keep the Methodist Church here in Hastings alive, and that’s one of my projects at the moment, is to go around to these Presbyterian churches saying, “We need your support to keep our witness here in Hastings.”

Are there any questions?

Question: I always thought that the pews were rimu and might’ve been saved from the original church?

Dennis: No – I’m not sure where they came from but they were rimu. But I’m not actually sure whether they came from the original church, but they are rimu.

Question: The Reverend Edgar who’s a Wesleyan Methodist … is the Hastings chapter, were they Primitive Methodists? That was the other branch in the early days; Primitive Methodists and Wesley Methodists?

Dennis: Yeah, we’re more the traditional … yeah. More primitive, yes. And where they are in Havelock North … there’s a church, I think it’s in Middle Road. Well that was a Methodist church that came from Waipawa, and it went up … when the whole thing of the split between them and us came about, and that was in the early 2000s as well, I had a letter from Christchurch, from the General Secretary, saying that people in Havelock North wanted to buy that building, ‘cause they were leasing it off [from] us. And there was a village out there as well which we built; and I had to go out there as property manager and have a look at this development out there. The amount of work that needed to be done was far beyond us, so I contacted Christchurch and said, “Look, the amount of work that these [?] use up is going to cost a lot of money. We can’t afford it; we haven’t got the money to do it. What do I do?” So the property manager for the whole of the Methodist Churches in New Zealand rang me and said, “Sell it.” So I went to the church a couple of weeks later when that part of the congregation was a bit larger, and got up and announced that Arohanui is going to be sold. Well! Cyril Smith, who was in his nineties in that time, stood up and said, “Over my dead body are you going to sell Arohanui!” And then I got phone calls after church saying, “You have no right to even say that. It’s our building.” I said, “It’s beyond fixing. It’s going to cost a lot of money – we can’t do it. It’s going to be sold.” So the following Sunday I went to church and it wasn’t a very pleasant sight. They said to me, “You either go ahead and just leave it as it is, or you stand down as our lay preacher.” So I rang Christchurch, spoke to the General-Secretary; he said, “Don’t talk to me, talk to the property manager.” So I spoke to Mr Wright … said, “Look – it’s all very well for you being in Christchurch”, but I said, “all hell’s let loose up here; they refuse to let me sell Arohanui.” He said, “Look, I’ll come to church next Sunday. Don’t tell them I’m coming. I’ll come in late and I’ll sit in the back of the church. You get up in the pulpit and announce it’s going to happen.” So I got up and said, “Arohanui’s going to be sold. End of story.” Well, Cyril Smith stood up, his wife stood up; and Mr Wright … Greg Wright … came down from the back of the church and got up in the pulpit and said, “Arohanui’s going to be sold; end of story.” Cyril Smith said, “You can’t.” And Mr Wright said, “Mr Smith, I know you’ve been here since you were sixteen years old, but if you’re not happy maybe you need to go the Trinity Methodist Church in Napier.”

So it was decided that we sell Arohanui. There was a lot of toing and froing about the cost – they didn’t want to pay the cost. We reduced it by a slight amount, but in the end we said, “That’s our limit.” That was all fine, until I got another phone call from the General Secretary in Christchurch, [who] said, “Now, you must go out to Arohanui. Anything that’s got written on it ‘Methodist Church’ must be brought back to Wesley.” I rang the minister at Arohanui and said, “I’ve been told by the General Secretary to come out and uplift any furniture or anything at all that’s got ‘Methodist Church’ written on it.” He was not happy. So I thought, ‘How do I do this?’ So I arranged to go out, and I took six large Samoans with me. [Chuckles] We had a big trailer and a van as well, and got out there. I thought we’d be greeted by the minister of the church, but I was greeted by six women of the congregation, [chuckles] who followed us around making sure that we weren’t going to touch anything that didn’t have “Methodist” on it. When the last thing went into the van, one of the women came up to me and said, “Do you want our tea-towels?” [Chuckles] “No, it’s fine.” [Chuckles]

So all the furniture came back to Wesley. There were three community tables, [?] chairs and lecterns. [I] thought, ‘What are we going to do with all this stuff?’ But all around the current hall at the moment we’ve got three communion tables, lecterns … but it’s all back where it belongs. Arohanui have settled down – I’m not sure whether they’ve done anything with the buildings out there, but as I said at the beginning, whatever the Methodists did, they always did it for the wider community. Like building shops – that went out to the community to create income for the upkeep of the church. And in Napier, the Methodist church in Napier has two shops in Emerson Street, which brings money into the upkeep of their church. Sadly, we don’t have anything here in Hastings, but with this new community centre that’s going to be built, that will create an income to keep the Methodist church here in Hastings going. So, as I said at the beginning with the new community centre, it’s going to be there for the community. We’re very, very strict on that. I’ll just finish on this note.

‘The modern [coughing] design will be sympathetic to existing Spanish Mission streetscape and enhance an already beautiful part of our city in line with the mission and vision of Hastings Landmarks Society. Our aim is to start construction in late 2018, but this will depend on funding and consents. Our community fund-raising is always a significant amount, but we’re always keen for wider community support. We’ll be approaching community and private trusts over the coming months, and commencing our fund-raising programme in the summer of 2018. Please let us know if you’d like to support the church in this vision.’

So we are going to make sure, and I will make sure, that this new hall or community centre in the building will be for the wider community, not just to be used on Saturdays and Sundays, but to be used every day of the week as it is now, but even more. Thank you.

[Applause]

Joyce: Dennis, that was wonderful. I didn’t know there was a [an] ecclesiastical Mongrel Mob in Hastings. [Chuckles] It’s small town, isn’t it; there’s [there’re] so many people you can’t mention their names, but that’s great. I think we have to thank Dennis for this strong vision, because it sounds like a lot of other stuff would have dissipated, and there is a strong history there and it’s wonderful.

Any more questions?

Question: I thought you might’ve got a bit more input from the Sikhs since they’re right next door? Any discussions with them, that they might be able to use the hall as well?

Dennis: They’re using the hall now. The young people are using the hall … Sikh Temple. We were hoping – that was one of my other visions, that I heard that the Sikh Temple have bought some land down on Pakowhai Road, and they’re going to build a temple out there. So straight away I thought about … [they’ve] got a new temple; we could buy that land next door, put something on it and create some income. The older men of the Sikh temple don’t want to move; they want to stay where they are, but it’s proving to be far too small so they may move eventually. So my vision is … soon as they do move, can we take that building over.

Just before I finish, Cyril Smith, who was one of the old members of the congregation … just before I go onto that, my role is I’m a lay preacher; parish steward; property manager; project manager. That’s my role in the church. And when I became property manager in 2001, Cyril Smith came up to me one day and said, “Of all the years I’ve been in this church, and all the years I’ve been under different property managers, you will be the most expensive one we’ve ever had.” [Chuckles] Any more questions?

Comment: I was a guide when we first started to guide around Hastings, and we always arrived at the church. And [of] course the original church was a Garnett church, wasn’t it? Garnett was the architect … the mayor’s son … and it might’ve been the same architect that did the Municipal Building at the time. And we were always told that it was in a brick area. But the church had a very strong representation on the Hastings Council, and were able to exclude the Methodist Church from the brick area so the new church wasn’t built in brick; it was built of wood. So that was built outside the brick area. I think Garnett might’ve even have been a member of those … [that] group of architects, but there was some dispute or other and he pulled out of that particular area, and another architect designed the church. That was the story; we always sort of said, “Well, tap it.” It was hollow, and it was an imitation brick … stucco brick, very cleverly done.

Dennis: And the fence around the current church is from the rubble of the 1912 church, so there’s bits of brick amongst all that as well, so the rubble around the current church is from the old 1912 church.

Joyce: I think it’s a point; for anyone who doesn’t know, when you walk through our parks … Windsor, Cornwall especially … every time you see those seats, the small bridges, they were all rebuilt from the debris of the earthquake. And the bridges in Cornwall, [Park] and there’s a bridge in Windsor, that’ve actually got 1932 or something on there.

Well folks, that’s it for 2017, reliving our history. Thank you, everyone.

[Applause]