There have been a number of events this year to mark the 200th birth on 13 March of Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort, so it seems appropriate to highlight the fact that the Christchurch Anglican Diocesan Archives care for a number of his ecclesiastical drawings.
It is well known that Mountfort had a somewhat inauspicious beginning as a Canterbury architect. Quite simply the congregation in Lyttelton “assembled in terror” in the first Church of the Most Holy Trinity when there was a nor’wester. Why? Because Mountfort was not familiar with the shrinkage that occurred in New Zealand woods (having been used to working with oak) and when the brick nogging [i] rattled it was decided that the congregation would return to the room they had previously inhabited in the Immigration Barracks. The building was ultimately pulled down, but not until 1857. [ii]
[i] Brick nogging is where bricks are laid between the beams and framing of a building to create insulation. Surprisingly when repairs were undertaken on the Lyttelton Vicarage in the 1980’s it was discovered that at least the west wall was brick nogged.
[ii] Lyttelton Times 11 March 1857. BW Mountfort provided the specifications for pulling the building down. FA Weld’s painting of the building can be found here
https://digitalnz.org/records/42768340/painting-holy-trinity-church-lyttelton
Even while the parishioners of Lyttelton were trying to decide the fate of their building, Mountfort was at work in Kaiapoi, designing St Batholomew. But work as an architect was not proving to be particularly lucrative, so he set himself up as a Bookseller and Stationer in Cashel Street and later in Colombo Street. It was in this latter building that he advertised in April 1857 as being able to take portraits by the “new Collodion process”[i].[ii]
All was not lost. In the same year Architects Mountfort and Luck[iii] were advertising for tenders for a Goalers House and Police Barracks in Lyttelton and for carpenters for the Bank Buildings in the same location. [iv] This was also the year in which Bishopscourt was completed.
Based on various lists, there are 28 church buildings that Mountfort was involved in and all or part of them that are still extant. The involvement could be a small as the additions to the nave and a Vestry at St Mary the Virgin in Addington, or the whole building at Tinwald and St Mary, Otaio. All Saints Prebbleton was destroyed by fire in 1906 and later rebuilt to the same plans whereas St Philip and St James Waterton can now be found at the Plains Museum. Further research of the original signed plans has shown that St Saviour West Lyttelton, that wandered off to Cathedral Grammar and came back again to the Holy Trinity site is not a Benjamin Mountfort, but the work of his son Cyril Mountfort.[v]
The Diocesan Archives has digitized the Mountfort plans in its possession. Below are two examples.
[i]. The wet collodion process used a prepared piece of glass which, in the darkroom, would be coated with collodion and then made light-sensitive with further chemicals. Before the plate could dry, it would be placed in the camera and exposed. These are now in many collections as glass plate negatives.
There is a possibility that Alfred Charles Barker, whose photographs of early Christchurch are well known was taught by BWM.
[ii] Lyttelton Times 8 March 1856 and 18 October 1856
[iii] Isaac Luck Married BWM’s sister Susannah in Lyttelton in 1853
[iv] Lyttelton Times 17 June 1857
[v] See Teal, FJ 2013 Here, There and Back again. Anglican Historical Society
Further Reading
Lochhead, Ian 1999 A Dream of Spires. Canterbury University Press
Mountfort, Ian J 1990 Mountfort, Benjamin Woolfield