Foyer

Foyer

Welcome to First Church.

When the first ships of Scottish settlers arrived in the 1840s, they carried with them, in the fleet, a limited supply of building material that was sufficient to construct a small school, which the settlers also used as a church for Sunday worship.

The people who gathered constituted The First Church, progressively enlarged and finally replaced with the elegant building as you see it today.

Regular worship services in three different languages make up the first church of today. Beside where you stand near the door on the southern side is the red sandstone block gifted to the congregation from the Iona Abbey congregation where St Colombo and Irishman based his mission to the 6th century Pict of Scotland. Schools, hospitals and monasteries were established and the century later St Aden continued his work among the people of the Scottish islands and the northern reaches of England. It is said that the stone is of the oldest rock in the world.

The free church settlers who established this church are also remembered here. Captain William Cargill, one of the leaders of the settlement and the first elected superintendent of the new community in 1853, is acknowledged here with a plaque just next to the Iona Stone.

On the northern side of the entrance is the memorial to the Reverend Dr. Thomas Burns, the joint leader of the free church settlement. A somewhat stern middle-aged figure but whose determined pastoral concern for the younger settlers took him to every family in the settlement. His determination to provide schools for the boys and girls of the settlement and ultimately a university was a powerful and generous commitment. Otago University was one of his enduring projects.

A plaque that names Robert Lawson just above Cargill’s pays tribute to his competence as an architect. Born and educated in Scotland his hand is seen in many significant buildings in Dunedin and beyond.

During the building of this church he took a short visit to Australia but on his return he realised that the builders had continued to work on the spire of the new church but they had shortened its height.

He insisted that the truncated spire was unacceptable and it was dissembled and restored according to the plans. To the right of Cargill’s plaque is a plaque honouring the work of the stone mason, Louis Godfrey, whose hand was on almost every carving in and around the church.

On each side of the door that opened into the body of the church, details of stone link with the world outside. On the left, near the top, a small lizard-like creature links the building with the Otago skink, a spirit-like creature of Maori custom.

In the right we see a glimpse of Godfrey’s sense of humour. Every Scottish child learned the poem about the Timorous wee beastie, the frightened field mouse of the poetry of Robbie Burns, the uncle of Dr Burns, the very first minister of the new church.