Memory box
St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church on Ohaupo Road is not very old, relatively speaking, and yet it may qualify as Melville’s oldest non-residential building.
It was built, largely by volunteer labour, in the middle of 1926 and was the first church to be built in Hamilton South.
It was reported in May 1926 that working bees to erect the church had been held on several Saturday afternoons, with the work being done by Melville residents and Hamilton wellwishers.
The Rev JT Burrows was the first minister of St Stephen’s. Burrows
(1861-1949) had been born in Christchurch and was ordained in 1902. He served in the Frankton parish from
1917 until his retirement in 1922, at which time he went to live in Melville and then apparently ‘un-retired’. According to the ‘Register of New Zealand Presbyterian Ministers, Deaconesses & Missionaries 1840 to 2015’, which is available online, Burrows held services and Bible Class in his own home until the church at the corner of Ohaupo Road and Mahoe Street was built.
During his time in Melville, Burrows also served as the Presbyterian chaplain at Waikato Hospital, just as Melville’s Methodist minister was to, after that denomination built their church at the corner of Normandy Avenue and Bader Street in 1959.
For some years prior to this, local Methodists had met at St Stephen’s for a monthly afternoon service.
St Stephen was a deacon in the early Christian church in Jerusalem and is said to have been the first Christian martyr, after he was stoned to death following an accusation of blasphemy.
As a servant of the church who was willing to speak up for the welfare of others, St Stephen is venerated as a saint in the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches.
The church overlooking Mahoe Street has a Fred Daniell look about it, although I haven’t been able to find a tender notice or other historic source to confirm that as yet.
Typical of Daniell’s parish churches, a lean-to across the short, south end of the building is broken by a gable over the entry. What makes St Stephen’s distinctive is that three buildings in all are connected across the back of the site, with a common window treatment uniting each section.
Although the paired windows are set within rectangular frames, the upper panes have a lancet motif that creates an ecclesiastical appearance without the need for the shaped framing and cladding that would have been required for ‘proper’ lancet-arched window. Perhaps this was one of the ways that the designer simplified the stylistic elements of the church in order to make the construction process easier for St Stephen’s volunteer labour force.
St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church predates the nearby Melville Hall by 12 years and, like the hall, is also used as a venue by various community groups, including the Waikato Tramping Club and Dance Folkus. The elevated setting of St Stephen’s and the site’s openness to the street foster the church’s landmark quality within suburban Melville. Looking at the church today, it’s hard to picture the rural setting it once had on the outskirts of Hamilton.