St Mary's Cathedral Church

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St Mary's Cathedral Church, also known as St Mary's Church, is the former Cathedral Church of the Anglican Diocese of Auckland. Located in Parnell, it replaced the earlier Old St Mary's. This wooden Gothic Revival church was designed by the prominent Christchurch architect Benjamin Mountfort and completed in 1897. The building served as the Cathedral Church and principal Anglican church of Auckland until 1973 when the Chancel of Holy Trinity Cathedral, for which the foundation stone was laid in 1957, came into use. In 1982, St Mary's Church was moved across Parnell Road to its present site beside the Cathedral.HistoryOld St Mary's, as it came to be known, was replaced by a large wooden church, for which the Foundation Stone was laid in 1886. At more than 50 metres long, it is the largest wooden Gothic church in the world. Its English born architect Benjamin Mountfort had become one of New Zealand's most eminent architects, responsible for many of the Gothic Revival buildings in Christchurch. St Mary's is the most impressive of his wooden church designs.The original intention had been to build the church in stone, but the plan had been rejected as too expensive. Mountfort seems to have ignored the perishable and limited qualities of wood, and built a vast church worthy of the finest stone. St Mary's covers an area of 9000sqft and has architectural features normally associated only with the great medieval cathedrals of Europe.