Please help us save our Heritage Belfry and Bell

Our beautiful Belfry was forced to close in 2018 because of structural damage and risk to health and safety caused by increasing layers of guano/pigeon poo, as well as its suspected cracked bell. The cost of full restoration is beyond the St Michael’s parish, due to the financial demands of maintaining its three other Heritage buildings.

In 1850, The Canterbury Association in England gifted the first European settlers of the First Four Ships, a magnificent church bell. Within a year it was installed in a simple, temporary structure on the St Michael’s site on Oxford Terrace beside the Avon River. It immediately became part of the soundscape of the developing town, ‘astonishing’ the locals. The permanent Belfry, designed by Benjamin Mountfort and completed in 1861 was described as ‘a great ornament to the town’.

From 1861, until 2018 when the bell was silenced, the parishioners and the city’s community enjoyed the glorious soundscape of the bell most days. The Angelus (a traditional call to prayer) was rung every weekday at 12 noon by the St Michael’s Church School children and on Sundays at 10am it called worshippers to services. After the earthquakes bridal couples chose Michael’s because it was the only remaining inner city church with bells. At funerals the bell honoured the dead by tolling the number of their years on earth. By restoring the structure of the Belfry and bell we also restore the beautiful daily soundscape to the city, loved and remembered for 165 years.