Three North Shore brick churches

St Aidan's Presbyterian Church, on Onewa Road, Northcote. My apologies, theses shots of that church were taken close to dusk on 20 June this year, as I decided to do a trek from Highbury down Onewa Road just to get shots of the building. I love ecclesiastical architecture anyway, but this 1931 church, using different brick colours to such wonderful effect, made me determined to take the photos.

Yesterday afternoon, though, this sight made me bail off the bus between Takapuna and Devonport.

St Paul's Presbyterian Church, on Albert Road, backing onto Mt Victoria. Dating from 1917, I think this is a stunning building.

Even a more modern addition to the site doesn't detract.

Next door is St Francis de Sales (Catholic).

Glorious pinnacles up to the heavens.

The original St Francis de Sales church here was a smaller church originally built by Bishop Pompallier in Symonds Street, according to Lois Westwood in The Hundred of Devonport (1986). The Catholics applied to the Crown for a site at Devonport, and part of the existing Mt Victoria Cemetery, promised initially to the Presbyterians, was at the time still unused (the Presbyterians then ensconced in Church Street). So, the government said to the Catholics that they could go ahead and have the site, they duly loaded the old 1866 church on hore-drawn wagons, carted it to the harbourside, and floated the building across the water on a punt, before hauling it up the steep grade to the present Albert Street site. This, as you can imagine, did not go down well with the Presbyterians. But, after arguments and appeals, the government then put forward the current solution: Catholics here, Presbyterians as the neighbours alongside. St Paul's was built in 1917, and thios latest version of St Francis de Sales in Devonport followed two years later.