Ten years on from being devastated in the February 22, 2011 earthquake, the Christ Church Cathedral is slowly being put back together. Photo / George Heard
Ten years on from being devastated in the February 22, 2011 earthquake, the Christ Church Cathedral is slowly being put back together. Photo / George Heard
Overlooking the battered and bruised cathedral, John Robert Godley commands the best view of progress.
Like a stoic site foreman, Canterbury's founding father surveys the scene.
Squadrons of cooing pigeons land amongst green buddleia sprouting from cracked guttering and piles of aged debris.
Hi-vis workers hoist heavy bricks down tothe ground and swinging cranes peck like swans.
Godley himself has been remounted since tumbling from his stone plinth in the violent shaking of the February 22, 2011, earthquake, which killed 185 people and also toppled the spire of the landmark Christ Church Cathedral lying before him.
But the 140-year-old Gothic-style church building has taken much longer to get back on its feet.
Ten years on from being devastated in the February 22, 2011 earthquake, the Christ Church Cathedral is slowly being put back together. Photo / George Heard
After years of public rows and wrangling, the Anglican Synod voted in 2017 by a narrow majority to reinstate the building.
Then came more talking and planning, but one year ago today, the stabilisation work – the critical pathway efforts before actual rebuilding begins – finally began.
A year on, the Herald was yesterday given a behind-the-scenes tour of the remarkable worksite.
Project director Keith Paterson describes setting out on the reinstatement project like one would approach a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle – starting with the border, finding all the straight edge pieces, and once that's done, there is a frame to start working within.
Project director Keith Paterson is happy with progress after a year on site. Photo / George Heard
Christchurch City Council granted a critical resource consent in December which allowed for the repair and restoration of heritage fabric along with the replacement of the west porch, tower and vestries on the main building.
It also enabled the superstructure of the main cathedral building to be seismically strengthened.
The last 12 months have been about wrapping the crippled church – which withstood violent earthquakes in 1881, 1888, 1922, 1901 and even September 4, 2010 - in a solid steel brace to support it, and help it withstand any quakes if they occurred during the work.
Major strides have been made in the significant preparatory process. The steel stabilising work is well advanced and a scaffolding exoskeleton wraps the building's north side, while plastic dust wraps around other wings.
Bricks are being carefully removed block by block before being engraved with a unique identification code, logged into a database, and moved into storage. Later in the rebuild, they will be retrieved and put back into place.
Bricks being removed are being carefully archived so they can be reused later. Photo / George Heard
Any bricks that are too cracked or damaged are being thrown away.
It's a fine balancing process of trying to save as much as possible, to be reused later, while also moving quickly and getting on with the vast multi-year project.
Vestry buildings at the rear of the cathedral, for example, have recently been demolished, allowing for better site access.
The vestries were added in the 1960s and while it would've been nice to try to save them, Paterson says, consent allowed for their removal, and they became "collateral damage".
"These kinds of hard decisions have to be made, but it was the logical decision to take," Paterson says.
Reinstatement work is on track to be done by mid-2027. Photo / George Heard
Each step in the reinstatement process involves the consultation of experts in the fields of heritage, safety, engineering and architecture.
It's a "carefully considered" sequence of work, Paterson says.
"The biggest challenge we're dealing with is a damaged building," he says.
"We're worried about the incident of an earthquake happening while our people are working on the site. Every piece of work has to be considered through that safety lens.
"It's kind of a journey of discovery. Some things are tougher, some things lead to opportunity, and others lead to more work. That's the challenge of the project."
The on-site work began on May 20 last year when the nation was just out of a Covid-19 level 4 lockdown. They were ready to operate the site to level 3 protocols but haven't yet been too affected by the global pandemic.
A year on, they're on track with the stabilisation work.
And designs for the main cathedral building and new tower – after the original spire snapped in the vicious February 22 ground shaking – are progressing well and should be completed by the end of the year.
At this stage, they're still targeting a final completion date around the middle of 2027.
Figures behind the Christ Church Cathedral reinstatement program know there are still likely unknowns that lay ahead during the long project. Photo / George Heard
Workers earlier this year found local resident, and then cathedral artist-in-residence Sue Spigel's handbag under the rubble of the collapsed spire after she fled the cathedral during the terrifying, violent shaking of February 22, 2011.
"That was a nice find," Paterson says.
"We are expecting to find more things like that when we get in the main building and if it's safe to do so we will retrieve those things."
The team is currently testing remote-controlled diggers, fixed with high-speed cameras to see if they're precise enough to be used to clear debris sprawled across the church's floor – limestone blocks, vast mounds of pigeon droppings, toppled chairs, shattered glass, and any lingering heritage material.
Paterson says the diggers could pave the way before human workers go in after them – likely around July next year.
"That will be very exciting," he says.
Paterson has looked at similar restoration cases in Britain and Italy to see if there are any lessons to be learned but the best case study is much closer to him – The Arts Centre just down the road. It was also damaged in the quakes, and was constructed using similar architecture, construction methods and materials.
But the cathedral is on another scale. This week Paterson has been reading a book from 1931 which outlines the cathedral's history which he's found deeply interesting.
"I got a sense of deja vu around the challenges they had with the original construction.
"These are great challenges and the brain never stops trying to make this puzzle faster and that's what is motivating me, along with leading this great team of people who are equally motivated to get this job done as efficiently as possible."
And while 2027 "seems like a long way away", Paterson is confident they are on the right track, and tackling it in the right way. Being adaptable and flexible is critical, he says, because of all the unknowns that lay ahead.
"What we are doing now is actually quite different to what we thought we were going to do at the start," he says.
"I think the set-up is right for what we need. I can't think of a better way of doing it."
He added: "I'm a Southland guy but I've been 15 years here and been right through the earthquakes and seen all the ups and downs, during and post-earthquake. This is a great privilege."
