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Once you've traipsed around the centre bordered by the four avenues of Bealey, Deans, Fitzgerald and Moorhouse and done Cathedral Square and Victoria Square and the parks there will still be a few things worth seeing if time prevails. The building in which the Arts Centre is housed was founded in 1874, initially as the university of Canterbury and the Christchurch high school. It was designed as a courtyard surrounded by limestone and bluestone buildings designed by Benjamin W. Mountfort. The Arts centre set up home in 1975 and is a delight with its stalls, workshops, shops and galleries. On the weekend the Market Square is turned into a craft market that attracts musicians and buskers. The centre also has a theatre and a cinema if you are looking for alternative entertainment. The information centre still has the original basement laboratory used by Ernest Rutherford when he won the Nobel Prize for splitting the atom. Along Oxford Terrace is another building of the same period, the delightful St Michael and All Angels Church, designed by William F. Crisp in 1875, it is a delicate mixture of French and English Gothic styles. The intriguing aspect of the church is in the dark wood interior where the structure makes use of the native black matai pine with pillars carved from single trees. The foundations are stone and contrast the stained glass windows that brightly colour the otherwise dark interior. The tabernacle is rather unusual, hanging from the ceiling. It was originally a Maori container used by chiefs to store their ceremonial feathers or taonga. The belfry holds one of the original bells from the four ships that brought the first settlers. |