Modern times

It’s partly concealed now by trees and stuff but when it was completed in 1954 St Mary’s church in Taihape must have been a shock. We only learnt recently that Ernst Plischke and Cedric Firth had designed this Roman Catholic church, so when we were driving through we stopped to take a look. This substantial concrete building looms on the top of a hill at the entrance to the town from the North. It was gifted to Taihape by John and Mary Bartosh which perhaps explains how building such an uncompromising structure was possible in a small country settlement in 1950s New Zealand.

Looking around the town it's pretty clear that the chilly wind of modernism never really blew through the streets of Taihape, but it certainly clipped the top of one of its hills.