Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period: Volume I (1845–64)

The Pukekohe East Presbyterian Church

The Pukekohe East Presbyterian Church

The Pukekohe East Presbyterian Church

This historic little church still bears marks of the Maori attack in 1863. There are two bullet-holes in the front of the porch (one of these, however, appears too small and clean cut for the large-calibre bullets of the “sixties”), and there is one inside in the rear wall, above the pulpit, besides several splintered bullet-holes in the ceiling. The shingled roof has been replaced by iron, but the original ceiling lining remains. Outside in the rear wall, high up, there is another bullet-hole. This was drilled by a shot fired from a rimu tree which stood on the steep side of the gully below the church. A Maori was shot down from the upper branches of this tree during the fight. In the burying-ground the oldest memorial is one which made a target for a bullet fired from the rimu tree. This gravestone bears an inscription to the memory of “Betsy, the beloved wife of William Hodge, who died July 3rd, 1862, aged 24 years.” In the back of the tombstone there is a large splintered bullet-hole. The stone is just outside the south-west corner of the stockade line.