An early-morning fire gutted St Paul’s Presbyterian Church on Tennyson Street in Napier on Monday, destroying its main sanctuary and historic pews while drawing police inquiries into what happened.
Emergency Crews Respond to the Tennyson Street Blaze
Emergency services received calls about the blaze at St Paul’s Presbyterian Church about 1am on Monday, dispatching five fire trucks and two support vehicles to Tennyson Street. Firefighters from Napier, Hastings, Bay View, and Taradale confronted a building already well involved in flames, spending nearly four and a half hours at the scene before extinguishing the fire shortly after 2am. There were no reports of injuries.
Reverend Mark Johnston, who served as co-minister alongside his wife Reverend Carolyn Kelly for two years, returned to the site after being notified at 2am. He spent the morning greeting and comforting congregation members and older members who dropped by to inspect the smoking ruins and grieve the loss of a building they had been part of for a very long time. Everything’s pretty charred
, Johnston said of the interior damage. He had last used the church for a 10am service on Sunday, noting it was upsetting to see it smouldering fewer than 24 hours later.
Historic Character and Sanctuary Loss at St Paul’s
The fire devastated the main internal sanctuary, buckling the roof structure while leaving the outer walls and metal trusses standing as the exterior remained intact. Pews salvaged from the original church after the devastating 7.8 magnitude Napier earthquake in February 1931—which killed 256 people—were charred or destroyed in Monday’s fire. The property holds a deep history of disaster and reconstruction in central Napier, following a 1929 fire and the 1931 earthquake loss. Despite the destruction of the main worship space, the church’s administration offices, lounge, kitchen, and toilets remained operable.
It’s devastated the whole sanctuary.
Reverend Mark Johnston, Co-Minister, via New Zealand Herald
Community Response and Police Inquiries in Napier
While police and a Fire and Emergency New Zealand investigator examined the Tennyson Street site on Monday, authorities noted there was no immediate confirmation of what caused the blaze. Concurrently, police arrested a 47-year-old man and charged him with arson over two separate suspicious fires elsewhere in Napier overnight—one at a Bower Street building and another in a Market Street alleyway—though police inquiries into the church fire remained separate.
They are great people…they rally, and they know that the church will continue … but we are going to have to reimagine what our future is on this physical site.
Reverend Mark Johnston, Co-Minister, via New Zealand Herald
No final decision has been reached regarding whether the parish will rebuild on the Tennyson Street location.