Photo essay: Inside New Zealand's most spectacular churches

St Gabriel's, Pawarenga. This style of church is timber gothic and it sits in a striking position on a hill overlooking Whangape Harbour. Photo / Jane Ussher

Photographer Jane Ussher has captured some of New Zealand’s most beautiful church architecture in her new book, Worship. It features stunning photographs of almost 70 churches — from tiny rural buildings to towering city cathedrals — accompanied by stories on each by architectural historian Bill McKay.

When the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 shattered Christchurch and the buildings of the Canterbury plains, the historic Hororata church of St Johns was heavily damaged. Parishioner Olive Webb said that in the following hours she saw "people you seldom see at church weeping outside for it. It is theirs."

Churches are not only places of worship; they are places for baptisms, betrothals and burials - the important rituals of life, both spiritual and secular. As the Hororata parish website puts it, people "expect the church to be there for their celebrations and for their solace ... St John's is the heart of Hororata and the background to everyone's life".

Churches are key elements of our communities, culture and townscapes; they are usually of heritage significance, frequently of historic importance and often of great architectural merit. But churches are such familiar sights in the New Zealand landscape that we generally take them for granted.

Extract reproduced with permission from Worship, by Jane Ussher and Bill McKay (Penguin Random House/Godwit $85).

Images from Worship by Jane Ussher and Bill McKay

Waterfall Chapel, Maungatapere

This chapel is a very small building for a very small congregation in northern New Zealand. Seven metres tall at its apex, it seats seven people. It sits on a farm, wedged in trees between a gravel road and a river, cantilevered over a cliff to catch sight of a white waterfall.

St Gabriel's, Pawarenga

This style of church is timber gothic and it sits in a striking position on a hill overlooking Whangape Harbour.

Church of the Good Shepherd, Tekapo

This was the first church in the McKenzie Basin and appears in countless tourist photographs.

The Cathedral of St Patrick and St Joseph, Auckland

The Cathedral of St Patrick and St Joseph, Auckland.

St Paul's Memorial Church, Putiki, Whanganui

St Paul's Memorial Church, Putiki, Whanganui. St Paul's is an important example of the innovation of Maori of this era to regain customary art and craft practices and establish buildings to foster that culture.

St Joseph's Catholic Church, Grey Lynn

Like many modernist churches that sprang up around New Zealand in the boom of the late 50s and 60s, this church shows the influence of that great exemplar of post-war modernist church architecture, Britain's Coventry Cathedral.

Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga in NZ, Favona, Auckland

This church, designed by Wayne Mitchell, has a barrel-vault roof that "has echoes of a long fale".

Our Lady of Victories, Sockburn, Christchurch

This spectacular church is more than a local landmark - it appeared on a Christmas stamp in 1970.

St James, Mangere Bridge, Auckland

St James may look a humble little church but in fact it is something of a miracle. Before St James, Bishop Selwyn's experiments with stone churches in Auckland were disastrous, and most of them disintegrated or were abandoned. Today a memorial stone commemorates the church builders.