End-of-year events

We look forward to celebrating the end of the school year and want to take this opportunity to remind you about the upcoming key events.

• Carols on the Quad – Thursday 5 December
  6pm – compulsory for Years 9–13
  Everyone’s welcome to attend
• Years 9–13 Prize-giving – Friday 6 December
  12.30pm – doors open
  12.30pm – all boys to be at the venue 
  1pm – Prize-giving starts
• Leavers’ Service in the Chapel at 4pm
• Year 13 Leavers’ Function – Saturday 7 December
  7.30–11pm – Christchurch Art Gallery

Leavers’ pack

Our 2024 leavers will receive their 1st-tier sport and/or choir photos in their leavers’ pack on Friday. The packs will include their leavers photo, Prefects photo (if applicable), and Old Boys tie. For those boys who have not yet collected their leavers jersey, they will also be included in the pack. The packs will be available from each boy’s Housemaster following the Leavers’ Service in the Chapel on Friday afternoon.

Photographs now available

Boys can collect their 1st-tier sports team photo from their MiC. Choir members can collect their photos from Music Department staff.

High achievement in maintaining focus

Classes have finished for the academic year. A huge congratulations to all the boys and teachers for their hard work and dedication.

As I write this final article for 2024, the seniors have one more exam before they finish their three weeks of NCEA exams. It takes a lot of focus and motivation, especially for those boys who have exams throughout the whole period. I would like to extend a special thanks to Dr Craig Aitken, NZQA Principal’s Nominee, and Kylie Kamo, NZQA Centre Manager, and her team, as well as Digital Services and Learning Centre staff. Their combined organisation, expertise, calm approach, and happy faces have not only made the exams run smoothly, but have made them as positive an experience as possible for our boys. 

This past week, Year 11 students have also completed exams for the end of their College Diploma. I would like to give these boys particular praise. Each day, as I have lined the students up for exams, they have impressed me with their focus. We have stressed to the boys that even though they may not be worth ‘credits’, these exams do matter, and they have shown that in their attitude throughout the week. 

However, there is more to learn and do before the term officially ends. Years 9–11 students all have a busy week of programmes. Whether it be outdoor education, service, or Finding Your Pathway careers programmes, there is something each boy can take away from this week. Prize-giving rounds off the year and I look forward to congratulating and celebrating all the academic, cultural, and sporting successes of 2024.

College boarders have been hitting the waves at Sumner, making the most of the chance to learn new surfing skills and get on board with the boarding programme.

Borrow a book or two for summer 

The summer break is a crucial time to recharge, but it is also an ideal period for students to maintain – and, hopefully, strengthen – their reading skills. Without regular reading, students experience the ‘summer slide’, losing some of those academic and concentration skills gained during the school year.

Encouraging teenagers to read during the holidays helps the boys stay mentally engaged. Reading not only keeps their minds sharp but also fosters critical thinking, improves focus, and aids emotional regulation. Please encourage your sons to read during summer and join them in enjoying a good book.

The College Library will be open to you and your sons from 4–5.30pm on 5 December, prior to Carols on the Quad, so that you can all choose some books for the holidays.

Author Q&A

In exciting news, Michael Grant – the author of Gone – has agreed to do a virtual Q&A with students, parents, and even younger siblings in Term 1. The Gone series has been among the most popular youth fiction in recent years. You can book a spot here to be part of the virtual Q&A.

The true gift of Advent

Tēnā koutou katoa.

Peace to you all in the name of God.

Dearly beloved, greetings as we enter December, and the season of Advent.

It is a joyful thing to be in Advent, as we can finally escape Christmas, which started in my local supermarket in September. Perhaps I am an old curmudgeon educated in a Presbyterian school (they cancelled Christmas for a time you know), but I made a rare visit to the mall a fortnight ago, only to be informed by my darling wife those few things I had purchased were (last Friday) now very much on sale. Money wasted aside, it was a timely reflection on our world. It dazzles and shines with Black Friday temptations and invitations, but is, on deeper inspection, rather empty.

However, Advent is a very different matter. Amid the frenetic ramp up to our Christmas gatherings, it whispers to us to wait. Wait for the greater light – even than 40% off – which has come into the world. A light that shines in the midst of our darkness, so different to the lights in the malls and social media shorts. God with us, declaring in the Incarnation your life and mine as Good and Holy.

This year, the return of the Christmas tree to the Cathedral in the Square reminds us that we are called to love and share what we have, boldly and extravagantly. Unwrapped gifts and non-perishable food for the City Mission can be left at the Cardboard Cathedral in Latimer Square. You can also leave items at the Cathedral in the Square if you have booked one of the site tours. As these lovely Canterbury summer nights draw out, I encourage everyone to take an early evening or afternoon stroll and leave something beneath the tree for the Christchurch City Mission. There are lights aplenty on the trees and mine. However, the real light, which is the light of humankind, is coming into the world, adventus. When it comes to loving one another, why wait.

Yours in Christ,

The Reverend Canon Cameron Pickering

Heading home for the holidays

Our international students are eagerly looking forward to returning home for the long summer break. Some have not been home all year. We have also farewelled our Year 13 international students, and others leaving College, at a special dinner. We wish the boys well and success in their next steps.

Bead mural 

It has been rewarding to see the artwork created by our senior students – in conjunction with Bead and Proceed – during Round Square Week, hung in the Miles Warren Building. A social enterprise, Bead and Proceed uses creativity to inspire action on the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The mural is an artwork of visual data and collective action, illustrating the SDGs that most concern senior students. A report accompanying the mural captures ideas gathered during the painting of the beads by the students. It also calculates the top SDGs. The most important for the boys is 14: Life Below Water, followed by 15: Life on Land, 1: No Poverty, 3: Good Health and Wellbeing, and 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. These represent all three areas of sustainability – economic, social, and environmental – and fit with the Round Square IDEALS. The boys’ ideas will be a focus for the Round Square, Environment, and Service committees in 2025.

Whooping cough epidemic

With New Zealand in the midst of a whooping cough epidemic and hundreds of reported cases in just the past month, the South Island has been recognised as a ‘hotspot’.

Whooping cough (pertussis) is a highly contagious respiratory tract infection. We encourage parents and caregivers to look out for early symptoms, when people are most infectious. This includes a blocked or runny nose, sneezing, fever, and uncontrollable coughing, with severe cases – particularly infants – often requiring hospital care. Vaccinations are available from your GP. You can learn more about the epidemic here and read the Health New Zealand fact sheet.

As we wish our College community a “happy, healthy, and safe festive season”, we want to remind all families that we will again be here to support your boys next year.

Uniform Shop hours – Term 1 2025

The Uniform Shop is open one week before Term 1 starts, Monday–Friday, 10am–4pm

From Monday 20 January–Monday 3 February
Monday 10am–4pm
Tuesday 10am–4pm
Wednesday 10am–4pm
Thursday 10am–4pm
Friday 10am–4pm

From Tuesday 4 February and the rest of Term 1
Monday 10am–4pm
Tuesday 10.30am–4pm
Wednesday 10am–4pm

The first week of every term, the Uniform Shop will be open for two extra days:
Thursday 10am–4pm
Friday 10am–4pm

For any urgent enquiries, please email uniformshop@christscollege.com.

2025 stationery

Years 10–13 stationery lists can be accessed via this link, with parents able to make their own purchases. Orders are placed through OfficeMax.

Looking for a Christmas gift?

Get on board with the Ōtautahi Christchurch edition of Monopoly, with players able to roll the dice and move onto the Christ’s College-themed green square. A perfect Christmas gift, Monopoly Ōtautahi Christchurch is available from the Uniform Shop for $79.99.

CHRIST'S COLLEGE & CCOBA EVENTS

William Chambers and Anne Matilda Louisa Harris

When College! A History of Christ’s College was published in 1996, Papers Past did not exist.  Research meant hours scrolling through black and white, poorly captured microfiche, followed by smudged printouts. The transcription of Bishop Harper’s letters was just on the horizon as part of the preparation for Shaping a Colonial Church, published to celebrate the Diocese of Christchurch’s 150th anniversary.

This, my In Black & White swansong, investigates instances where access to this material would have enhanced and expanded our knowledge of these two individuals. It will not repeat material found in College!, unless it has a direct bearing on the examples below.ⁱ

The choice of a successor to Reginald Broughtonⁱⁱ lay with Bishop Harper’s commissaries in England. Thomas Stevens, Henry Selfe Selfe, and Henry William Harper were given instructions that they were searching for a man to raise the profile of College’s educational advantages within the colony. They settled on William Chambers Harris, an assistant master at St Peter’s College Radley. They were impressed that he was in deacon’s orders, and by his academic ability and sporting prowess, a combination known as ‘muscular Christianity’.

What finally persuaded the newly marriedⁱⁱⁱ William Chambers and Anne Matilda Louisa Harris to set sail in 1865 on the Blue Jacket? There is no clear answer. The voyage was not without incident. A week into the voyage, a mutiny was suppressed but not without serious injury to the second mate and first officer.^iv The passengers’ introduction to New Zealand was not ideal. Instead of sailing up the harbour to Peacock’s Wharf, the Blue Jacket was put into quarantine at Camp Bay with suspected smallpox. A torrent of letters to the Lyttelton Times blamed the surgeon, Superintendent John Wilmshurst, for not distinguishing the disease from chickenpox, as well as praising him for his care. Blame was also laid on the English government inspector. Finally, the patient was isolated, and it was Harris who sat and read to him “with instructions not to go nearer than was necessary, to avoid his breath and not to stay long”. It was Harris who administered “the last consolation” to James Reid.^v Harris finally made it to land and was present at the College Sports and Prize-giving of 13 December. Later in the week, he was admitted as a member of the Diocesan Synod.^vi

His time at Christ’s College as headmaster has been well-documented. However, a letter from Harper concerning services in the College Chapel shows that Harris took his position as College Chaplain very seriously. With Edward Atherton Lingard, who taught at College until June 1866, he was ordained a priest on 25 May 1866. 

We do not have Harris’ side of the story that elicits a firm and very long response from Harper. However, it was clear that Harris wished to have more control over the services in the newly constructed Chapel than those established for Sundays. They were taken not only by him, but also by ordained Fellows of the College. After recourse to the College statutes, Harper came to the conclusion, based on Harris also being a Fellow of the College and as such with responsibilities for services in that position, that they could be extended to include morning prayer and weekdays and one service on a Sunday, “including the preaching of a sermon in the morning and the evening at his discretion as shall seem to him most suitable for the instruction of pupils”.^vii Although the Cathedral foundations had been laid in 1864, construction had stalled. Not only were the Diocesan offices at College, but the Chapel was Harper’s place of worship, and possibly influence, when he was not in other parts of his far-flung Diocese. 

Harris also took the instruction of the boys in Divinity and prepared boys for Confirmation. The first to be named in records were confirmed at St Michael and All Angels on 14 April 1867. They were Harry Lyttelton Brittan (66), Robert Dobson (196), Sam Routledge Dransfield (161), Richard Canterbury Mathias (115), John Pearson (201), Donald Henry Potts (152), Thomas Gordon (140), and William Russell O’Connell (181).^viii

By 1872, Harris’ health was in question, and he asked for a leave of absence to return to England. It was granted, so the family booked their cabin passages on the Charlotte Gladstone. Some sources suggest that he was seeking a position as vice principal of the Lichfield Theological College, but there is no evidence that this eventuated. In the end, he resigned from the headmastership and chaplaincy from December 1873.^ix

Harris’ return to New Zealand was not planned. From 1874–1877, he was headmaster at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wimborne in the Diocese of Salisbury and then moved to Marchwood in the Diocese of Winchester from 1878.^x Since moving from Christchurch, he had remained in contact with Bishop Harper as one of his commissaries and was involved in the appointment of WEW Morrison to the Grammar School and although local priest Francis Augustus Hare was appointed as tutor and chaplain, he had been involved in the initial search^xi, so a letter from Harper would have been no surprise. This time, he was seeking an organising chaplain for the Diocese. The Synod had voted a stipend of £400 for two years. When Harris received the request seeking his aid to find a suitable person, he telegraphed offering himself. The New Zealand Church News reported that:

“It is scarcely necessary to say that the Bishop telegraphed back accepting the offer. We need not enlarge on the advantage of having secured for this important post a gentleman so widely known in the diocese, and so universally respected and who had previous knowledge of colonial work and people.”^xii

So, William, Anne, George, Francis, and Edward found themselves back at sea, this time in the Rotomahana that docked at Port Chalmers on 30 September 1879 and with a further family member, a sister, Edith Margaret. They were in Christchurch in time for Harris to preach at the Synod service on 18 November^xiii and were domiciled not far from College on the corner of Peterborough Street and Park Terrace. George, Frank, and Edward were enrolled at Christ’s College and Harris became a Fellow once more.

The Diocesan Inspector of Schools was a wide brief that included responsibility for visiting and examining Sunday schools, the small church day schools, and, of course, Christ’s College. His 5th report to the Diocesan Synod said that there were 92 Sunday schools and four church day schools, and he had, in that year, inspected 46 Sunday schools. He had also examined 1384 scholars in Church catechism, Old Testament history, New Testament history, and the Book of Common Prayer. In all, 476 had competed for certificates of religious knowledge and 413 had been awarded certificates in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd classes.^xiv

At the end of the two years, there was the question of what next? Rumours began to swirl among the laity that he should be appointed as principal of the Upper Department. Harper, in writing to his son, Henry William, believed that Harris was not aware of the rumours and did not want them to circulate further. Not only had Harris indicated he was enjoying his work and wanted to continue, but Harper was also sure there was no one else who could undertake the work “or do it so thoroughly and, in the case of schools especially, with so little annoyance to clergymen and teachers as he does”. Harper proposed to appoint Harris to an archdeaconry, as this would give him “a definite position and Episcopal authority”.^xv

However, once more Harris’ health began to fail and he returned to England with Anne, where he died at his father’s home in Bryn Dyffryn, Llanrwst, North Wales on 3 June 1885.

Anne Matilda Louise Harris (nee Sanders) is an important part of the story. There is one image of her taken before the 1867 fire, which means it must be George in her arms.

Her involvement with College began on the same day as her husband’s when she, too, was present in the Big Schoolroom and presented prizes, and there is evidence she continued to do this in 1867, 1868, and 1869. In 1869, she advertised for a cook and a nurse, and in 1871 and 1872 for a housemaid. By January 1872, with four children to care for, she was seeking a girl, about 14 years old, to assist in the nursery.^xvi

The children were George (903), Francis (904) (also known as Francis Chambers and Frank), Edward (905), and Mary. George was baptised at St Michael and All Angels before the construction of the College Chapel. Strangely, the baptisms of the subsequent children, all in the College Chapel, are recorded there, too, not in the Service Register for the Chapel that is at the end of school records. Mary died in June 1872, aged four months and eight days.^xvii

Domesticity aside, Anne was also the precursor in chain or ribbon migration. Once again, Harper’s letters provide the clue. In sending his condolences to Anne in England on the death of her husband he wrote: “Your sister no doubt will have forwarded to you the papers which so plainly shew (sic) the estimation in which he was held.”^xviii There must have been a sister in New Zealand? In fact, two of her sisters, Alice Letitia and Edith Margaret Sanders, arrived as saloon passengers on the Durham in 1880^xix and there were other connections.  Her brother, Frederick De Veulle Sanders, recently retired as a captain in the Royal Navy, and his family lived at Rosebank in Avonside from about 1883.^xx John O’Brien Beckett left India after the death of his wife, Elizabeth Frances Sanders, in 1881 and by 1882 was living at Almona in Upper Riccarton^xxi. According to her death notice, Edith lived at Almona before moving to Nelson.^xxii She and Alice Letitia, whose address was also given as Upper Riccarton, did not marry.^xxiii

All this adds up to cousins at College. In 1883, William Henry Sanders (1090) (at College from May 1883–1887), John Booth Beckett (1037) (September 1882–1889), and George, Frank, and Edward Harris were briefly at College together. 

Did Anne return to New Zealand? Yes, although it is not known when. Research in Papers Past shows that she was contributing as “Mrs Archdeacon Harris” to Mr Herrick’s call for good for the destitute.^xxiv She died on 26 November 1891. She is buried in the Barbadoes Street Cemetery in the same plot as her daughter, Mary.^xxv

ⁱ Hamilton, D. 1996. College! A History of Christ’s College. Christ’s College Board of Governors. Brown, C. M. Peters and J Teal. (eds) 2000. Shaping a Colonial Church Bishop Harper and the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch. Canterbury University Press
ⁱⁱ Teal, F J 2018 Reginald Broughton College’s second headmaster. College 34 pp80-82
ⁱⁱⁱ Married at the Parish Church, Edgbaston, county of Warwick on 26 June 1865. Ancestry.com.au 
^iv Colonist 12 Dec 1865
^v Lyttelton Times 27 November 1865
^vi Lyttelton Times 14 December and 15 December 1865. The Press 20 December 1865.
^vii Harper, H J C to Mr Harris 22 January 1869  Bishop Harper’s Outward Letter Book (BHOLB) 3pp99-107 Christchurch Anglican Diocesan Archives (CADA)
^viii School records. Christ’s College Archives
^ix This position is mentioned in Harper, H JC to Mr Harris 10 March 1874 BHOLB5 pp628-629 CADA; The MacDonald Dictionary of Canterbury Biography https://collection.canterburymuseum.com/objects/711937/macdonald-dictionary-record-william-chambers-harris and Harris’ obituary The Press 17 June 1885.  Liz Street, Collections Officer Stafforshire History and Archives Centre can find no evidence of this. pers comm 24 November 2024.
^x Blain Biographical Directory https://anglicanhistory.org/nz/blain_directory/
^xi Harper, H J C to Mr Harris March 10 1877 BHOLB7 pp427-429 and April 19 1878 BHOLB7 pp557-559 CADA
^xii New Zealand Church News  April 1879 p3
^xiii Otago Witness 4 October 1879.  Press 18 November 1879.
^xiv Proceedings of the second session of the 13^th Synod of the Diocese of Christchurch, 1884 pp 113–117
^xv Harper, H J C to H W Harper August 19 1881  BHOLB12 p 100 CADA
^xvi See Star 12 July 1869; 31 August 1869;18 May 1870;  11 July 1871; 23 January 1872;  29 January 1872
^xvii George born 18 March 1867; Frank b 20 April 1868; Edward b 13 April 1879; Mary see Lyttelton Times 24 June  1872. 
^xviii Harper, H J C to Mrs Harris 19 June 1885 BHOLB20p225-5 CADA
^xix The Press 9 November 1880
^xx The Press 27 February 1885
^xxi The Press 17 May 1915
^xxii The Press 25 September 1889
^xxiii See https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/223688700/alice-l-sanders
I am grateful to Christine Hickton of Hawke’s Bay for her help in researching the Sanders family.
^xxiv Lyttelton Times 4 November 1891; Star 18 September 1891.
^xxv The Christchurch City Council Cemetery Database Barbadoes Street Cemetery Plot 833. Later, her son, George, was buried in the same plot.