On our last trip out to Matakohe just before we drove home again I talked the other half into walking down the drive next to the museum so I could have a look at this church.
The Coates Memorial Church opened in 1950 and the architect was Horace Lovell Massey (Massey is a well known name in the Kaipara region).
Inside it's very clean, tidy and well maintained. Mr Massey was also part of a firm named Massey, Morgan, Hyland and Phillips who also designed the nurses home at Napier Hospital (1925) and the Fallen Soldiers Memorial Hospital in Hastings (also 1925). From the research I've read he also designed many other churches, crematoriums and fine houses.
Matakohe is a farming area which was first settled around 1860 by farmers and labourers from England, there were no roads or trails - the only link with the outside world was the sea right through the Kaipara inlet.
A big Kauri gum industry developed here around 1867-1870 by the settlers and from memory the earliers grave we saw was from the 1880s. The name "Coates" as per the name of the church is another well known one for the area - in fact one of our last prime ministers was Gordon Coates who lived in nearby Maungaturoto.
Some information taken from the Maungaturoto - History of the Kaipara Facebook page.
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