First World War memorials installed in St Paul’s Anglican Church, Wairoa, included tablets in remembrance of Sergeant Frederick John Hooper, a member of the Legion of Frontiersman, who was fatally wounded at Gallipoli on 24 August 1915, and Sergeant-Major Charles Hawksworth Brown, who was killed in action two days later. A memorial altar was also placed in the church in 1929 (not pictured here).
After the Second World War the congregation decided upon a more substantial memorial: a new church. The Rt. Rev. N.A. Lesser, Bishop of Waiapu, laid the foundation stone on 6 September 1958. Its text reads in part: THIS CHURCH IS BUILT / TO THE GLORY OF GOD / AND IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO / GAVE THEIR LIVES IN WAR. The impressive new concrete-clad church was opened on 15 October 1960. A memorial plaque in the nave lists the names of 12 men from the parish who gave their lives in the First World War and 25 who gave their lives in the Second World War.
See: ‘Wairoa Plans a New St. Paul’s Church’, Waiapu Church Gazette, vol. 7, no. 1, September 1944, p. 4; A.O. Edwards, A Short History of the Parochial District of St Paul’s, Wairoa, Auckland, 1948, pp. 36, 38, 48; Diocese of Waiapu Yearbook, 1957, app. 3, p. 4; Diocese of Waiapu Yearbook, 1960, app. 3, p. 4.
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