Also known as: Trinity Congregational Church, State Trinity Theatre, The Octagon, The Church Brew Pub
Location: 124 Worcester Street, Central Christchurch
Current status: Running as The Church Brew Pub
Active as a live music venue: 1975–1993, 2023–present
Website: churchpub.co.nz
History
The building at the corner of Worcester and Manchester Streets was designed by Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort — New Zealand’s most distinguished colonial architect — and opened in 1875 as the Trinity Congregational Church. Mountfort’s design employed the Gothic Revival style, and a deliberate shortening of the transept produced an unexpectedly octagonal floor plan, roofed with a double barrel vault of timber that became one of the most admired ceilings in Christchurch. The building is Heritage New Zealand Category I listed, placing it among the country’s most significant historic structures.
The congregation that gathered beneath that vaulted ceiling included some of the most prominent figures in colonial Christchurch life. Among them was Kate Sheppard, the leader of New Zealand’s women’s suffrage movement, who was a member of the Trinity Congregational congregation and worshipped regularly at the church. That a building now celebrated for its music history also sheltered one of the country’s most consequential reform campaigns is a reminder of how deeply the building was woven into the civic fabric of nineteenth-century Christchurch.
The church functioned as a place of worship for exactly a century. In 1975, the State Insurance Office purchased the building and set about converting it into something quite different: a theatre, restaurant, and bar known as the State Trinity Centre — and at other times as the State Trinity Theatre. The transformation preserved Mountfort’s architecture while giving the space an entirely new purpose. Over the following eighteen years it operated as a performance and entertainment venue, hosting piano examinations, theatrical productions, and a wide variety of musical events. The combination of the Gothic Revival interior and the barrel vault ceiling made it an atmospheric setting unlike any other in the city.
The venue’s most significant moment in New Zealand music history arrived over Easter weekend 1985, when cult Flying Nun act The Axemen booked the space and recorded their landmark album Three Virgins within its walls. Engineered by Larence Shustak, the record was released on Flying Nun in 1986 and went on to become one of the defining documents of the Christchurch underground scene. AudioCulture describes it as “a stone classic” — a fitting summation of an album that captured something genuinely strange and singular about the city’s independent music culture at that moment.
The State Trinity Centre’s life as an entertainment venue came to an end in 1993. After a period of closure and uncertainty, the building found a new identity in 2006 when it reopened as The Octagon restaurant, trading on the distinctive shape of its floor plan. That chapter was itself cut short by the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010–2011: the February 2011 earthquake caused significant structural damage, including the collapse of the tower, and the building was red-stickered — placed off-limits — and stood largely empty for the better part of a decade.
The restoration that followed was a substantial undertaking. Inkster Company led the project, returning Mountfort’s building to something like its former glory and reimagining it once again as a destination venue. The Church Brew Pub opened in 2023, offering a bar with wood-fired pizza, a mezzanine, and a sunlit courtyard — all beneath the same double barrel vault ceiling that has defined the space for a century and a half. The new incarnation won the OneMusic Outstanding Ambience and Design award at the 2023 Canterbury Hospitality Awards, a recognition that the building’s architecture remains as compelling as it ever was. The Church Brew Pub continues to host occasional music events, maintaining a thread of continuity with the building’s long history as a performance space.
A sprawling, mind-bending 90 minutes of catchy songs, horrible noise, catchy noise and horrible songs, built from massed guitars and precarious structures.
AudioCulture, on The Axemen’s Three Virgins (1986)
Christchurch Central, Christchurch 8011, New Zealand
Links
- The Church Brew Pub
- The Axemen — AudioCulture