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Restoring Christchurch's quake-battered Nurses' Memorial Chapel is to get underway in the New Year, Mayor Lianne Dalziel announced today.

Re-opening the historic chapel – believed to be the only chapel in the world built to commemorate nurses lost in the First World War – is estimated to cost up to $1.8 million following the damage it suffered in the 2011 quakes.

Dalziel said the Council was fully committed to restoring and strengthening the chapel so it can be re-opened in 2018 as part of the country's World War One centenary commemorations. 

The collection to build the memorial chapel started just weeks after the British troopship Marquette was sunk in the Aegean by a torpedo on October 23 1915 with the loss of 10 New Zealand nurses – three of them from Christchurch Hospital.

 

By the time the gothic revival chapel – built on the grounds of Christchurch Hospital – held its first service in late 1927 it had also become a chapel to commemorate nurses who died during the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918.  It is also a memorial to the nurses who died in the Second World War.

Dalziel said as the chapel was the country's only memorial chapel to nurses lost serving in wars and the flu epidemic it had unique national significance. She said it was also special not only for its architecture, carving and stained glass windows (commemorating local nursing pioneers) but the fact that it was saved from two attempts to demolish it in the 1970s and 80s.  "It is a building that has survived against the odds." 

Richie Moyle, the Council's Heritage Rebuild Programme Manager, says that quake damage to the quake included five out of nine columns in the basement having vertical cracking (see image) and the raising of the chapel's special parquet flooring. He added that an engineer working on the project was actually the great-grandson of the chapel's original builder. Moyle said it was hoped to start work on the chapel site in March 2017 and complete it by the end of 2017 in time for re-opening in 2018.

The Friends of the Chapel committee – formed largely by nurses to stop the attempts in the 1970s and 80s to demolish the chapel – is also to launch its own fundraising project to raise funds for new visitor resources and displays for the chapel. More information at: cnmc.org.nz