19 Facts About Benjamin Mountfort

Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort was an English emigrant to New Zealand, where he became one of the country's most prominent 19th-century architects.

Benjamin Mountfort was instrumental in shaping the city of Christchurch's unique architectural identity and culture, and was appointed the first official Provincial Architect of the developing province of Canterbury.

Benjamin Mountfort was the son of perfume manufacturer and jeweller Thomas Mountfort and his wife Susanna.

Benjamin Mountfort studied architecture under the Anglo-Catholic architect Richard Cromwell Carpenter, whose medieval Gothic style of design was to have a lifelong influence on Mountfort.

Benjamin Mountfort married Emily Elizabeth Newman on 20 August 1850, and 18 days later the couple emigrated to New Zealand.

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Benjamin Mountfort arrived in Canterbury full of ambition and drive to begin designing in 1850 as one of a wave of settlers encouraged to immigrate to the new colony of New Zealand by the British Government.

Benjamin Mountfort was a Freemason and an early member of the Lodge of Unanimity, the main building of which he designed in 1863.

Benjamin Mountfort's career received a fillip when he was commissioned to design the St John's Anglican church at Waikouaiti in Otago.

From this time onwards, Benjamin Mountfort was a disciple of Pugin's strong Anglo-Catholic architectural values.

The irony of this was that many of Benjamin Mountfort's churches were for Roman Catholics, as so many of the new immigrants were of Irish origin.

Benjamin Mountfort often worked in wood, a material he in no way regarded as an impediment to the Gothic style, though he was unique in this respect as Gothic buildings were often created from stone and mortar.

Benjamin Mountfort was responsible for several alterations to the absentee main architect's design, most obviously the tower and the west porch.

Benjamin Mountfort designed the font, the Harper Memorial, and the north porch.

In 1872 Benjamin Mountfort became a founding member of the Canterbury Association of Architects, a body which was responsible for all subsequent development of the new city.

Between 1886 and 1897, Benjamin Mountfort worked on one of his largest churches, the wooden St Mary's, the cathedral church of Auckland.

Outside of his career, Benjamin Mountfort was keenly interested in the arts and a talented artist, although his artistic work appears to have been confined to art pertaining to architecture, his first love.

Benjamin Mountfort was a devout member of the Church of England and a member of many Anglican church councils and diocese committees.

Benjamin Mountfort was buried in the cemetery of Holy Trinity Avonside, the church which he had extended in 1876.

Cyril Benjamin Mountfort was responsible for the church of St Luke's in the City, which was an unexecuted design of his father's.