All Saints Anglican Church (187 Hinemoa Street)

The Anglican history of Birkenhead began slowly. Birkenhead was originally under the mandate of the vicar of Devonport, who oversaw all the Anglicans on the North Shore and as far north as the Mahurangi River. Yet Anglican workers at the Colonial Sugar refinery wanted more direct access to the church. In the 1880s, a local congregation met for the first time under a shop verandah at Chelsea. Around the same time, a Sunday school formed in the village, run by William F. Hammond, who also designed the Zion Hill Methodist Church. A chapel at Chelsea was eventually erected in 1885 and continued to operate there for over twenty years. The building, rechristened St Peters Anglican Church, was moved to Birkdale in 1907 and later to Beach Haven in 2000.

With the chapel removed, local Anglicans began to meet at the hall of the Ancient Order of Foresters, which had been built to replace an earlier structure in 1905. The hall was located at approximately the current site of the Library and Civic Centre near Highbury. On 21 November 1910, a well-attended concert was held by the congregation which gathered enough money to buy the Foresters Lodge Hall. Even before renovations began, the Anglicans resumed meeting in the old structure from 1911. Throughout 1912 and 1913, the building was expanded and upgraded to add more seating and a school.

Christened All Saints Church, after a similarly named church in Ponsonby, the renovated building opened for its first service on Friday, 20 June 1913 in a dedication ceremony led by Bishop Commissary Archdeacon William Calder. A decade later, the building was moved south along Hinemoa Street to its current location. During the process, the downstairs classroom was removed and reinstalled as its own building behind the church. It now functions as the Foresters Hall (formerly the Parish Hall). The entire church complex was restored and improved between 2008 and 2011 and continues to serve the Birkenhead Anglican community today.

Continue along Hinemoa Street.