Easter Sunday. Christchurch. New Zealand.

Easter Sunday lunch is at Torenhof Belgian Beer Cafe in the Provincial Buildings looking out over a sundrenched River Avon. Truly idyllic.

I dined on filet mignon and drunk the recommended Leffe Brune (how appropriate in this cloistered atmosphere to be drinking an Abbey beer).

Fitted out as a 1920's Belgian cafe the food and the service were excellent.

Today I aim to explore the Arts Centre (which immediately strikes me as having the feel of a small Oxbridge College), the original site of the University of Canterbury, and Christchurch Girls' and Boys' High Schools.

Classes commenced at Canterbury College - later to become the University of Canterbury - in temporary accommodation in Lichfield Street in June of 1874. It took a further two years to decide on a site and another year after that before the first permanent building was completed. The site is home to the oldest lecture theatre in New Zealand.

The driving forces of the early years were the College's first professors Alexander William Bickerton and John Macmillan Brown.

A pioneer science educator, Bickerton was genial and outgoing and effusive in his enthusiasms, many of which ran well outside his duties as a university professor. Macmillan Brown, the College's founding arts professor, provided the surer foundation of scholarly discipline. Like Oxbridge 'esprit de corps' (college spirit) was encouraged to develop the whole person through social activity.

Under the leadership of Macmillan Brown, Canterbury College was the first in the British Empire to admit women to its classes. From its foundation the College had a policy of 'educational equality' and between 1873 and 1944 of the 2,600 graduates. 730 were women.

My first stop is the Great Hall and it makes me feel as if I am back at school. With classroom space in short supply, a hall was a luxury for Canterbury College; but the Board commissioned Mountfort to design a 'Great Hall' and it opened on Diploma Day 1882. The first corbel installed was that of Helen Connon (later Macmillan Brown) who in 1881 became the first women honours graduate in the British Empire. By the 1890's the College had become a world leader in the education of women. Helen later married Professor Macmillan Brown.

In 1878 Christchurch Girls' High School commenced classes in newly-built premises on the Rolleston Avenue and Hereford Street corner of the site. By 1881, the building was already too small and the school moved to new premises on Cranmer Square. Helen Connon served for many years with distinction as Lady Principal.

The original school buildings were taken over by the College's School of Art, which remained there until 1957 when it became the first university department to move to the new campus in the Christchurch suburb of Ilam.

Christchurch Boys' High School on the north eastern edge of the site opened in 1881 and stayed longer than the girls' school thus having a much greater impact. By 1897 it was New Zealand's largest secondary school and to cope with its growing roll the school was extended three times in thirty years. Extra classrooms and laboratories as well as a gymnasium (now the Academy theatre) were added. Despite expansion the site became unsuitable for the school's purposes long before its move to Riccarton in 1926.

The 1890's saw a string of famous graduates from Canterbury College including the Maori Sir Apirina Ngata (M.A. 1894, L.L.B. 1897) New Zealand's first biculturalist; Sir James Hight (M.A. 1894), a leading academic and educational administrator between the wars; and Ernest, Lord Rutherford (more about this genius later).

Amongst other famous alumni are Sir Julius von Haast (whom we encountered on my journey around the South Island), Canterbury Museum's first Director and the College's first Professor of Geology; Denis Glover, poet; and Dame Ngaio Marsh, novelist and playwright.

From 1889 the School of Engineering was headed by Robert Julian Scott. Scott's cousin was Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and both men exhibited a similar drive for success. Under Scott's leadership the School of Engineering was considered the most advanced in the British Empire with its graduates filling important posts all over the world.

Talking of eminent families. New Zealand's first university, the University of Otago, was founded in 1869 with one Rev. Dr. Thomas Burns as Chancellor (he being the nephew of one Rabbie Burns, Scotland's national bard).

As the first university in the Empire to accept women into its lectures Canterbury College was a pioneer. Although not always welcomed by men many women went on to greatness. Certainly some came for social contacts and it was not unknown for women students to court future spouses. The regime though could be tough...one woman student was even expelled for wearing trousers for the purpose of bicycle riding.

The Grand Design... Benjamin Mountfort arrived in the port of Lyttelton on the Charlotte Jane in 1850. Working in the Gothic Revival style that he had studied in England, he quickly became one of the province's leading architects.

Gothic Revival, or Victorian Gothic, refers to the period of mock-Gothic architecture practised in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was in effect a return to the building styles of the Middle Ages; a time believed by many to be a watershed in human achievement - both in way of life and art...Therefore worthy of imitation.

Perhaps hard to understand today, Victorian Gothic Revival architecture intertwined with deep moral and philosophical ideals with the style representing a marriage of spiritual and artistic values.

Mountfort's Canterbury College buildings were all built to High Victorian Collegiate Gothic (like my old school at Brighton College and many nineteenth century public schools...Christ's College here in Christchurch is another good example). The style was considered the most suitable for expressing a Christian Oxbridge tradition.

Faced with interminable delays, budget cuts and professional demands there had to be inevitable compromises. Almost all of the buildings in the Arts Centre complex though were in place in time for the College's 50th Jubilee in 1923.

Built in 1877 the Clock Tower (where I am currently) is the oldest stone building at Canterbury College and was designed to reflect that Christian Oxbridge tradition and it feels just like the porters lodge of my old college at Merton. Canterbury College was infact known as the Antipodean Oxford.

The architectural unity here is remarkable in view of the fact that the buildings were assembled piecemeal over half a century. This is due primarily to architect Samuel Hurst Seager who in 1913 persuaded the Board of Governors to accept his 'grand design' for two quadrangles on either side of the new library and for the buildings to be linked by the arcades that have become a much admired feature.

Mountforts' work is one of the reasons Christchurch is such an admired city...the Canterbury Museum and the Provincial Council Chambers are just two of his other works. After all the city's colonial character is reflected in its neo-Gothic buildings such as the Arts Centre, Museum and Cathedral.

Between the two World Wars the site became more and more crowded. After World War Two strenuous moves were made to improve accommodation for the University. These moves eventually led to a new campus in the north-west suburb of Ilam. In 1975, when the university had completed its move the fate of the city centre site and buildings remained unclear. However an early suggestion to create a cultural centre was finally taken up and The Arts Centre Trust was formed in 1978 to administer the site.

The Arts Centre is now the cultural hub of the city with more than forty art galleries, craft studios, shops, theatres, cinemas, cafes, restaurants and bars. Its famous market bursts into life each weekend and is a mecca for New-Zealand made art and craft as well as international foods and live entertainment.

So this is quite the historic site. The original home of the 1873 Canterbury College and then appropriately (considering its future use)the site of the first TV broadcast in New Zealand in 1952...but the real highlight has to be Rutherford's Den.

Ernest Rutherford was born on the 30th of August 1871 on a small section at Spring Grove (Brightwater) near Nelson. He was the fourth of twelve children born to James Rutherford, a mechanic and Martha Thompson, an ex-school teacher. He was the genius who went on to explain how radioactivity was produced by spontaneous breakdown of atoms; he identified the nuclear structure of the atom and he was the first person to split the atom.

In 1897 he won a scholarship to Nelson College, where in 1889 he was head boy.

Ernest moved to Christchurch in 1890 to attend Canterbury College, the beginning of a career that would take him to the universities of Cambridge, McGill, Manchester and back again to Cambridge.

In 1892 he completed his BA and then he completed his MA with first class honours in mathematics and mathematical physics in 1893. It was during this time that he asked permission to use the room that has now become known as Rutherford's Den. In 1894 he took geology and chemistry and graduated BSc in 1895.

Whilst attending Canterbury College he boarded with a widow, Mary Newton, who was involved in the women's suffrage and temperance movements. He later went on to marry her daughter May on June 28th 1900 at St Paul's Papanui (where I took you last week).

They had only one child, Eileen who was born in 1901 and who died nine days after giving birth to her fourth child in December 1930.

In 1895 at the age of 23 he set sail for England to take up his Exhibition of 1851 Scholarship to Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory (where he would later become the Professor of Experimental Physics 1919-1937). He became a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 1898.

During his nine years at McGill he wrote 69 papers and in 1903 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

1907 brought Rutherford back to England as Head of Physics at Manchester and the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize (not for Physics, but for Chemistry).

Knighted in the 1914 New Year's Honours list, Sir Ernest returned to the Cavendish Laboratory as Director in 1919 and in 1931 he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Rutherford of Nelson. He included a kiwi, a Maori warrior and Hermes Trismegistus, the patron of knowledge in his coat of arms.

Rutherford was involved in a number of causes during his life. He campaigned for women to be granted the same privileges as men at Cambridge University and he supported the freedom of the British Broadcasting Corporation from government censorship. Rutherford advised New Zealand University colleges on the appointment of their physics professors and in 1933 he co-founded and became President of the Academic Assistance Council which was established to help academics who had left Germany after Hitler's rise to power. He even chaired a meeting of the Democratic Front at Cambridge University where he supported the ban of aeroplanes in warfare.

He died in Cambridge on October 19th 1937 after a hernia operation and his ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey in Scientist's Corner (near Sir Issac Newton); the only New-Zealander to be granted such an honour.

A great man, yes...but why all the fuss?

Rutherford's Science.

"It is given to a few men to achieve immortality, still less to achieve Olympian rank, during their own lifetime. Lord Rutherford did both".
- New York Times eulogy on Rutherford's death.

For centuries it was believed that atoms were the smallest lumps of matter and that they could not be divided into smaller parts. In 1897 Professor J. J. Thomson at Cambridge had described a particle smaller than an atom, which he called an electron. This research set scientists to find things smaller than an atom. Rutherford, who was studying under Thomson at the time went on to spend much of his life working on research in nuclear physics.

As well as identifying the structure of the atom, he explained naturally occurring radioactivity and was the first person in the world to achieve artificial transmutation (changing one element into another). He was the first to identify and name alpha, beta and gamma rays (the discovery of these particles can be described as the beginning of modern nuclear physics); to identify and count individual atoms and describe them thus giving us a basic idea of what matter is like.

The sheer volume of his experimental work is impressive and his scientific achievements were many. He explained naturally occuring radioactivity, identified the structure of the atom and became the first successful alchemist by changing nitrogen into oxygen.

His ground breaking research meant he was the first to identify and name alpha, beta and gamma rays, the first to identify and count individual atoms and he enabled the age of the earth to be accurately dated for the first time.

During the First World War he led research into the detection of submarines. He worked with radio waves and at one time held the world record for the long-distance transmission of wireless signals.

From his early work grew many of today's technologies including the smoke alarm, the Geiger counter and radioactive dating of minerals.

So let me take you into the Den of world famous scientist Lord Rutherford of Nelson who was a student at Canterbury College from 1890 and where in 1894 he and fellow student J A Erskine asked for permission to use a cloakroom to conduct their experiments. Although cold it was a suitable place for Rutherford's work as the concrete floor minimised vibrations...this is the room that was destined to become Rutherford's Den.

This area beneath a former lecture room is where Rutherford carried out his first experiments whilst a Canterbury College student. The exhibition space is excellent and many of his greatest achievements are on display such as the diagram showing the curves of decay of radioactive elements and his gold foil experiment that provided the first experimental evidence for the structure of the atom.

New Zealand is rightly very proud of him and he of his native land. He never forgot that free public school education at Nelson College which paved the way for his future success and on his death he bequeathed one hundred pounds to his old school. It is appropriate then that his appearance on a New Zealand banknote on November 3rd 1992 was on the $100 note.

Tonight I get to attend Evensong in the Cathedral. A lovely touch was when the Dean came amongst the congregation about twenty minutes before the service to extend his welcome and after the service both he and the Bishop were there to wish one and all a very Happy Easter.

Festal Evensong was the perfect way to round out a truly wonderful day!

Tonight I dined at Two Fat Indians - the art of a pint & curry...trust me, no-one makes a curry like a British Indian.