Panorama St John’s College

Measuring nearly two metres in length this 360-degree panorama records the view from the site of St John’s College, Tamaki as it was in 1851, less than ten years after Bishop Selwyn purchased the land in 1844. The College was founded as an Anglican theological college, but in its early years included other educational institutions and was the heart of ‘Bishop’s Auckland’ as Selwyn called it. Taken from the highest point of the ridge where St John’s Road today runs, the College buildings are in the immediate foreground of the first four panels and include the Bishop’s House, Dining Hall (built 1849), Kitchen (1846), Māori Adult School, College Chapel (1847) and Māori Boys School. The remaining four panels offer a view of the other side of the road – a vista almost entirely unknown – giving a rare visual insight into the lives of early settlers in Auckland: we see farm buildings and hay stores, stables, a well and various modest homes. The notable features of each of the eight panels is noted in the text beneath, with a compass included within each panel to orient the view, and the direction of each road inscribed upon it.

Caroline Abraham, the artist upon whose work the lithograph was based made the panorama in August 1851. Rev. Vicesimus Lush reporting seeing her working on it, she was ‘still an invalid but in good spirits, and busy when I entered the Bishop’s drawing room painting a panoramic view of St John’s College and all the adjoining buildings, so that her friends in England might have a tolerably clear conception of her present abode.’ The source

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