Urutī’s First World War fallen were first honoured on the memorial obelisk at nearby Urenui, unveiled on Anzac Day 1920 (this memorial also honoured the fallen of Pukearuhe, Onaero and Okoke).
The Anglican Bishop of Auckland, Dr Alfred Walter Averill, laid the foundation stone for a fallen soldiers’ memorial church at Urutī on 19 November 1924. The church, which later became known as All Saints Church, was dedicated on 4 March 1925.
In 1939 the Urutī community began raising funds to erect a centennial gateway as its contribution towards the New Zealand centennial. War intervened, and the gate was not erected on the chosen site in front of the church until 1949. By this time it had been designated a war memorial gate and incorporated tablets with rolls of honour for both world wars, listing 13 and four names respectively. The Urutī Centennial and War Memorial was dedicated on 29 May 1949.
Today the church is no longer regularly used as a place of worship and its original function as a war memorial has largely been forgotten. However, a brass tablet inside the church lists the same names as on the memorial gate.
Sources: ‘Heroes Recognised: Urenui’s War Memorial’, Taranaki Daily News, 27/4/1920, p. 5; ‘For Those Who Fell’, NZ Herald, 24/11/1924, p. 10; ‘The Bishop’s Taranaki Visit’, Church Gazette, vol. 55, no. 1, January 1925, p. 1; ‘All Saints, Uruti’, Church Gazette, vol. 55, no. 3, March 1925, p. 39; ‘All Saints, Uruti’, Church Gazette, vol. 55, no. 4, April 1925, p. 63; ‘Approved Centennial Memorials’, New Zealand Centennial News, no. 15, February 1941, p. 21; ‘Centennial and War Memorial at Uruti Unveiled’, Taranaki Daily News, 30/5/1949; Glenwyss Brooks, How Green Was Our Valley: Collected Memories of Uruti, New Plymouth, 1994, pp. 117-24, 151-3.
Exterior images: Jock Phillips, 2010; Main and interior images: Robyn Forryan, 2015
Text: Bruce Ringer, Auckland Libraries, 2015