Christchurch Cathedral

The badly damaged ChristChurch Cathedral will be pulled down, it has been announced.

Really unhappy news - but looking at this picture, it's hard to imagine a different decision being viable.

Bishop Victoria Matthews confirmed the city's icon would be demolished at a press conference on Friday afternoon in Christchurch

The cathedral was badly damaged during last February's earthquake which killed 185 people.

Bishop Matthews said the building would be deconstructed down to a level of 2-3 metres so heritage items could be removed and stored until decisions about a new cathedral were confirmed.

"There will be no bulldozers or wrecking balls, on the job," she said.

"We acknowledge the high level of community interest and sense of ownership as the cathedral was both an iconic building and a place of regular worship by many.

"However, this is now a very dangerous building that needs to be made safe."

"Our priority is also to ensure people working on-site are safe - in fact if anyone had been in the building on December 23 [when an aftershock hit] they would have been put at a great risk of serious injury or worse."

"We are also mindful that since December 23, the context of our decision making has changed given the further deterioration of the building and the risk of further seismic events, according to the geotechnical experts."

This is a picture which we took (as you can see) at the end of December 2010 - before the 'big' one hit - sad to think that the square will never be the same again. The cathedral has been one of  'the' icons of Christchurch for over a hundred years so it's hard to imagine how they are going to handle it's demolition and how decisions will be made about what eventually will stand on this site.

Dis al!