Biography

Alfred Brunton c1827 – 1900

Alfred Brunton was one of the most dynamic evangelists of Victorian Dunedin. The son of an engineer, he was born in Islington, London, probably in 1827. He went to Australia at the age of 19, intent on being a gold miner, but instead became a teacher, evangelising in his spare time. Brunton arrived in Dunedin in 1866 to relieve the minister of the Moray Place Congregational Church and was afterwards a preacher for the Plymouth Brethren. He delivered the gospel in a rousing, popular, straight-from-the-shoulder style and was soon attracting hundreds to the Sunday evening services at Farley’s Hall in Princes Street. In the 1870s he established a choir of more than 100 voices, knwon as “Brunton’s Choir”, which introduced the lively choruses of Moody and Sankey to Dunedin and helped to attract even greater crowds. A sailor at a meting in Port Chalmers later described Brunton and his choir:
“Gathered close to the platform was a little company of well-dressed men and women intent upon the words of a thick-set dark-visaged man, who was addressing the volubly… Suddenly I heard him say, “Now then, one, two” and with a sweep of his hand he launched them into another burst of song, quite unaccompanied, but wonderfully sweet.”

In 1880 the Assembly moved to the Garrison Hall, where on one occasion a congregation estimated at 2800 packed in to hear Brunton and a fellow evangelist. Brunton died in 1900 at the age of 72, his wife having died some years earlier. According to a friend he was active to the end, and died “practically in harness”.

Sources:
Death certificate
Otago Daily Times, 18 May 1900, 19 May 1900
Frank T. Bullen, With Christ at Sea (1901)
Charles Croot, Dunedin Churches
Peter Lineham, A History of Assemblies of Brethren in New Zealand (1977)