'Everything's pretty charred': Police seek cause of fire that gutted Napier church

Police are investigating the cause of a fire that gutted St Paul's Presbyterian Church in central Napier on Monday morning.

"Everything's pretty charred," the parish's co-minister, Mark Johnston, says of the damage.

Emergency services were called to the blaze on Tennyson Street about 1am.

The building was well involved when crews arrived, and five fire trucks with two support vehicles fought the blaze.

The fire was extinguished shortly after 2am and there were no reports of injuries.

Members of the church's community took to social media today to express their shock and sadness at the damage following a post of images from inside the building.

One described the building as a "treasure in the town" and said the church would be missed by multiple generations of people in the area.

Johnston, co-minister of the parish for the last two years alongside his wife, Carolyn Kelly, said a lot of the historic character of the church was destroyed.

"The body of the church has been pretty devastated by fire and water damage. The internals of the church [are] pretty much burnt out. The roof structure is still intact ... there was metal framing inside the structure ... but you can see the tin roof from inside now."

The fire was the third time a St Paul's Presbyterian Church had been destroyed since its establishment in Napier in the late 1800s, Johnston said.

The original church was destroyed by fire in 1929, as was a rebuilt church, destroyed by fire months before it could be reopened after the Napier earthquake in 1931.

Pews from the earlier building, integrated into the Tennyson Street site, had been destroyed in the latest fire, Johnson said.

It was too early to tell whether the church would carry on at the Tennyson Street location, he said.

"We'll have to spend the next few months coming to terms with what's happened.

"A lot of our older members are going to be pretty devastated and they'll be grieving the loss of a building for which they've been a part of for a very long time.

"But churches are not just buildings and we are a people who will gather again as we have in the past."

Johnston said he was called about the fire about 2am and had been at the building greeting and comforting members of the church who were dropping in to see the damage.

"It's pretty upsetting. [I'm] feeling for the people in our congregation. Some are pretty upset ... it's upsetting for us ... it's mutual," he said.

He was grateful for the support of the community in the wake of the fire.

"People rally round and we've already felt that from the community and we'll feel that in the coming days.

"People feel this, not just our own congregation. Churches mean a lot to people - even if they don't go to church, people see them as sacred spaces and they see them as symbols of constancy in the midst of change. I think a lot of people will feel this across the city," Johnston said.