It has been subject to many repairs since its first unveiling in the Octagon in 1864 and an entire dismantling and re-erection on its present site in 1873 and it had already been built, wholly or partly in Melbourne before being taken to pieces and reassembled here for the 1864 unveiling.
The latest work undertaken by Mr Marcus Wainwright involved only half dismantling it. But the earlier whole dismantlings were for making and relocating it, not restoration.
Part of what has been done is the removal and replacement of earlier restoration work. The new work started in 2009 and adheres to modern, ''best practice'' building conservation standards. For instance it allows new, replacement stone work to be clearly visible instead of attempting to ''age'' it or ''cleaning'' the old stone so that, too, seemed suddenly new.
When the latter approach was used on the Otago Boys' High School's main block's principal tower in the late 1980s, the public was very pleased.
When the new method was used on Otago Girls' High School's main block just a few years later I remember a workman telling me disparagingly it had only been done to save money.
Although it leaves things looking a bit piebald for a while I think it's generally to be preferred, though this shouldn't be turned into dogma. In the case of the Cargill Monument it seems fine to me.
The monument commemorates Captain William Cargill (1783-1860), the secular leader of the Otago settlement. He was, of course, a Presbyterian and Presbyterians are a little wary of statues in anything like a religious context.
This may have been in the designer's mind when he conceived this monument which many have compared to the Scott Memorial in Edinburgh which has one conspicuous difference: a large statue of Sir Walter Scott seated beneath its canopy.
The Cargill Monument has a similar roofed space central to its fabric, as well as some others. But no effigy of ''The Captain of Our Souls'' fills it.
This is because, I think, none was intended. The vaulted space is what in ecclesiastical architectural terms is a ''ciborium'', in Gothic architecture typically a vaulted roof over an altar. It doesn't contain a figure. Its emptiness is to indicate the special nature of the commemorated and the fact of his absence, an elegant reference to his decease.
The principal ciborium is still eloquently empty but a higher one now has a metal column visibly rising through it. This has been done to make the topmost parts of the structure resistant to earthquakes - the work was in progress during the very damaging ones in Christchurch in 2010-11. One person asked me what I thought of the ''stent''. It is a bit unfortunate, but generally the restoration is a job well done.
The Cargill Monument is an example of the revived 13th and 14th-century Gothic manner, very early for New Zealand and highly decorated and thus shocking when new.
But its model is less the Edinburgh monument than the ''Eleanor Crosses'' as N.Y.A. Wales shrewdly observed in 1890. There are surviving medieval ones and the Charing Cross monument in London is another Victorian one, designed by E.M. Barry and unveiled in 1865, one year after the Dunedin example.
In parallel with the restoration work I was commissioned to do some research on the monument. It is a New Zealand Historic Places Trust category 1 historic place so it's not in need of recognition.
It turns out there are surprisingly few Gothic revival monuments around the world, this being a type which resisted export from Britain. And ours looks good beside its peers. This is an internationally significant structure in terms of both its rarity and aesthetic success.
More is known about its designer now too, Charles Robert Swyer (1825-76)
whose own-designed house in Park St survives though it and the connection are not well known. Born in Manchester, he became an architect and engineer working in railway construction. He had connections to the Anglican Church and went to Victoria on that account.
Mr Swyer was related by marriage to Arthur Guyon Purchas (1821-1906), another architect-engineer who came to New Zealand and built churches.
Mr Swyer was appointed engineer to the Otago Provincial Council and was apparently here by late 1862. As well as the monument, he designed a powder magazine at Andersons Bay and a stone school at Caversham, among other things.
He left in 1865, not for Australia as it was long supposed, but for Manchester where his 1871 Barton's Arcade survives and is still admired. It features curvilinear ironwork like a swan's neck.
The Swire family crest has explicit swan's neck emblems and there's one on the Cargill Monument (pictured).
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
