Christopher Vine's obsession with old buildings has been almost lifelong. He was the first architect to enrol in the Historic Buildings Conservation course set up by London University's Institute of Archeology, and he worked on the propping up of various venerable piles around Britain. Feeling during the Cuba crisis that Europe was a less than ideal place to raise four children, the family emigrated to New Zealand and settled in Nelson in 1964. The delightful Teal Valley, then sparsely occupied, has been his home ever since. He lives in a cottage reputedly built in 1845. Shortly after arriving in Nelson the Provincial Building fiasco blew up. The unsuccessful attempt
to save it rekindled the old building mania. He served on both the Broadgreen and Melrose committees, besides those of the Historic Places Trust. the Historical Society and the Suter Art Society, and was a Trustee of the Suter Gallery for many years. More recently the Nelson Institute has been a focus of attention. Between embellishing the several crumbling buildings and planting trees on his quasi-farm, he divides his time between writing, illustrating. and most especially, making things. Feeling that the description of our species as Homo Sapiens is a gross conceit, he prefers the term Homo Faber, Man the Maker.
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THE NELSON INSTITUTE Founded on a ship coming ou t to New Zealand in 1841, the Nelson Institute is older than the settlement that bears its name. It is also the oldest surviving Institution of its kind in the country and was incorporated through the Nelson Institute Act 1907. For many years it was active in promoting the cultural life of the region. The Museum and Library, formerly its domain, have been administered publicly since the 1960's. The Institute has initiated lectures and played a role in both Adult Education and town planning, and runs regular meetings where writers discuss their new works. This book is its first venture in the field of publishing, and marks the one hundred and. fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Nelson's first Reading Room and Library.
TABLEOF CONTENTS
Preamble ..................................................................... .. 8 Come Inside ....................................................... .. ........ 9 Earth to Earth .. .............. .................................... ......... 12 Home Sweet Home .............. ..................................... 15 The Icing on the Cake ............................................... 26 The Red Shed ............................................................. 33 The Demon Drink ..................................................... 39 Commerciai .. .. .. .. ........................... ............................. 44 Public Building ..........................................................48 Churches & Memorials ............................................ 52
Published by The Nelson Institute Inc, 470 Atawhai Drive,
Nelson, New Zealand
First published 1992
Schools .... ............ ........................................................58 The Sea .. ...................................................................... 60 Lines of Communication .......................................... 63
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Wheels of Industry .................................................... 66 Streetscape ....................................................... .. .. ....... 70 South and West ........................................ ................. 75
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Christopher B Vine
Colden Bay .................................................................81
ISBN 0-473-D1621-4
The Late Lamented .................................. ................. 93 Post-Amble ........... ................................................ .... 103
Colour Separations by Litho Laboratories, Wellington
Typeset by Progressive Printing Ltd, Nelson Printed by Stiles Printing Ltd, Nelson
DEDICATION To those who made what is drawn within.
FOREWORD C::::~=:::::::::=--I
ACKNOW1EDGEMENTS This collection has been made possible only because of the help and co-operation of a number of people. Firstly those who have had sufficient faith in the idea to help financially in the project, and to the Trust Bank Canterbury Community Trust and also the Mackee Trust due thanks are given. Also to Bruce Hancox and judi Lenart for their great encouragement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Books by the following authors have been invaluable, Ruth Allan, Lois Voller, jeff Newport, Shirley Horrocks, Mike johnson, Cyprian Brereton, Enga Washbourne, june Neale and P V and N L Wastney, and the compilers of Broad's jubilee History of Nelson and the journals of the Nelson Historical Society - and its cousin in Motueka 'And so it Began'.
Also I am greatly indebted to the Right Hon. Sir Geoffrey Palmer for his very pertinent Foreword. Besides these the committee of the Nelson Institute have put up with my harangues and obsessional promotion of the idea with kindly indulgence, in particular Colin Gunn who has kept track of my wayward ideas. Robbie Burton of Craig Potton Publishers who has helped with the intricacies of book production. Dawn Smith of the Provincial Museum has also been a provider of information. My thanks also to Graham Spencer who has cast his professional eye over my erratic script. But the most important has been the kindly help and interest of countless Nelsonians, who have tolerated my questions with a fund of good will and often fascinating anecdote. This is their book too.
Christopher Vine is a man of unusual talents. He sees in the "",__= 1 buildings around us qualities which so many miss and never bring to mind. This book contains a great deal of ~~_~_~~_~.~~~ discernment about I!! architecture, the hand-made environment fashioned out of the natural environment by the craftsmen among the early settlers in the Nelson region. To many this is a world we have lost, but not to Christopher Vine. Nelson's rich historical heritage of buildings has long been an outlet for Vine's drawings and his exquisi te taste for detail. He sees in the work of those who have gone before the essential human qualities of buildings. Those builders wanted something which was not only useful and practical but also expressed the pride of creativity and excellence of craft. These are qualities not always found in our contemporary buildings. Many of the buildings in this book are wooden - the material most easily to hand in the early days and a material of warmth and versatility. Wooden buildings reqUire maintenance, however, and there is a tendency to pull them down and start again rdlher than repair them. Often much of quality is lost when this happens. Christopher Vine has been observing Nelson for many years now. He has been here quite long enough to witness acts of architectural vandalism which have befallen some of Nelson's public buildings. Most notable of these was the demolition of the Nelson Provincial Chambers, a structure of the most remarkable symmetry and elegance. It is devoutly to be wished that his painstaking work on the architecture of Nelson will influence people to preserve and nurture what we have. Much that is
good remains as this book amply demonstra tes. This book represents the culmination of many patient years of seeking out, drawing and investigating the human history of many buildings both grand and humble in the Nelson province. The conservation of buildings is not some fad of extreme environmentalists. ' Buildings require money and resources. The next generation can never afford to replace everything built by the previous generation, not to mention the cultural deprivation such a policy would bring. As we arrive at the point of human history when a prime concern of public policy must be with sustainability - the need to ensure that the resources of the planet are not all used up so we do not leave sufficient resources for future generations to live in dignitycare for old buildings will become even more important than it is now. Christopher Vine may not relish the twentieth century, but he has lavished loving care on the richness of our nineteenth century heritage. Those people who built the buildings depicted in this book have something to say to us now through their work, something which is hard to hear in the noise of the many ct:mfused and multi-media voices of the late twentieth century. It is a message about there being in life as in buildings a sense of proportion, a pride in the beauty of things which have been well made, a conviction that simplicity and economy are not enemies of quality. This book, in short, is a celebration of values of human civilisation as they have been expressed in the earlier buildings of the Nelson region. It is a further demonstration, were any needed, of the grace and elegance of this most blessed part of New Zealand. Thank you, Christopher Vine. Geoffrey Palmer Patron Nelson Institute.
In case anyone should think that I have deliberately ignored the Maori tradition I should explain that I do not feel competent to comment. The vigorous resurgence of Maori culture whose most visible signs in Nelson are to the north of the city, are still in the process of taking shape. Others better versed than I shall have their say. It is good to experience diversity; this breadth can enrich us all.
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7
PREAMBLE ~
A few words of explanation. I can date my first drawing of Nelson to the day in July 196,4 after moving into a shack which was to be home for the first few months of living here. -;;::: ::::::: This drawing of the cottage L...~_ _ _"":::'_---l has, over nearly thirty years, been followed by several hundred others. Just how many times I have written or raved about the place I have long since stopped counting. It was a time when some of the older people still
referred to Britain as "home" even if they had never lived there, when old crocks and furniture were often just discarded, and the wooden fretwork which now fetches extravagant prices was being thrown out to save on the painting bills. The controversy over the old Provincial Building was raging and the historical societies and other bodies concerned with New Zealand's past were regarded by many as peculiar if not worse. Things have changed m the three decades since, but I was very fortunate to have arrived then, when the interest in things past was beginning to reach a wider public. A little later, Graham Spencer, the Editor of the Nelson Evening Mail suggested an illustrated series
for the paper. This, after a year's contributions, I felt had about covered the field. But there is something special about living in Nelson, it does not give up all its treasures at once. You can for instance, whisk around it for a few days wi th a camera and assemble a collection of photographs. But to me at any rate, much of the subtler qualities only reveal themselves slowly, to those who live here. So that first series has been followed by three others at irregular intervals. A bit like Dame Nellie Melba's 'last' concert, it happened over and over again. Why drawing you may ask. Firstly I am no great shakes as a photographer. Also 1 enjoy drawing, it forces you really to examine a scene, and features become evident over the time you spend putting pencil to paper. Also the things, mostly, that I am drawn to draw are themselves the product of hand and eye. This, in the building field is now less true; the production line and power tool, even the computer, have modified the techniques; buildings are less handmade objects than before. So to make this record by hand also seems to me appropriate. As a schoolboy I was urged to keep a commonplace book, a collection of bits and pieces that caught the imagination. This book too is a collection, a ' quite personal one, of Nelsoniana that have seemed to me noteworthy, and I very much hope that other people will gain pleasure too by perusing this record of a special place.
COME INSIDE Porches have at least two purposes. To make a comfortable transition between the inside and outside, a place
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unfurled, goodbyes exchanged and more earthily, gumboots _...,."" ......... .......... L..:....:...-_ _~_--I stacked. They also help to prevent rain driving within, and give emphasis to the entrance; an architectural way of saying 'Enter Here'. _~o.
Often they only serve the last purpose, such as the Ii ttle curved roof over the front doors of Broadgreen. Flanked by two strangely detailed columns it is some country carpenter's idea of ionic, very attenuated but all the more intriguing for that. The Technical School doorway is a particularly happy example of symbolism, at least I suppose that that's what it is. There are a couple of birds of prey (judging by their fierce beaks) supporting another curved canopy. They don't look like owls, which one might reasonably expect on a place of learning, more like vultures. Still they are a definite plus. Would that we could find the funds (and the fancy) to embellish our dull and utilitarian modem equivalent.
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u The only visible part of the once elaborate porch to the 1904 Suter Gallery Building is a small portion above the roof line, with stained glass which previously let light into the gallery but now merely illumines the roof space.
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Fittingly the Cathedral should end this section, for the Gothic portal is the only part of the original conception to be carried out in its entirety, the nave being truncated at triforium level on acwur.t of earthquake worries, Still this is a good piece of work in our local marble, and a tantalising glimpse of what the whole thing might have been like if only the Murchison earthquake had held off a few years,
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EARTHTOEAR Cob, like mud, clod and sod, sounds earthy. Cob buildings, fashioned from the very soil on which they stand, usually have a plain no-nonsense simplicity which admirably fitted the building needs of a young settlement rich in labour and poor in resources. The skills needed to put up a reasonable shelter are not great and almost anyone with strong arms and a shovel can make a go of it. It was quite nostalgic to find so many houses built this way when I did my first explorations in Nelson. Many of the first settlers here came from the West Country in England which was my home too. Cob has been a traditional material there for centuries. The birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh at Cola ton Raleigh in Devon is still in pretty good nick after four hundred abysmal British winters. If the local adage 'Give un a good hat and dry feet' is followed, (that is dry foundations and a roof that throws the rain well clear of the walls) then, barring Acts of God, they will last for a very long time.
An unseen advantage of this way of building is the provision of a cellar, this being the quarry from which the earth is dug. A useful adjunct in the days before refrigerators; ozone friendly too. Lined with a damp-proof layer of puddled clay, these made the ideal storage place for cider. The mixture of this earth combined with straw and dung was slopped on wet along the lines that the walls were to take. As the stuff dried it would be pared down with a cob knife to make the surfaces true. After drying for a few months the walls could be plastered or white washed. The whitewash was
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A few hundred metres sou th of Broadgreen is Aldinga, of roughly the same vintage, also having additions. And at Hope is another in Hoddy's Road. I thought that this was a hopeless case when I first saw it. The sprinklers of an irrigating plant with their upward spurting jets of water were effectively defeating the role of the wide verandahs in keeping the walls dry. Fortunately it was saved in time and has been painstakingly restored as a house once more.
In Brightwater is Longfield. So far as I know it has been pretty well continuously inhabited, and it too has bee·fortunate in its present owners who have sympathetically cared for it. Not SO fortunate was Rosebank, a pleasant two storey house once at the top of the rise leading towards the college in Nayland Road. All that now remains are some large trees and rambler roses. It was sacrificed by the Ministry of Works to make room for a motorway that twenty years later has still not materialised. The love affair we have with motor cars is a powerful cause of the destruction of old buildings. Car parks, road widening and schemes like the chimeral motorway are as big a threat as borer, dry rot and good old neglect. A famous, or infamous, cob hotel is the old accommodation house at Tophouse. It was the scene of a notorious murder, and the bullet holes are still displayed to visitors in search of a vicarious thrill. Though it no longer serves its original pur-
12
HOME SWEET HOME
Cob was also used for buildings other than houses. As the road in Hoults Valley breasts the _ first little rise, there is a hop kIln, whIch stIll ove r looks the hop gardens beloW. Kilns have, not surprisingly, had their share of fires, so cob, being incombustible, and a good insulator too, was a good choice of matenal here. Far from being a mere historical curiosity, earth as a building material seems to be enJoymg some.thing of a renaissance. Adobe blocks are now bemg made locally and are being used WIth enthUSIasm as this Lud Valley mud house shows .. In .nearby Todd Valley is one already quietly merglng mto the. hillside after only three years, It'S earth roof d~'p ping long pink streamers of geraniums. ThIS IS going to earth with a will!
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At about the time audiences were raising the roof to Dame Nellie Melba's popular en,core;":;:' piece, 'Home Sweet Home', there was a very different voice raised on the other side of the world, which was l!!!!!!====:<1 reshaping their idea of homeor rather house. There is a vital difference. The Swiss architect Le Corbusier wrote volumes, but his best known quote must surely be, "A house is a machine for living in". Quite so. Like a termite mound. It fulfils the necessities of life support, but does not cater to the unnecessities. A rational solution to the problem of slotting people into their pigeon holes. The result has not been universally successful. The image of estates of high-rise apartment blocks in the United States being dynamited because they have become too dangerous to live in is one of the touchstones of modern imagery. A dream that went sour. What, if anything, has this to do with New Zealand, let alone Nelson? Fortunately, so far, not a lot, for arguably still our greatest asset is space. But the idea of 'home' is eroded by other forces too. The mobile society makes living for years in the same place, if you are ambitious, often difficult. Estate agents add to the restlessness and uniformity by seeing dwellings not so much as something tailored to individual idiosyncrasy, but as a product that should meet some ideal lowest common multiple of saleability so that there will be a quick tum-over. I may sound carping but it will serve perhaps to tip the balance slightly in the direction of 'home'.
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Like well worn slippers, homes become moulded to those that live in them. Usually this is a quality that comes with age. Some new places work well too of course, but mostly the ones I have chosen come into the comfortable slipper category. Though it is now a garden shed, the Watts' cottage in Hardy Street has a fair claim to being the oldest dwelling in Nelson. Built from bricks brought out as ballast in 1841, the door with its fielded panelling was probably an import too, as there wouldn't have been much time to make such niceties in those first days of settlement. Nearby in Tasman Street are a number of other modest cottages. One right beside the Brook can't be much younger, and further north are several of a type once common that are right on the roadside. Front gardens have advantages, but that small separation is often enough to limit conversation to a 'G'day', whereas in thesp street side homes conversation came more easily.
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Country cottages were similarly compact. One built in 1845 by that remarkable immigrant, Feodor Kelling, at Ranzau, is still largely as it ~as nearly one hundred and fifty years ago; the wmdows and weatherboards are original. In those days it was easy to be buried on your own land so he and hIs two wives have their grave under a coppIce of elm trees, the stone inscribed in his native tongue. Of the same period is the plan of a cottage shown in exploded view, in Teal Valley. Its type came from New England where it was called the Cape Cod salt box. It would have been sensible to use North American precedent here rather than European, as the conditions were comparable. In Britain skilled labour to lay bricks and cut stone was plentiful, timber was getting scarce, and time was not us~ally pressing. The opposite was true both here and m America so wooden buildings made a lot of sense. In this c~ttage the entrance was straight into the parlour, and the big kitchen· at the back must hav~ been very dark with only one small WIndow lookmg due sou tho A steep staircase leads to the three rooms in the loft running the full length of the roof. The low ceilings make it much easier to heat. Just what is so sacred about the eight foot stud, I wonder? There is no waste space at all, and apart from the low head room of the doorway leading to the loft (and you have only to bang your head a couple of times to remember) it makes a wonderfully convenient and compact dwelling. On even more modest lines is the Turner cottage at Carluke in the Rai. Though dated f"",m the 1880's its type has been in common use from the earhest days of settlement. Made from split to tara logs and roofed wi th shakes from the same trees, it has tiny windows let into the solid timber walls. The Turners were a remarkable family. The first Europeans to try their luck in the then remote Rai. Coming from the relative sophistication of an archItect's '" practice in London the contrast must have been. ."t~:t~ extreme. When the house was reopened after bemg ~ painstakingly restored by descendants in 1967 it was strange to see architectural textbooks on the rough : ]~:t{~~~1~ hewn shelves of what was really the woodsman'S· cottage par excellence. Rather grander but still one of the first, Oaklands.,.under the Richmond foothills, was built from timber brought out in some of the first ships and from which a barracks for new arrivals had been made. Not long after it was dismantled and the present house made from it. There have been addItIons since but the original part is still clearly visible.
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Huge gum trees screen it now, but the roof line of Stafford Place at Appleby must once have made a striking sight across the Waimea Plains. When the Pisi' house (known as "Old Peasy") was still standing beside it, the group would have been even more impressive, but that was taken down after the '29 earthquake.
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Another noticeable silhouette is at Houlton, the country retreat that the Buxton family built at Ruby Bay. Carefully restored it presents still the same facade, with steep pitched slate roof and crows foot gable, though the castellated porch is now replaced by a verandah. There are more gables at Thorpe Street in Motueka. But the most gabled of them all, so much SO that it takes its name from them, is in Waimea West. Built of plastered sun-dried bricks, from material dug on the property, it is a handsome hom~. The roof was originally slated and there was a decorative balcony across the front, but apart from that both interior and exterior are little altered. The northern end, which was a country store for years has still the counter and cupboards while outside a cobbled path leads to a parterre of trimmed box. This was the part of early Nelson to be settled by the gentry, Dillon Bell, Dr Monroe, the Blundells, the Kerrs (small brick portions of their homestead still stand), all had holdings within walking distance of each other. At Brightwater the Malt House Farm (the brick malt house is still there) has more horizontal lines, with a hint of Georgian abou t it. On the other side of Nelson at the Glen there is a similar spacious feeling in the house designed by John Scott in the 1880's called Woodvale. Apart from small changes to the verandah it has altered little. A rather grander version of the same type is a short ride away. Hillwood, built for Arthur Shuckberg Collins, was quite symmetrical when put up in the middle of the last century, though some years later a wing to the right was added to accommodate a ballroom including pillars with lotus headed capitals. The grounds are stately with some of the biggest redwoods in the dominion. On New Year's day a fair is held on the wide lawn in front of the house framed by great oaks. A perfect setting.
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Almost at its gates is a more modest house, of two storeys, though hard to see behind its evergreen trees. Thackwood dates from the 1880's and is again in Georgian mode, very four square and narallV altered.
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Nearer the city the high red gables of Cnew,erula peer over the greenery and command a wonderful prospect of shimmering tidal flats, with a distant prospect (in winter) of snow-clad mountains across the bay. Above Crewenna is the workshop built to house the Pottery that Harry and May Davis established in the early 60's. A pioneer project, theirs w, the first ripple in what later became a tidal wave of potters. Now it is hard to go down any by-road in the province without being confronted with a pottery sign. The two-storeyed verandahed house, villa grown taller, was a favourite at the be'gilming;;", of the century. The one that stands on the rise beyond the bridge at Tapawera is a particularly good one but there are many others both in the country and in the town. 18
Looking east along Bridge Street is a italianate house, Fellworth, whose wide eaves supported by paired timber brackets, imitation stone quoins at the comers, semi-circular headed windows and acanthus leaf column capitals to the verandah, make it almost the mirror image of Melrose in Brougham Street. This latter was left to the citizens of Nelson and with its large garden is a splendid civic asset. At the other end of this street, in friendly rivalry almost, is Warwick House, known to Nelsonians affectionately as 'The Castle'. This started off quite simply with the wing on the right. Gradually it flowed and ebbed, rising to an apogee of magnificence about a century ago, after which it started to loose wings and turrets again. But still it is a fine mansion, quite the grandest for hundreds of miles, with a ballroom embedded like a fly in amber, a double height hall - complete with minstrels gallery, walls of fifty millimetre kauri, and some of the most elaborate bargeboards I've seen anywhere.
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On the other side of Melrose is Fairfield, a house renowned for its association with the Atkirtilon family. Sited among stately trees on the steep slopes of the Grampians it makes a decisive impact, terminating the Trafalgar Street South vista. Much of Maria Atkinson's voluminous correspondence was written here and on a tower in the north-west corner (hopefully soon to be restored) her husband sur- (' - ' veyed the heavens through the five inch refractory -=....,~-r- - telescope still used by the Nelson Astronomical SOciety. This area of Nelson has always been a 'good address', and is reflected in the substantial homes that have been built there. Bronte Street too had its '" ,;..'n""r._ share of robust burgher houses. The public spiril:ed/~~;;:-~'~i~ F. G. Gibbs lived here in a tall house with some rather good woodwork, on the junction with Collingwood Street. In Manuka Street another worthy, Sir David Monroe, a man of more than local significance, bought Newstead, a house which had previously served as the first Boys College building.
~~~Imil~ Recently it has had a gable restored, though to be awkward, the original building (as was not unusual) had different patterns on each gable. A wonderful i""'" ,=-"._--'" example of this is at Hillside, a house that must '''4 " . ,<',"""" ' "'-'"'___ - .f!.' /~.. " . stood out from its prominent position above the roof"
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tops of the Wood below it. The full glory of these splendid bargeboards is now being meticulously restored by the dedicated owners. The Wood is an interesting place. Cupped by sheltering hills it became a sort of Little Italy. Until a few years ago in Trafalgar Square there was even an Italian Consulate with attractive plaque to adver- . tise it. Now a growth of townhouses is ousting the sun-drenched greenhouses filled with tomatoes in their season. There are still however plenty of good early cottages and bay villas to discover. Elliot Street, being slightly out of sync with the prevailing gridiron street pattern, has preserved its southern side almost unaltered since it was built.
The embodiment of Edwardian security, a veritable fruitcake of a house is the impression I get from Rutherglen. This is a virtuoso performance of the wood turners' art, with stained glass fan light made by Harry Atmore, later to represent Nelson many times as independent MP. Almost next door in Richardson Street is a house which belonged to one of the Tyree family (of photographic famel..~ which has fretwork of a delicacy second to none.
The bay villa as a type is still common enough for us to treat it with the casualness familiarity brings. The long verandah ending in the projecting 'bay with gable over it and a wide spandrel beneath gave an opportunity for the carpenter to let his ingenuity with saw and lathe have free rein. The First World War was a watershed. The harrowing experiences and idiotic waste it brought also brought that Indian summer of Edwardian security to an end. Changes like these are reflected , in the way we live and the things that we surround ourselves with. A peeling away of what was seen as I superfluous ornament followed . We are still heirs to this inheritance. ~, I
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The arts and crafts movement started as so many movements have, in a desire to return to 'basics'. In part too it was a romantic vision of the middle ages with half timbering, wrought iron, the use of brick, stone and other "natural materials" and a penchant for asymmetry. An attempt to regain what was seen as a more 'honest' and earthy building. There was even a revival of cob for awhile. Another example is Ronaki, a solid Edwardian home with oak panelled reception rooms and vestibule, and flagstaff from the old provincial building in Endeavour Street. The long austere horizontal lines of glazing bars, flat rooves and wrap around corners, and streamlined effects of "moderne" seem a bit contrived yet they were an attempt to break new decorative ground - and ha ve once more become fashionable. There are a number of houses built on these lines Manuka Street, Collingwood Street and Princes Drive, all have some typical homes of this sort.
22
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With houses of so many varieties it is only possible to give a small - I hope representative sample. Everyone will be able to think of excellent ones not specifically mentioned, but to be exhaustive would also be exhausting!
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THE ICING ON THE CAKE A correspondence in The Times on the nature of the plastic arts ended with a letter which stated that there were three, "painting, sculpture and confectionery - of which architecture was a branch." Looking at Milan Cathedral, the steeples built by Christopher Wren or the wilder excesses of Baroque, one takes the point. We don't have anything of this order here, but there are echoes of that elaboration in humbler ways. We live in austere times, in the shadow of the functionalists who saw decoration as almost sinful. Puritans in the 17th century, and monastic orders in ! . . the 12th century tried to purge buildings of trap~!\.I;~\A'iitt\-:j pings. But the partnership of hand and mind takes ~~.~' ~LtIM:. f¥Cf.t:>hm,dlln vWDr1~ no notice and doodling will out, eventually. So this \<4, "T ._.---;] U chapter is dedicated to that uniquely inventive duo, ~ at~tiatL (\"YUNttt.-S~ . and the twiddlebits they have made. The fret saw Coming to a place as a newcomer has great was to the 19th century colonial carpenter what the advantages - the features that familiarity has made chisel was to the medieval mason. Coming from unremarkable are - to the innocent eye - more Britain, where wood was scarce, these men really outstanding. The richness of wooden detail, in went to town. Here was superb virgin timberbargeboard and bracket, finial and fretwork, made a amenable to intricate cutting and shaping that strong impression when I first came to Nelson. withstood weather and woodworms. The taste of the day, for lacy intricacy, found its outlet in cast At the going Chinese exchange rate for words iron filigree and timber fretwork. This exuberance (lOOO:I) it makes sense to let the illustrations make of fancy caused a rebellion in later generations; a their point. reaction we still endure.
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RED SHEDS The smart and respectable buildings that generally make the glossies, are only a small part of the built up environ....."1'.-e-~1j1 ment. They are the tip of the submerged, or at any rate largely ignored, iceberg of e:.:~'-':"""'_ _ _---l humble but never the less necessary buildings which abound. Among these are the unsung red sheds. You may love them or loathe them. A former governor general made it his self appointed task to clean up "those eyesores of rusting iron which pepper the land". One man's meat etc .. To me they are spice in a landscape that might otherwise appear somewhat bland in its tidiness. 1 don't want to give the impression that Nelson is a wilderness of ruined buildings, though I shall probably be accused of just that. A small but choice selection will suffice.
A venerable pit-sawn bam well inlb its second century by now, graces a Sherry River farmyard. Besides its pastoral use it also served as a school room. Young Master Wattie (later to be Sir James) received his earliest instruction here. Even a respectable sized boat was constructed in its loft. The cut weatherboards show where the walls were temporarily removed to let the vessel out. There is another one of the same vintage in Murchison and leaning picturesquely askew, opposite the famous Spring Grove level crossing sign, yet another, to give but three examples. A fine aggregation of kilns and outbuildings caught my eye at Woodstock chiefly because of an unusual window. It came, I was told, from the old ·~. ~;Jr\\~Ij~I~l7-~'"'f,i~~,J Post Office at Havelock. "'-:.J,i!U~~~~~tf'\)il1L~/lJ,,,~;,(t.0~~~~~~) Stanley Brook has a good smattering of vintage sheds and kilns. There are, of course, a multitude former farmhouses with a warm patina of corroded iron to be found in every comer of the province.
Time was when finials and folderols to enliven the skyline were an important item on the building agenda. Imagine Christchurch's Cathedral without its totally useless (in the modem context) spire. Or Kings College Chapel in Cambridge lacking its crocketted silhouette that inspired an irreverent critic to liken it to 'an upturned sow'! The absurd apotheosis of this aspiring desire must be the top knot crowning Moscow University during the Stalin 32
era; it could perhaps have contributed to the current unpopularity of twiddley bits. Though the taste for finishing off a roof with a bit of a flourish has gone out of fashion, we are the fortunate heirs to a legacy trom less austere times. They are their own best advocate, so let them speak for themselves. One day designers may stop being SO ponderous and find a contemporary equivalent. They can only improve on Nelson Post Office's attempt!
The patriarch of Nelson barns is that brought out by James Makay in the Slaines Castle (which also contained a huge quantity of their other effects) and was put up at the Glen in 1845. Made of ash the boards are butted, not overlapped as is more common. The posts and plates are of generous size and the floor is 50 millimetres thick. Though apparently it never had an upper storey it has high level doors to unload the hay more easily. It was while he was doing this, at the age of 73, that James Makay fell, injured his back, and died of a spinal tumour 15
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No reference to the red shed would be complete withou t a nod towards that other common feature of the farm, the last resting place of departed machinery. Heaped up beneath some old man macrocarpa or tucked away in a gulley, they are a treasure trove of obsolete technology. Here may be found long dead ploughs, harrows, separators, wagon axles, even windmills. The ubiquitous wheel emerges from the detritus, There too the gaunt and rusty exoskeletons of cars and defunct whitewear, Neither seems to add much to the ambience of the collection until time and lichen have transformed them. Like the prospector on the tack of the mother lode, the connoisseurs on the trail of a vintage dump will be inclined to keep their whereabouts secret. So I shall only identify this specimen as "somewhere in Appleby" ,
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months later, This shed is grey rather than red while a fine old timer in Old House Road is white. Though built of the generally impermanent kahikatea it is still standing up welL Adjacent to it are the yards with their no longer functional 100, which brings me to that small subclass of shed given scant public notice.
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A picturesque two-holer at Stafford Place was built with eight walls and a nicely panelled door to boot. Polygons seem a favoured shape. One at Hira has sixteen facets, slated roof and terra cotta pinnacle. Marahau has an airy one with stained glass as does one at Sunday Creek roofed with ferro cement which makes an interesting combination of techniques.
Farmyard deposi ts are the earthly counterpart of the Cosmic Black Hole into which everything is inevitably drawn. My farmyard too has its repository of things-which-will-come-in-handy-if-onlyyou-keep-them-Iong-enough. Just how an old platen press will come in I have yet to find out. In the meantime it is weathering very nicely after half a century of rusting solid. A fine sample of the iron master's art, its date of 1888 is indelibly visible. The transition from red shed to stable is imperceptible. At one end of the spectrum there are the once proud brick stables put up by the so called Father of the New Zealand turf, Henry Redwood, at Appleby. He certainly didn't stint when it came to accommodating his beloved nags. The solid brickwork with segmental headed arches over the doors is matched by equally substantial structure within, a well laid out series of horse stalls separated by the heaviest tongue and groove boarding I've ever seen; a walkway at the head to give access by the stable hands, The walls are encrusted with a heavy efflorescence, These salts, produced by the effect of manure on the masonry of the walls, were one of the
37
THE DEMON DRINK
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If Nelson can be said to have a
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unique building type, it has to be the Hop Kiln. For nowhere else in NZ is this vital hop plant grown, so necessary to the national image of the good h~~~~~~~~ keen man. Fussy about its [ latitude and climate (between limited degrees of latitude and calm weather) Nelson suits the long lived vine down to its roots. Hop gardens have abounded in the sheltered valleys and sunny nooks of the province almost since the first European settlement. With heavier yielding varieties now in vogue, the acreage is less, but the built evidence remains. The shape gives them away, the long two storey shed with cubical kiln surmounted by pyramidal roof with its ventilator adjoining. Once you know the shape to look for they are easy enough to identify, and are still abundant in the Moutere and Dovedale area. One of the most venerable, the Staple ~rewery at W~s~~~~~ Riwaka, still had its silvery shingled roof n f totara V~""",m'if4'" (~~ .l990)~ . shakes until it subsided in a storm some twenty years ago. The brick base is still visible beside the road. A similar fate overtook the one on the Wadsworth farm at Dovedale. It was a great favourite with the Nelson painter Marjorie Naylor who made a pilgrimage there when autumn crimsoned the Virginia creeper that swathed it. There are a number of others nearby. One in Brandy Valley shows clearly the mud infilling to the wall of the kiln itself, both insulator and fire retardant. Understandablya hazard of the industry, where the steady fires burned constantly to dry the pungent, fragrant blossom, was conflagration. The same applies to the tobacco industry.
few sources of saltpetre and in consequence became once a royal monopoly, for without this vital ingredient neither gunpowder, nor war-as-they-knew-it was feasible. These same walls are now taking on a bit of a lean, and the timber buttresses that have been erected to strengthen them rise from the road reserve. In what must surely be the ultimate in 'user pays' I've heard that Transit New Zealand are anxious (0 charge rent for the space these occupy! Other stables such as those at Hartsmoor (Tapawera) and Hillwood (Whakapuaka) have the standard two storey design with provision for a hay loft above. The coaching lines required changes of horses at regular intervals, and both at Kohatu and Foxhill are stables associated with this essential service. Murchison has a well preserved Commercial Stables. 38
Kilns are to be found as far south as the Sherry River and Tadmor. There is a patriarch at Stanley Brook, which doesn't have the characteristic shape, in fact it looks merely a rather picturesque barn, though it makes up for this in the generous sized timber supports to the lean-to that surrounds it. Considering the wealth of huge tree trunks available, it is surprising how few of them feature in the construction of rural buildings. This is a happy exception. A more unusual brick one stands at Brightwater. Until recently it was neighbour to a flourmilI, the line of the water race now the only evidence of this, though the farm is called the Malt House Farm. There were several still in the city itself until the rash of car parks began drastically to alter the inner city scape. The Buxton Car Park had one and a brick
39
one adorned Harley Street. The old Dodson's Brewery stood in Tasman Street, with a handsome base of Kaiteriteri granite. Sunrise Valley, Neudorf and Upper Moutere have good examples. But to me the most memorable is that one which crowns the rise leading into Hoult Valley near Wakefield. The kiln was built, single handedly so it is said, by a Mr Cropp. It is also constructed of cob which makes it doubly a local artefact. Evidently Mr Cropp became disgruntled at his feckless brother's inability to meet the embarkation deadline of his sailing ship as a result of his fondness for the product of which hops form a vital ingredient. On returning from the brother's (finally successful) embarkation, he ripped out the hop vines, and turned the building into a fruit packing shed. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, it makes a handsome sight with a screen of dark beech trees behind it, complementing the dark rusty boards, with their peeling haemaqte red paint. 'I"~)
It would not be proper to leave the subject of hops without a mention of their current state of the art. The functionally sensible cubist construction in Waimea West is the present day equivalent, betrayed more by the aroma during the hop season, than by its outward appearances. Though it is surrounded by the serried ranks of the hop vines, trained up to their high posts in long vistas of pale yellow string in the springtime. A lot more interesting than many painfully contrived and self consciously arty constructions. I see them as some vast stringed aeolian harp waiting for the wind to awaken them.
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One of the most characteristic images of colonial New Zealand must be of the Hotel. Any photograph of early Trafalgar Street will show them, quite imposing for the most part, with a door on the corner and a big lantern over the top encouraging patronage. The ratio of pub to public was sometimes almost ludicrous. The goldrush days nurtured a picture of hard working, hard drinking blokes . whose pursuit demanded pubs in proportion to the miners' abundant hope.
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But in times of sluggish travelling, the hotel was as much a refuge to benighted travellers as it was of refreshment. Tophouse Hotel, for instance, its small deeply embrasured windows glowing with candlelight must have warmed the heart of weary riders almost as much as the hearth within, or the grog for that matter. The public house had sometimes another role to play, oddly akin to that of the church in one respect anyway. When most people lived in very minimal conditions, and there were no large or
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small screens to provide easy emotional escape, the public house could offer a place rather apart. The high Victorian pub, aglitter with bevelled mirrors, gilded ornament and beautifully executed lettering gave its patrons a feeling of being somewhere more special than their humble cottage, just as the church did. This was ironically acknowledged in describing the junction of Collingwood and Bridge Street as Four Spirits Corner. It had at one time a place of religious observance, a garage and two pubs, all dispensing spiri t of varying sorts! The name is no longer apt, though with luck the name will stick. The typical city hotel, with double height verandah, both decorative and a useful escape route if fire, as it quite often did, broke out, looked as though it was becoming obsolete. The motel seemed to be killing them off; but the backpac~r has injected them with a new lease of life. TIle former Coach and Horses, for all its flamboyant mural and name change (to Pavlova House) still has the same window pattern that dates back well over the century. Right opposite, the once proud Trafalgar Hotel stood. I've cheated a bit and drawn it as it was in its heyday, for by the time it was finally demolished in the mid sixties it had been sadly shorn of its encrusting cornices and pediments. The balcony railing though, still guards a garden in ' If:~~~~!:~~ Bronte Street. 11 "If only walls could speak" cry the sentimentalists. I admit to being curious to hear what tales might have been told in the old drinking inn in Neudorf Road. Long pensioned off from its licensed life, it bears the name, in faded lettering beside the door 'Wypersfontein'.
The move towards humanising the successors to the notorious booze barns has still a long way to go I feel. The attempt often produces a hybrid between ~~_ an operating theatre, all chromium plate, glass, and too much lighting, and a railway waiting room. Only very rarely do they succeed in producing an atmosphere at once comfortable and welcoming. Though the hop vine has been clinging to Nelson for years, the true vine has only recently taken off. Long seen as a fringe area for grapes, indeed the official opinion was that the South Island just wouldn't do, this other (and to me the True Vine) now flourishes as far south as Central Otago. Nelson has enough vineyards to justify a Wine Trail.
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COMMERCIAL As with most other towns in the country, the heart of Nelson has had a sort of ritual disembowelling in the interest of carparks. The need to save our feet the misery of walking and to make life easier for cars has meant that much of the inner city has been sacrificed on the automobile altar. If the older buildings have been lucky enough to survive that hazard, there are others in store, posed by the fear of earthquake or fire. -tAdded to these there is the feeling that older things indicate a stick in the mud stuffiness. There is also sheer disinterest or neglect. Despite the fact that few commercial buildings rely on day lighting, the insufficiency of ~ ~\Ji, ~ ('.~ ~ ,R aJol",,~ this has been used to relegate some eminent old timers to the demolisher's hammer. So one has to '"\ respect those survivors just on that account alone: that they are still there at all. Some hardy perenn; of Hardy Street are the Peoples Stores, though no stuccoed, it keeps its unusual pointed windows, ana the facade of Wilkins and Field's splendid old shop. There are a few bits of the original interior that have been kept out of piety still in use within. At Hardy Street's westward end is a group of more modem premises, one of which has a ki wi on top. The National Bird seems to be largely overlooked in the building context, perhaps because it does not lend itself easily to heraldry. I would tentatively suggest another heraldic beastie. I've always envied the Welsh their excellent dragon. What price our Tuatara? Long lived and with a pedigree going back 1>cv.
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Few wooden buildings remain but of those that do, the little house-corne-shop, once home to the redoubted Marjorie Naylor, when it was known as Gallery Twenty Nine in Bridge Street, is a remarkable anachronism. When built the high tide still flowed up to the end of the garden. Typical of many shops of the time there was accommodation for the owner above the shop and a kitchen at the rear. The sturdy wooden verandah posts that are so prominent in many of the photographs of nineteenth century New Zealand towns have survived here and there, and more common are their cast iron counterpart, occasionally with the filigree iron brackets supporting the roofs. These have been such a
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Buw-- 1M. marked feature of townscape here it is good to see, as in the building by Ian Athfield on the junction of Trafalgar and Hardy Streets, an attempt at a modem version of this. Since it is now obligatory for verandahs to be independent of support from the pavement, these posts can only now be a decorative feature. Next door to this is another of the now rare wooden facades, carefully kept and making a happy contrast with several other later brick and plastered buildings. The whole side from Hardy Street to Selwyn Place is noteworthy, even the glass curtain wall of one has at least something quite interesting to reflect in it, which is cheating rather but better than nothing.
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Though much altered in the last twenty years there are in the main street quite a few good facades, and several new ones which give the eye something to divert it in an area which is increasingly pedestrian, and which consequently has a greater need of these visual extras. There is time now to engage the passer by, and the opportunity has been seized by some shops - and with luck those that have avoided the issue by the erection of mere blanks on which to display their names and no more - may soon come to the party and add to the richness that was certainly there in the first period of Nelson's development.
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PUBLIC BUILDING PRO BONO PUBLICO. So the foundation stone of the old Institute building proudly proclaims from its new resting place in the present library , building. 'For the public good' is a sentiment that is a '-----------' bit out of place in the deviltake-the-hindmost of market forces. The engine house is probably the oldest public building in Nelson, built around the time of the old Provincial
In Collingwood Street no one can miss the ,~~~~~~~~ dazzling white Masonic Temple, a solemn classical ~ " facade which becomes less imposing at the sides, it
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The deep window embrasures of the courthouse want only a cannon or two to complete the fortress impression - a severe and unfriendly building. The Monroe building beside it is an unintended irony, for the offices it replaced were condemned largely on account of poor daylighting. Its successorreplete with large windows - had soon to be fitted with sunscreens and curtains. When you go inside most of the rooms have lights on, even on the brightest days. We are a perverse species. The oddly phrased 'New Zealand School Fishing' building was formerly the Nelson Institute, where the library and museum were. A good Edwardian pile, of brick and stucco with a touch of whimsy in the ori el window. The high gabled structure at the back is part of the even earlier Institute building.
surprisingly it dates from 1928 - it looks older. has a grandeur that belies its fairly small size.
In Selwyn Place the building designed for Transport Nelson by JASMAD is particularly notable. So much of contemporary painting, sculpture, music and building seems inaccessible to most people rarefied and appealing to only a few. This building is almost universally liked, and it is worth wondering why. The long low lines (used to effect by other buildings by this firm) the wide sheltering eaves, walls of weathered cedar and warm coloured dolomite, cascading geraniums from window boxes all contribute to its approachability.
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Building which stood across the grass where the courthouse now is. With dutch gable ends, it is the only reminder left of that style. It gets its name from • being the home of a fire engine, evidently a fairly modest one as the space is no larger than a domestic garage. It has another name, The Morgue, from its L association with the Maungatapu murders. Here the "I) ". victims of the nefarious gold robbery were laid out after their bodies had been found. A stone's throw away is the old munition store, a brick building will' heavy iron door and stone foundations. The rose around the doorway gives it the air of a garden shed, giving no clue of the lethal contents. And another stone's throw from that is the Suter Art Gallery. This was built originally at the beginning 0 ; the century, with sensitive alterations added 70 years later by Warren & Mahoney. Taking a leaf or two from the original book, using a brick plinth, tiled roof with similar pitch, and board and batten walls, the gallery has deliberately been kept unspectacular - the object being to display the contents rather than the building. The major casualty in the renova tion, the fine roof of the exhibition hall, is not lost irretrievably. It is still there above the false ceiling. One day I fancy it may be revealed once more to cries of "How could it have ever been covered up?"
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The former Waimea County building at the end of Trafalgar Street is one of the few nineteenth century wooden buildings still standing in the central area. Its thoroughly formal symmetry lends the quality of importance on a small scale that Victorians were very good at. Diagonally across the road, the rich facade of the one time NZI building, known by long association with the law firm as the Glascow building, is another splendid example of high Victorian; also wooden. By the time this book reaches the public, its fate may have altered, but I hope very much that it will be allowed to stay just where it is and not carted off to be exhibited. Buildings need real uses if at all possible - even the best exhibit has something of the kiss of death about it. There is another and later version of an NZI building around the comer in Hardy Street with grandiose columns reminiscent of ancient Egypt. The latest version at the bottom of Trafalgar Street, another successful contemporary building by Ian Jack, gives a look at insurance buildings in the late 80's, using strong modelling so that deep shadows are cast, making use of the sunlight for which Nelson is justly famed. Next to that is the State Cinema, a piece of thirty's modern with a wrap around building joining it. The three buildings make for a good piece of street scape, a coherent bclginnin'g to the main city street.
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Opposite, the Post Office has one merit. The W. have at least succeeded in making people
" ~=~~~;;;;;;;::;:;;;:;;;h~~tf~~~.~on~~~at a building, even if only to disparage it. I ~ that castigating anything leaves one wide to the mockery of succeeding generations who
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by misjudging work. If that happens, so be it! An aunt told me that if I had nothing good to
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say, then say nothing. Well, I've said that one good thing. Since it has become the City Council Offices someone has seen fit to remove the expensive skating rink laid outside the doors, a wide expanse of polished marble. A more inappropriate paving it would be hard to find. Many's the pedestrian who had skidded on that surface; but no more. Bricks have replaced that slippery slope. Of the rest of it, well, Nelson does have its clock back, in a basket of stainless steel pipes. And for the rest? Perhaps it is a foretaste of the impersonal face of the Postal Department, which has now become a revenue producer with service taking second place. So this frowning building may be a true reflection of the indifference of bureaucracy. I have yet to hear anyone say anything complimentary about it.
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On the subject of Post Offices I should perhaps lay a palm (J hope never a wreath) at the door of the little one at Wakefield. Here is another instance of the monumental quality that designers managed to inject into quite domestic sized buildings at the turn of the century. A touch of elaboration in the Art Nouveau lettering, and the absurd conceit of the cupola give this building an air of importance quite out of proportion to its size. Motueka has a Post Office in characteristic cubical 3D's style with a touch of embellishment over the doorway and the mandatory flag pole held away from the face of the building. Further afield at Havelock is another good one, somewhat earlier and in the Thatcher tradition of strong roof lines, with those chamfered window heads so beloved of Government buildings of the period. They occurred again at the cable station at Cable Bay. On a lighter note, in the days B.c. (before cinema) even quite small towns would boast a theatre. Wakefield still has one, and going strong too by all accounts. Murchison's is a sturdy looking building, and Nelson has its Theatre Royal, home of the local Rep, whose dedication keeps it going. The auditorium is little altered, and quite a rarity. So many of these buildings seem to have come to a fiery end, presumably because of hazardous lighting in days of gas or oil lamps.
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The most famous auditorium in Nelson must be that of the School of Music, with a ceiling resembling the wooden hull of a boat, which gives a very resonant acoustic. It also has a huge organ, gift of that Nelson benefactor, Sir Thomas Cawthron. The exterior has been strengthened against earthquake, and an addition made which is an example of good architectural manners, the new taking its cue from the old to give a harmonious whole. On the subject of harmony the old Harmonic Society emblem (a harp) salvaged from the demolition of their hall in the 1970's, hangs within.
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CHURCHES & MEMORIALS All over New Zealand you see them. The red roofs, pristine white walls, sombre foliaged trees and pointed windows. The miniature country church often in isolation far from habitation is a characteristic feature of the New Zealand rural scene. St John's in the Wilderness, set in con tradiction to its name in a verdant setting among h~ge redwoods and wellingtonias, is typically dIstanced a !tttle from Wakefield, the village it serves. Nelson's only Grade 'A' building on the Historic Places scale it has been in continuous use for longer than any other church in the South Island. Pared to the essentials of a church, with wooden walls incised to mimic timber and minuscule steeple, it is remembered by many for its most irrelevant detail, a eat's muddy footprints on the boards of the chancel ceiling, presumably imprinted before the boards were nailed on high! Being in the midst of the wide Waimea West plain far from other buildings makes St Michael's particularly prominent. Though very small it is complete. Spire, belfry, choir loft, buttressed nave, it is a brilliant exercise in miniaturisation by that great explorer Thomas Brunner, who also designed St Cuthbert's in Collingwood . Towering rnacrocarpas overshadow it like dark fountains frozen in full flight. In the graveyard are many well known names, among them Constantine Dillon whose brick and stone monument conveniently screens the conveniences, an odd fate for the tomb of so august a person. Both these churches and St Paul's at Brightwater have what should logically be called grave woods. Surprisingly durable their timber has proved to be, indeed they seem to have suffered less from the attention of witless vandals than some of their petrified neighbours. The lettering is raised slightly from the surface, maybe because the extra
church on its little knoll. This eminence was early called 'Destruction Hill' which would have seemed a suitable locale for a hell-fire and brimstone tabernacle, which this elegant church by Beatson certainly ~~. .~:; is not. This name originated apparently in a great conflagration which swept across here when a bush fire got out of control. Another rural church at Hira, St John's, has a claim to fame in being known as the 'Church with a Chimney'. Here the minister would stay if benighted, hence the fireplace in the vestry. Motueka has a fine marble building, with a Norman solidity. layers of paint applied there gave more protection to the wood. It is still possible to decipher the wording on several. One at Wakefield has one each in stone (slate in fact, and carved in Nottingham) and one in timber seemingly for the same boy, crushed in a saw pit on his birthday - his cake served at his funeral. The epitaph bears a suitably admonitory inscription: 'Take heed gay youth be not SO bold Death comes to all both young and old. One stroke may lay you low like me, Therefore think on Eternity'. At Appleby, St Joseph's formal avenue of silver birches, framing the bright red doorway in stark white walls is a striking image. At Richmond, a beautifully proportioned steeple surmounts the
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Returning to the city, for richness of detail the Baptist Church in Hardy Street has a high score. At the other end of the scale is the plain chapel at Bishopdale, for long screened by a flourishing growth of trees, and now more visible where it crowns the rise. One that has' almost been resurrected is the former St Peters-by-the-Strand, now restored to its pristine state and moved to Founder's Park. St John's in Hardy Street and All Saint's both have interesting interiors, the first quite adventurous, a very early example of a laminated timber arch, the other more conventional. The Cathedral itself, the third on the site, started with high ambitions, a thorough going piece of gothic in marble with spire, but unfortunately the Murchison earthquake intervened and cut off the grand design when it had not even reached the tower stage. The porch and the nave piers give a hint of the splendours that were to come but sadly did not eventuate.
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Of the other city churches, the two that did get their spires are an interesting contrast. For those given to anthropomorphic comparisons I suppose the spire of Holy Trinity might be described as masculine, and St Mary's (appropriately enough) as feminine. Their stabbing outlines, robust or slender respectively, stand out dramatically among the leafless trees of winter dominating the domestic scale around them.
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Like everywhere else in New Zealand, Nelson has its mournful memorials to the young men who traversed the globe to fight in wars not of their own making. That such a remote country should have lost more of its population proportionately than most other of the contestants in these wretched affairs is food for thought. But there are other 'CO'o ~~r' desolate reminders. Gates certainly have made a useful vehicle for commemoration, to Colonel Pitt and another to Mayor Trask, both with handsome wrought iron, in the Queens Gardens, and at the .>=#~~ Wakefield Domain a stone one in memory of a doctor are among this category. There is a small pyramid on the old road to Kaiteriteri; which has - ----- - --
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two mill stones made from local granite incorporated in it, a suitable symbol for the establishment of a young colony when there were times when even bread, the very staff of life, was in desperately short supply. Nearby Motueka has a supreme example of multifunctionalism in the lamp on the old stone wharf. It not only lit the street, but commemorated the death (from dysentery) of Trooper Tarrant in the V' Boer War and the reign of Edward the Seventh, as . ~~~;tt~i9~ well as serving as a drinking fountain and horse ~~~~~jmj Ittrough. Value for money. ~
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At last Lord Rutherford has his memorial. on his birthplace at Brightwater, its symbolism is a bit puzzling. A festoon of cables curves across the site, an unintended comment on the Pandora's Box of nuclear dilemmas this modest, brilliant and much "",,~§~~g~ liked man helped innocently to open. That such discoveries should have had origins in this quiet village in a sleepy province at the end of the world has a gentle irony.
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57
SCHOOLS Nelson seems to have attracted some rather idealistic people among its first settlers. Prominent amongThe these was that Mathew ~~~~~~~~~~ Campbell. school bore his name now only exists >'2'~"" in the portion of the front wall - - ~;,II-_._ sandwiched between the new and old exhibition halls at the Suter Gallery.
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Very much more evident is the so-called Bishops : School in Nile Street whose design was described when it was put up as 'Elizabethan' though quite why I'm not sure. It is a handsome little erection all the same, another instance - like Wakefield's Post Office - of the ability to infuse a feeling for consequence into a project that was no bigger than a small bam. The round headed windows are echoed by the quite non-structural semicircular arches within. These are made from huge flitches of timber and laminated side by side, but are really only for effect, perhaps to give the supposed 'Elizabethan' feel.
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fanciful stages, first in timber and the~ in stone, before emerging from the ravages of fIre and e~rth, quake into its present mundane fonn. The girl s equivalent still had its italianate camparule till the _ mid 60's with stained glass Windows to bo?t. Auck " land Point has a vestige of its fonner state In the cupola salvaged from the roof which, tucked away at the back of the present school, has little chance to show itself off.
Wren described his turrets on the Greenwich Observatory as "a lytle for Pompe". I enjoy that phrase - a reminder that buildings may do more than merely shelter us. Which may be why my pencil has never been moved to record a modem school building - too sensible and dull; a bun with no currants.
Last, but anything but least, the brick and stucco Parklands School in Motueka's High Street is a shining example of giving education its position of importance. There's a great deal for pomp here - it contrasts particularly with the adjacent commercial buildings which mostly do not make much visual impact at all.
Country schools at the tum of the century had a liking it seems for the semicircular Window. PIgeon 1'JI\l.l1ou Stanley Brook, Wakefield and Waimea West are instances, a small sop to the idea that the absolutely functional left something out. Even the tiny building at Matariki has.a minute piece of fretwork. ~--
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The school in Hardy Street, now part of the Polytechnic, does have a bit of a claim to being Elizabethan if you like; at least it has the semblance of Tudor arches over the main doorway. One ~f the few surviving buildings in the city to have vertIcal weatherboarding. Next to it is the quite imposing small two storey Nelson Technical School, whose splendid entrance has been mentioned under 'Porches', It is odd that as school curricula have had more emphasis on the so-called 'creative' skills - so school buildings have got duller and duller. The Boy's College went through a couple of wonderfully
58
59
THESEA Those that picked the name for the settlement of Nelson chose more wisely than perhaps they knew, for its association with and dependence on the sea has been vital to its existence. Though it didn't point its white finger to the sky until nearly twenty years after the first European ships entered the haven, the lighthouse has always been a potent symbol. It was shipped out prefabricated from the iron founders in Bath in 1861, and it has been a beacon, both real and metaphorical. Though it no longer serves to guide boats into the harbour its importance has been recognised and graded accordingly. The route through the hazardous waters of French Pass also has its lighthouse, not far from the place where Dumont D'Urville grounded his ship for several cliff hanging hours. This stretch of sea is ' even more famous for that dolphin, Pelorus Jack, ~1i'1l\i\1Wi\lnt> that for many years would accompany ships through this passage. A few weather-beaten hulls sinking quietly the mud stir the imagination of some and seem merely an eyesore to others. The Janie Seddon off the old Motueka Wharf has drawn criticism from the tidy minded, yet to others, including me, it gives an added spice to the scene. The Venture, now only a rib or two, at Awaroa, is a reminder of the boatbuilding skills of the Hadfields who were pioneers here. Closer to Nelson, an iron skeleton rusts near Queen Elizabeth Drive. I'm told this was a Turkish pontoon, involved in an abortive crossing of the Suez Canal and brought back as a trophy from the First World War. Also near the road just before Havelock is the beached hull of the once proud steam ship Pelorus, which towed many a huge raft I of native logs to the sawmill which stood near this, its last resting place. Even further afield, in fact right outside Nelson's present boundary, is the Edwin Fox at Picton. Not quite cheating to include , it though as it was ships like this that brought out many of the immigrants. An ambitious scheme of restoration is proposed about which there are, as always, differing opinions. There is a point beyond which the restored object begins to make the viewer wonder just how much is genuine and how much replica . At present anyway the beautiful old teak hull, for she was built in India, leaves no doubt that this is the real McCoy.
60
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Another ship that has left its'mark on Nelson, if only in name and memory, is the brigantine Delaware that was wrecked in 1863, giving Delaware Bay its name. The tale of the daring rescue by Julia Matenga and her husband Hemi and other Maori of the Pa is a particularly happy one, in a history of interaction with the new settlers which has been so often muddied by misunderstanding. An anchor from the site of the wreck was dredged up some time ago and is now carefully preserved in a garden nearby. A ship's carpenter's swage block supposed to have come from the wreck as well as the bell are two other relics. Of the port of Nelson, the old sea walls of Adele Island granite are still visible along Wakefield Quay, but the pleasantly higgeldy piggeldy collection of pubs, ships chandlers, plumbers shops and other ship-related buildings that were still there twenty five years ago have now nearly all been tidied away. The power house building, with its well known trompe l'oeil mural and, opposite, the former Anchor Foundry are reminders of the industry that flourished here before the land reclamation allowed expansion on what had previously been the sea.
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LINES OF COMMUNICATION ~~~~~I O'os~f
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The railway gradually supplanted the horse, as it had previously ousted the canal, and was itself soon to be rivalled by the car. Nelson's
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involvement with railways has ~.-!".;;;;ai;;~~d~~~ not been auspicious. It was '---_ _ _ _ _ _-' here that New Zealand's first ~fJ "'",,';:' railway (though drawn by horses, technically it qualified as a railway) wound it serpentine way up to the chromite mines on the Dun Mountain. Its short life of three years or so was still a pretty heroic enterprise considering the terrain.
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The more conventional railway that pushed its railhead in fits and starts southward towards the elusive goal of the Main Trunk, was for decades something of a cause celebre. After painful years of promises and disappointments it finally expired ir the fifties, still a few short (but difficult) miles fron its hoped for union. It left behind not only consid~ able resentment but quite a few visual reminders. It's not easy to picture those resolute engines chuff .= -./.,. ing away into the broken mountains. But bridges, tunnels and earthworks remain, as well as the foll) of the smoke blackened overbridge at Three Broth· ers Corner near Richmond where the road takes a leap over the now non-existent railway line. Most renowned is probably the wonderful wooden windmill at Belgrove used to pump water into the tanks of locomotives before the Spooners Tunnel ju . ahead. There is an Engine Shed close by, though a bigger brother to it stood till recently behind the Globe Hotel in Nelson. Various buildings such as the gangers house at Tadmor beside its overgrown platform nudge long lived memories. Another aspect of communication in Nelson, .. I, though it has few visual evidences left, has to be mentioned, if only because it gave its name to Cable \" I Bay. The frayed end of the cable still protrudes through the shingle of the beach. Improbable as it now seems, in days of instant everything, the first quick and reliable news of the rest of the planet emerged in stuttering morse through this now long corroded wire. There was quite a settlement here for operators, cadets and families and the necessary equipment. Among the evidence that remains is the tennis court and on Pepin Island at the end of the causeway a whare with the chamfered window pattern used on the station buildings, and so possibly salvaged from them when the station was closed.
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WHEELS OF INDUSTRY As pre-Columbian America proved, industry is possible without wheels. Mining and smel ting and some of the most beautiful metal work and masonry seen anywhere in the world were equally innocent "'-'.-""''-.!..!..E'-''-'''--'-'' of rotary motion. But for us, heirs of the industrial revolution, the wheel is the very symbol of production. Poking about in the long-abandoned workings of back country Nelson, it is often that tell-tale circular shape, half shrouded in vigorous regrowth, that gives the clue that people have been at work here. Winding gear at Marble Creek,.circular roasting pots toppled down the slope of Aniseed Valley, flywheels in a Takaka quarry or the huge pudding basin of a Burden mill on a gold working at Reefton all proclaim that our busy species was tinkering at something. One of Nelson's first industries was the weaving and tanning business of Thomas Blick in Brook Street. Alfred Saunders wrote of him" A plodding weaver named Blick, not a capitalist, had undertaken in a very humble way to make Nelson Tweed, which rough and ugly as it was, was religiously worn by public spirited settlers as a means of employing their neighbours". The iron water wheel he installed to power his workshop, after several moves, is now on a farm at Pokororo.
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Another flour mill still exists, near Tapawera. The Oliver family settled here, and built the mill, a sturdy three storey one with a cellar for the turbine, below a mill pond on the terrace above. The water plunged down through a steel penstock to drive the stones supported by stout cast iron columns. These bear the name of their maker cast into the metal.
The wheel drove a sawmill too, an activity that has become much associated with the family name. Later the building was used as a hop kiln, which is why there is little evidence left of its original purpose.
Far from being either dark or Satanic, Nelson's mills are poSitively sylvan in their settings. The oldest flour mill still standing has a huge chestnut tree sheltering its totara shingled roof and lichen-yellowed weatherboards. The water race is now a race for cattle, and apart from one millstone there is not much to give a clue that this enterprise of Edward Baigent saved many households from a chore far drearier than washing up, that of hand grinding grain. The millstone, a French Bllrr, is made from small pieces of a very hard stone quarried near Paris, and, because it only occurs in these fragments, has to be fitted crazy paving fashion within strong iron hoops. I. b~\), ,' 'f~:r.!.;iiJ
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One of the most famous flour mills was that of Alfred Saunders, which was later converted by Mr Ellis to produce electricity. This allowed the neighboUling village of Brightwater to have street lighting, and the ingenious Ellis, needing to tum this on and off at dusk and dawn, devised a switch operated by the weight of the chickens on their perch. This must rank among the wonders of appropriate technology, a photoelectric hen roost! There was a great abundance of flax growing in Nelson, and around the Moutere area in particular, many people built flax mills. The only one I've knowledge of that still exists in part, is near Flaxmore Road appropriately enough, where the rather precarious building still straddles the onetime mill race. A heavy wooden contrivance within was presumably something to do wi th the manufacture of the fibre. Minerals attracted many optimists, who almost literally moved mountains in pursuit of various ores. The Dun Mountain Company, being the first, and in many ways most ambitious project locally, has achieved fame through having laid New Zealand's first railway. A short lived project, for the chromite ore gave out, as did demand for it. The long well graded rail-bed still winds through regenerating bush and open mountain side to make a nostalgiC and lovely walk. The longer lived copper workings in the Aruseed Valley have left some remains, a tall brick flue, some stone walls and iron pots for roasting the ore. The marble quarries on Takaka Hill supplied stone for the Parliament buildings, among others, and also had a line laid to the coast for shipping out the blocks. Saw mills were quite often nomadic early on, following the bush as it was felled, the donkey engines hauling out the logs and in their own tum hauled themselves by bullock teams to the camps set up for the lumber-jacks. Sometimes the old engines were merely abandoned where they stood, after their days were done, as with the one in Slaters Creek under the Whangamoas. More often the sawmills were nearer settlements, and easy to spot by the funnel shaped cyclone, sometimes a smoking destructor, and the orange mountain of sawdust gradually rising around them. More modem ones have a trimmer air, like the one in Eves Valley, painted a sprightly blue, or the cloud capped silver stacks of the Swamp Road plant. Those billowing plumes of steam make a dramatic sight if you drive towards Richmond in the evening, the dark sky highlighting this dazzling whiteness puffing skywards.
68
Also in Swamp Road the prisms of the fertiliser works please me by the utterly logical shape they have, reflecting outwardly the piles of fertiliser -within. Our local version of the pyramids.
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STREEISCAPE
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If ever the truism about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts makes sense, it has to be about streetscape. Often a building taken out of context is of little significance. Put another, perhaps of quite different type alongside, and some chemistry may begin to happen. On the lines of a rich Christmas cake, the fruit, the spices, the brandy and the glue to hold it all together combine to make a total which bears little relation to its
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Mount Street has the advantage of being on a hill which generally makes for interest but also has a variety of good turn of the century houses. Overall the impression is of diversity within the accepted design convention of the time, ringing the changes on gable and finial, railings and verandahs. South Street has received a lot of attention for its survivai in a central area because of its sense of arrested time, and has been well documented.
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New Zealand is not the place to find the Grand Design. Interminable boulevards with arches and obelisks find no takers here. But almost by accident the occasional vista pops up. Sel wyn Place has the Masonic Lodge to terminate the view. Tasman Street also, where the road takes an unexpected kink, has a particularly delightful Victorian house which closes this sou thern prospect. Fairfield has a in Trafalgar Street South.
70
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The cui de sac (pudding bag to some people) encourages that pleasant air of backwater. Fountain Place where ships took their supply of fresh water is blessed in this way. At the top it opens unexpectedly into a small green. All it lacks is a fountain. Russell Street has received just recognition recently in a booklet which gives a very detailed account of this interesting area. A little further on are houses which gradually escalate as you progress along Wakefield Quay. They are well worth strolling past. Dri ving is no good as there is far too much traffic to make it safe or enjoyable. Starting with cottages after the Poynters Crescent junction, there is a gradual crescendo of grandeur, finding its climax in the houses of Richardson Street and (formerly) The Cliffs.
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Possibly the most remarkable, is a group of buildings in Collingwood Street which epitomise the cumulative effect of mixing ingredients together. Flanking the Masonic Temple is a double fronted stucco house wi th slate roof, tiled entrance way, and attractive stained glass which has an air of permanence more usual in Dublin or Dulwich. Its northern neighbour, a late Victorian essay in timber design, is typical of its time and place and next to that a house which I have to confess I would have seen but not looked at ten years ago. Built about fifty years ago it exemplifies perfectly how easy it is to ignore the things close to one in time. With its glass bricks, long horizontal glazing bars and deliberate economy of line and very formal planting it too is a period piece. This with its four southern neighbours form an unusually interesting and nearly mint condition group. In SO far as Nelson Polytechnic has any say in these buildings, it may be possible to redress some of the sorry mess it has made of the block it has made its own. Not content with removing several houses of interest in Hardy, Alton and Nile Street, it has caused to be erected buildings with no distinction whatever, an irony for an institution that among its several departments numbers some that are devoted to things visual.
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~~~~~6~~'f'~' But I don't know of a vista anywhere in New Zealand to compare with that of the main street. Stretching from sea to Church Hill, this elevation forms a natural punctuation point. The series of churches which have graced their eponymous hill have followed naturally enough. The steps came much later and are the happiest of inventions. They invite the pedestrian to sit and watch the world go by in the main thoroughfare below.
Street furniture is an important part of streetscape too. The pillar box in Hardy Street is a well known feature, and there are several other instances of the ironmaster's craft about. Railings around Rocks Road, those outside the School of Music (recently curtailed); others that stood outside the old BNZ building in Trafalgar Street and have been moved to its rear; handsome ones which guarded the upper floors of the Trafalgar Hotel and now do duty outside a house in Bronte Street - all enrich the town. At the top of Collingwood Street is some post and rail fenCing. This must once have been a common sight all around the city. There is an ingenious example of the thousand and one things to be done with Number Eight wire opposite the old Inn in Neudorf Road. An instance of vernacular versatility.
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SOUTH &WEST It may seem a bit odd includ-
ing these areas in a book on Nelson. Historically however it has strong links and anyway there are various things there
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The most recent and prominent of all the items of street furniture in the ci ty could also be classified under 'Memorials'. Near the spot where this fivebranched lamppost now stands in the centre of Nelson, its prototype also shone until an untimely investigation to find the source of a"gas leak caused an explosion and the destruction of both lamppost and workman. In the new-found interest in Nelson's past, a replica has been put up which must be a rare instance of a memorial using another memorial as a prototype. It need hardly be said that in the reconstruction it was needful to use a computer. How long before we require these to hel p us tie our shoe laces?
through the ever rougher countryside and into the mountains around Murchison it is possible to get some slight feeling of what it must have been like for those intrepid explorers and their Maori guides as they made their pitifully slow way through soaking bush and swollen rivers in search of the EI Dorado of pastoral land. How much effort a few hours in an aeroplane might have saved them! How much the poorer we would have been in lore. It is a place that has attracted independent spirits, embodied in the near folk hero of George Fairweather Moonlight, who would have made a lasting impression even without such a wonderful name. Adventurous, and generous to a fault, his saga ended appropriately perhaps, dying alone amongst the bush where he had spent so much of his life. The town of Hampden, renamed Murchison, is very much part of his legend, though the earthquake of 1929 has meant that the township has not a great deal to offer the hunter of old buildings. Some good bay villas, a substantial commercial stables, a theatre and some vintage red sheds, and formerly a splendid example of those ingeniously composite bridges using steel for tension and timber for compression, which abounded just a few years ago allover the country and are now rapidly becoming rarities. The road winds down the defile of the Buller to the site of that once crowded township clinging to the precipitous valley sides at Lyell, named for that famou s Victorian geolOgist and teacher of Charles Darwin. Though there are no live residents left, the mortal remains of some lie in the vertiginous graveyard (not to be confused with the one near the road) which is a few minutes walk into the hills. Here the vigorous young beech and rimu are greening the graves, quietly taking over the mossy memorials. In the dappled light, these terse epi taphs tell little of the tenacity and stubborn endurance these hardy people had. One though gives a hint, even if the reasoning seems arguable. " Afflictions sore Long time she bore Physicians were in vain. Till God above in His great love Relieved her of her pain" Those golden decades in this savage valley left few other marks of human endeavour. The
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buildings, apart from the top floor of one which is incorporated into the hotel at Berlins, have only a few brick hearths to show the passage of people here.
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Reefton however is still a busy place, though I'::== ,:ertai:nly its temperature has dropped a bit since the l=t:~~=~~~J~~'J~~~==-kJll-::::!IIS=. _highs hit during the gold fever. A peculiarity of the ;" ,oj ~ mining life, precarious 'at the best of times, was the -r ,'R~~ proliferation of friendly societies, logical enough in the days when widows, orphans and the disabled
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through hard times. There are quite a number of could not associated look to thewith Great Nurse Statesome to tidefuncthem premises these bodies, tional, others pensioned off, around the town. The rule of law has a specially emphatic position, with . the courthouse sited foursquare at the end of a long . vista, giving it'a grandeur which close approach diminishes.
Naturally there is a School of Mines, plenty of pubs, a turreted parsonage, a cast iron horse trough (at least I judge from its hooves that that is what it is) and best of all, if you care to take time out to explore, Gold Workings. As its name implies the Reef ton Fields were not the gold panners' paradise, it was hard rock and quartz mining country, m~an ing capital on a large scale. The reefs are de
, ;;.,_ Geology being so influential in determining 'here industry should be, it often happens that the .' ,reat engineering works connected with it are often o be found in quite unexpected places. As with the cowering poppet head on the high windy heath of Waiuta, the iron works in Golden Bay, the coke ovens, swing bridge and tall chimney at Brunner set in a lovely riverside spot, the setting seems contradictory.
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Of all these sites, the most unlikely to me is thc place that used to be called, with superb understatement, just "The Hill". Denniston, another instance where exhaustion followed quickly on the heels of exploration and exploitation, has still a few hardy inhabitants, though the mine and the famous incline, once claimed to be the eighth wonder of the world, are now merely curiosities. One or two forlorn and stumpy chimneys, and the works rusting away on this misty height may soon disappear. But at least two things remain and are likely to be around for quite a while. The beautifully built stone flue to the old boiler house made from rock quarried from the cliff behind so that it seems as much a natural as man-made feature, and the incline itself, sweeping in a narrow gash through the trees down hundreds of metres to the plains below. From beetling crag the laden trucks went down, pulling up the empty ones by counterbalance. It was not a journey without hazard, as a look at the excellent information boards at the top will tell; it took its toll, mostly of the very young. Westport, like other West Coast towns, is hard categorise. Isolated and sandwiched on a plain, sometimes no more than a shelf and never very wide, between high mountains and stormy sea, wet, warm and lush, it seems to me a vegetable kingdom where the works of man are half claimed by moss and lichen almost before they are completed. For that this is a town with a character very much its own. Coal and cement have supplanted gold as its mineral backbone. Westport seems to have a penchant for round headed windows. A surprising town hall in the 30's -:~~~Si~ idiom as well as some shop fronts in the same vein. _ Plenty of the cast iron verandah brackets, known in Australia as Sydney Lace. A bandstand too, and a splendid house, once a vicarage, with arching gothic gables.
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There are wheels and shafts and water tube boilers still dotting the paddocks leading towards that famous ghost town of Charleston. There it is the harbour which is the wonder. How could those frail craft be inched through that narrow gap, often only under sail, with no second chance if the captain miscalculated? The trees, swept into bonsai shape by the constant wind, are mute evidence of the hazards they ran.
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GOLDEN BAY I---:~~~;;;;:::-I
Just-as Nelson seems rather apart from the rest of New Zealand, even more I think, to those that live there, does r. Golden Bay. This sense of
~~~~rJ,~~~ separateness is welcome in I~ times of increasing uniformity. Natural barriers, the sea and mountains have a lot to do wi th this. For Golden Bay one frontier is the unearthly stonescape of Takaka Hill whose intricately weathered outcrops of marble could have inspired EI Greco's tortuous landscapes. From the summit the prospect of the Takaka Valley curling down towards the sea is best in winter with snow on the mountains. Bare rocks and wind buffeted beech give way to undulating pasture. It is easy to see why the sea provided the logical link for this islanded place before the road was carved out of the hill.
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'Over the hill' is the phrase used by the locals, and it has a metaphorical as well as geographical logic. The tempo and type of life are peculiar to Golden Bay. For an account of early days hereabouts, 'Courage and Camp Ovens' by Enga Washbourne gives a fascinating account. As with Nelson there were many attempts to turn the minerals of the bay to financial gain. But in spite of its name, happily changed from "Massacre" to "Golden" after the area was declared New Zealand's first official Gold Field, the story neither begins nor ends with gold. Down the West Coast at Maungarakau, the first shipload of coal was taken to Wellington in the Jewess in 1840. And at Puponga, the jetty piles point the way to mines from which millions of tons of coal were taken. The Marble Creek mines high up on Mount Burnett have left as a legacy wheels, a boiler, even a sizeable tunnel through which the cable hauled tramway ran its precipitous way down to the flats below. The Washournes had a mighty overshot wheel at Para para where haematite was ground for making paint. This same iron oxide was the basis for a great enterprise at Onekaka.
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•
80
Together with local coke and limestone it was fed into the smelter, and the ingots and iron castings were taken down to the coast in a long overhead cableway. Massive cog wheels and other more or less imperishable left overs still lay on the site till the 70's but have since been recycled, as have many of the massive fire bricks from the old coke ovens whose gorse covered hemispheres resembled Roman Baths. The old wharf still juts out to sea and is currently home to an intrepid dolphin, swimming nonchalantly among wondering and slightly bemused landlubbers. Very recently, the cement works at Tarakohe closed. They also used local raw m3terials. I hope the huge cement silos, perched like Tintagel Castle on a crag overlooking the sea will remain; they are spectacular. Marble too had been quarried in the Bay, but the only stone now worked commercially is at Mount Burnett where dolomite is won for use, among other things, in glass making and agriculture. Asbestos was found in the Cobb and many other minerals in small amounts. Electricity perhaps hardly qualifies as a mineral but it's certainly an export, and has resulted in a large lake as well behind the dam. A smaller hydro electric plant above Pupu Springs is a source not only of power but pleasure, at any rate for those who enjoy walking beside the water-race snaking along the mountainside, where it was originally dug to supply water for gold sluicing. So at last to gold. For all that it was a flourishing field, it has left few visible signs. In the Aorere Valley, where it all started, there is a good walkway, which gives easy access to the artificial lake called Druggans Dam, and the fern shadowed, though mostly dry race that flowed from this is cleared again. There are huge spoil heaps and, more remotely, stamper batteries too. To bring it right up to date there are present day gold seekers equipped with less back breaking methods of wresting those thinly scattered flecks of that yellow human magnet out of the gravel with front end loaders and rotating screens.
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Water has had a role in other ways. Still in the Aorere Valley is an overshot wheel in a web of kiwi fruit which until the 1920's provided power for milking, running a monstrous grindstone and other jobs around the farm . At the other end of the bay, in Waitui Road is another, this time snared by supple jack, which drove a chaff cutting plant; the shed and cutter are there stilL On the same farm is a magnificent old tolara shingled barn under the shadow of big totaras itself, against which are propped some fine old wagon wheels. Other shingled roofs are around. So far as I've seen, the only occupied house of vintage years using them is at Upper Takaka. There was a beauty in East Takaka until the eighties, a perfect example of an early farmhouse, that fell victim to the juggernaut of progress. Fairholme, a house close by, has still a shingled dairy, and at Motupipi is a shed housing a power plant which is similarly roofed, and there is currently a revival of I interest in the use of this lovely material, often using Kawaka, the mountain cedar. Just ~bove this power plant is all that remains of a winery well known from the famous Tyree photograph of the workers and their barrels under the limestone crags. Golden Bay is one of the richest sources I know for that undervalued object, the Red Shed. Perhaps the humidity and benign climate encourage the brilliant growth that splashes fence palings and weatherboards wi th rescue orange. There are real old timers here and there. In the Hamama Valley is a split slab whare still in good nick, and right beside it some lichen encrusted pulleys from the water wheel that
J
85
was here. Closely related to the red shed is that endangered species, the bach. Not the home from home, wall to wall type that is hardly distinguishable from the suburbs, but the sort that were a genuine retreat from the tyranny of phone and vacuum cleaner, lawn mower and stuffiness. At the other end of the scale of house technology, there is an arrival from outer space at Pohara that would appear to be in the process of uniting with a terrestrial. What the result of this miscegenation may be is mind boggling. Another slightly surreal building is the bandstand at Pohara, its base lapped by waves
carpin~;p~i~ec~;e::~:~~~IIII~~!~~ii~~
about English seaside resort wrote at highthe water. Osbert Lancaster, in a "heard on these shores the music of spheres would sound like something from the Gondoliers." No doubt many a tune from those well loved operettas that wafted from that salt encrusted rostrum.
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87
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~mt.h"\jtoP- 6j!tcSJ ~~ Ili.%rn:~:. Two non man-made bits of scenery cannot go unremarked. Beyond Puponga is the beach at Wharariki whose wildness makes me hesitate to mention it. Rollers break at the foot of the huge grey stacks, and run up a shore which seems as though no human foot might ever have trod there. And on the subject of feet, the Devils Boots (upside down as befits the Southern Hemisphere) form bizarre sentinels to the Aorere Goldfield. On the dusty road towards the Heaphy Track, is one of the last of the country stores at Bainham. These once common places, in which everything from gumboots to gold pans found a niche, and where commerce in goods was hardly more important than in gossip, have almost vanished. The minuscule Post Office with its enamelled sign, the store that caters to some of the needs of trampers has an importance out of proportion to its size. Returning, you cannot avoid seeing the long line of Collingwood buildings stretched out across the harbour, the prim post office standing stiffly in the middle. I'm sure I'm not the first to use the Phoenix analogy, and though towns in New Zealand have often had their fires, Collingwood seems to have had more than its fair share. It has some survivors however, the gaol, a tiny museum (there is another fascinating one at Rockville filled with machinery, photographs and tools in a heterogeneous amalgam), and an old courthouse. A sign near the waterfront proclaims, in a sort of Folie de Grandeur, that masters of overseas vessels should report at once upon landing to the nearest custom post, at Nelson! There is a story that there were once plans afoot to make Collingwood the capi tal of New Zealand, though I have never been able to confirm the origin of it. On the hill overlooking the estuary is the toy church of St Cuthbert (the patron saint of the mighty Romanesque Cathedral of Durham). Like St Michael's at Waimea West, this is another of that intrepid explorer Brunner's essays into architecture, and equally successfuL
89
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I've left the town of Takaka till last. I have a particular affection for this place. I don't care what the quartz crystals that drive them say, the hands of watches move more slowly here. Even the buildings look as though they have been caught in some sort of time warp. The bank, the Council Chambers, the former, very elegant. Post Office, now an excellent Museum and Art Gallery, the Catholic Church, the near identical twin of that in Motueka and the tiny Anglican one, a memorial, of course, but to Pioneers for once, a hotel with balcony, and a number of good old houses with some interesting woodwork. There is even a small lake tucked in at the back of the shops. Of all the settlements in the Nelson Region it has more of that hard-to-define quality, a sense of place. Which really begs the question. If you don't believe me, go for yourself.
90 --==~~ - .=
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THE LATE LAMENTED It may be maudlin to dwell on
~
the dear departed, but no account of Nelson would be &.,. complete without some ir.J; ~ ~UI)lJ reference to its once proud ·;..1 ~"91 'jJ~e Provincial Building, which :::I~' was condemned to perish by 00 0 " such a slim vote. It is cold comfort to say that it would certainly not happen that way now, so a few vignettes of the splendid structure are included by way of lamentation. That ~~~(.f.l~~ a not very prosperous Province, with a population ;=:of about 5000 souls, should have seen fit to spend the equivalent of more than a week's average wage per head of the little community on it was a remark,
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able actbe ofmany faith in 1859. The presentOne day loss equivalent would millions of dollars. that is . r peculiarly symbolic is the casual bulldozing of ~ ._ Nelson's first cemetery on the Cliffs to make way for :::~~ if'-." / ..../// /(....~''/'' / ./--::/ .. a housing development. Let the dead bury their """",-><--' - -';', ,,,' ,,' /...~dead. Of the others illustrated, some in fact are not quite yet departed but have one foot in the grave '-:::-:-;::'; .:::: ";...-./;;<:::,:;-;:'~::~ ~r~?1~~~~~ and one on the bath soap. It would be tiresome to I pen an epitaph for each one, so best let the pictures speak. .
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100
101
POST AMBLE Now the journey is done. Very early in its career, Nelson ~~~ I acquired the title of 'Sleepy Hollow'. Cradled within its sheltering mountains and hence cut off from the main ~~~~~=J stream this place may seem somewhat somnolent to the outsider. So much the better, for it has kept its identity, and not yet become the Nowheresville of less fortunate places.
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To misquote Orwell' All places are unique but some are more unique than others'. If you sense that uniqueness, then I rest my case.
VIGNETTES
JlI.Sr cc.~~ ,~ WI-~abll: ~ i" r<'S1'~ ~ (6\J kcu.i£; ~ W~ 1I-iJf's
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~~ , buat- IA.. tfL7. \840's, lcGt~ "'i~cMb-. A h~ ~ ~ f.u..~ I 'oa.! ~ nfu) ,.JvttR c&,~f~iC in~-\b b~~ s,t-nriL'<.- 'fja.i...<., tkis,t~ ClIl a. -C;u..Lt~
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Arrow Rock Oriel Window, former Nelson Institute Building Threshold, Bishop School Tophouse Houlton Lotus capital, ballroom, Hillwood House Spring Grove Bam Staples Brewery, Riwaka 154 Hardy Street Theatre Royal
St John in the Wilderness Bishop School, Interior Anchor, Paru Paru Road Tui Overbridge, Waiuta Poppet Head Pillar Box, Hardy Street Hall, Reef ton Wooden pulley, Petersen's mill, Hamama Former Auckland Drapery Building Seat, Queen's Gardens
](ll
INDEX
Compiled by Alison Johnston
NELSON OBSERVEP written by "Christopher Vine HOUSE Adit (mining) Anchor Anchor (vig) Argus (ketch) ? Arrow Rock (vig) Atkinson Observatory Auckland Drapery Building Auckland Drapery Building (vig) Auckland Point School turret Bach Backpackers Baigent Homestead Baigent's Mill Bairds Building Ballroom - Hillwood House (vig) Building, Banana Bowl Bandstand Bank of New Zealand Bank of New Zealand Baptist church Barn Barn Barn Barn Barn Barn Barn Barn Barn - Hop garden Barn (vig) Barns Barns Barns Beehives House, Belton Dr Bishop School Bishop School - turret Bishop sChool door Bishop School Interior (vig) Bishop School -Threshold (vig) Bishopdale chapel Boat sheds Boat sheds Boscabel - Ellis builder - 1890 Brackets - 172 Commercial St Brackets - 57 Commercial St Bread oven (brick) Hickmotts Rd Brewery, Harleys Brick arch Bridge Bridge Bridge Bridge abutment Bridge club
ADDRESS no location Delaware Bay Paru Paru Rd Nelson Haven Nelson Haven Princes Drive Trafalgar/Hardy Sts Trafalgar/Haroy Sts Haven Rd Ligar Bay Weka St Wakefield Wakefield Trafalgar St Whakapuaka Nelson City Pohara, Golden Bay Takaka Trafalgar St Bridge St Dovedale Old house Rd Spring Grove Woodstock Tapawera Murchison Golden Bay Brightwater Wakefield Spring Grove Upper Moutere Stanley Brook Brandy Creek, Dovedale Aorere Valley Trafalgar St [sic] Bronte St Nile St Nile St Nile St Nile St Nile St Bishopdale Riwaka Wainui Bay Norris Rd, Tapawera Takaka Takaka Golden Bay Nile St West St "Vincent St Kawatiri Juction Queen's Gardens Murchison Spooners Tunnel Nile St
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42
411
79 61 60 62 7 51 102 93 32 85 21 34 67 44 26 45 85 91 94 54 35 35 35 35 35 75 83 99 35 33 34 34 34 88 20 58 32 10 58 9 56 61 85 24 92 92 88 99 96 63
72 75 64 30
:( Bridge, Brunner Westport Broadgreen (cob house) Stoke Stoke Broadgreen House Stoke Broadgreen, oriel window Building Trafalgar St Building Hardy St Building Trafalgar St Building Bridge St Building Wakefield Quay Building Trafalgar St Building - built 1863 Hardy St Hardy St Building - kiwi on top Building (Marjorie Naylo~s Studio) Bridge St Bridge St Building c.1860's Building NE comer (Four Spirits CnrCollingwood/Bridge Sts Buildings Haven Rd Selwyn Place Buildings High St Motueka Cali Bung Cambria St Cambria House - gables Candy Corner Store Collingwood/Nile St East Teal Valley Cape Cod cottage plan c.1845 Bridge St Cast Iron Cathedral doorway Nelson Cawthron steps pillar cap Church steps Cement silos Tarakoe, Golden Bay Central School - turret Nile St Chaff cutter Golden Bay Champion Mine smelter flue Aniseed Valley Chimneys Waimea West Chip mill Richmond Orinoco Church Church Tadmor Church High St, Motueka Church doorway Rutherford St Church doorway, All Saints Church Vanguard St Church window Motueka Church, East Takaka Takaka, East Takaka Church, Roman Catholic Takaka City Council 1903 Building Trafalgar st Cob "House Mahana Cob "House built by James Harford Aniseed Valley Rd Cob House Spring Grove Main Rd Cob House Brook St Cob House Todd Valley Cob House - Woodstock (Beatson) Stoke Cob House - Adobe Lud Valley Cob House - Brookside Erin St Cob house - William Higgins Spring Grove Cob House 1852 Hills St Richmond Cob House 1856 Brightwater Cob House- Aldinga Stoke Cob House- built by Simpsons Washington Valley Cob House 'Overton' 1863 Cob House -Palmer 1840 Waimea West Collingwood Mining Company Aorere, Trafalgar St Commercial Bank of Australia Murchison Commercial Stables Concrete mixer - 44 gallon drum Tapawera Convent - Redwood College Manuka St
280 112 203 67-73 300 123 29 181
67-73
41 b
77
35
252
78 13 9 31 44 45 46 47 47 50 45 45 47 47 96 62 70 23 29 47 24 30 11 71 82 32 83 66 99 69 53 53 56 11 11 53 87 91 94 12 12 13 13 14 14 14 14 102 14 13 14 14 14 13 84 46 75 37 95
Cottage Cottage Cottage Cottage Cottage Cottage - Oaklands Cottage 1860's Cottage by Kelling Cottages Cottages Cottages County Council Chambers Courthouse Courthouse Courthouse , Nelson Crewenna Cropp's hop kiln Dairy Deniston Incline Dodson's Brewery Dredge Druggan's Dam Duncan Home Edwin Fox (ship) Egyptic design Egyptic design Ellis winerysite Engine House Engine shed Engine shed Eves Valley Mill Facade Fairfield House Fairholme dairy - shingled roof Fairholme, House Fanlight Farm relics Farmhouse - shingled roof Fellworth Fence - post and rail Fence, wire Fertiliser works Flax mill Flue Forge Fountain Foxhill Stables French Pass Lighthouse Fretwork Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Fretwork, gables, bargeboards
Collingwood St Lud Valley Harley/Bridge Sts Bridge St Fiddle Lane Richmond Foothills Church Lane Ranzau Tasman St Russel St South St Takaka Reefton Collingwood Bridge St Whakapuaka, Main Rd Hoult's Valley Brightwater Denniston Tasman St Port Nelson Aorere Hardy St Picton Hardy ST,"Public Trust Hardy St Clifton, Golden Bay Albion Square Belgrove St Vincent St Eves Valley Trafalgar St Trafalgar St Takaka, East Takaka Takaka, East Takaka Mount St no location Takaka, East Takaka Milton St 42 Brougham St Neudorf Road Lower Queen St, Richmond Lower Moutere Buller Aorere Valley Queen's Gardens Foxhill French Pass Brougham St Brightwater Collingwood St Tory St St Johns Church Collingwood St Tasman St Cambria St Manuka St Russel SI Milton St
184
1
204
114 14 168 8 87 41 147
15 16 96 97 98 16 17 16 15 70 70 91 77 90 100 18 40 31 80 93 62 84 101 62 30 30 86 48 64 96 68 94 19 87 87 11 37 87 10 71 71 68 66 78 88 72 38 60 21 27 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 30
Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Milton St Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Brookside Collingwood St Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Endeavour St (Ronaki) Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Rutherford St Fretwork, gables, bargeboards Belgrove Fretwork, verandah Waimea West Gables, The Gables, The Waimea West Waimea West Gables - General Store Gables, House Stafford Place Gables, The Thorpe St , Motueka Ganger's house Tadmor Station Whakapuaka cemetery Garin Chapel Gas engine Marble Quarry Wakefield Domain Gates Wakefield General Store Generating Station Wakefield Quay Trafalgar St Glasgow's building - (NZI) no location given Gold workings - adit Appleby Gravel works Lyell Graveyard Greengables Home, bargeboard Bridge St Griffith grave Wakefield Trafalgar St Gully, John, Studio Hall (vig) Reefion Hannah's building Trafalgar St Trafalgar St Hannah's Building Collingwood Harbour Hardy St Girls School Hardy St Harley House Milton St Trafalgar Square Harmonic Society Hall Lower Moutere Hewetson House Hillside Grove St Whakapuaka Hillwood Hillwood Stables Whakapuaka Hodginson's Guest House Tadmor Holy Trinity Church Richmond Hop garden Riwaka Brandy Creek, Dovedale Hop kiln Dovedale Hop kiln Sunrise Valley Hop kiln Sherry River Hop kiln Hop kiln Tadmor Hop kiln Dovedale Waimea West Hop kiln Neudorf Hop kiln - part cob Stanley Brook Hop kiln c.1870 Horse drawn grader - Hickmott's Rd Golden Bay Horse trough Reefion Hotel, Telegraph Takaka Ruby Bay Houlton Houlton (vig) Ruby Bay Nile St East House House Nile St House Tasman & Manuka St Trafalgar Square House House Nile St Nile & Alton St junction House House Haven Rd
110 192 25 114
407 240
110
30 30 30 30 30 26 16 27 44 17 17 64 56 69 57 47 62 49 79 68 77 30 57 99 75 46 101 90 58 30 100 24 20 18 38 103 55 43 40 40 40 41 41 43 43 41 39 89 76 91
17 28 349
15 17 19 20 20 20 21 21
House House House House House House House House House House House House House House - 1970's - McKee/Patton House - 2 storied House - Art Deco style House - Art Deco style House - Beach Rd House - Commercial St House - dilapidated House - Gables House - Gables House - old House - shingled roof House - two storied House - unconventional House - unconventional House - unconventional House and turret House with verandahs House with verandahs House with verandahs House, old House , space age Houses Ho.uses Houses Houses Inn Inn Inn - Gaukrodger Iron decoration Iron lace Jronwork, gate Ironworks, wind ing gear Isel House Janie Seddon (ship) Kelling grave Kerr Homestead Kohatu Stables Letter box - Toss Woollaston Lighthouse - Boulder Bank 1861 Limeworks Lockup Log house Louis Kerr Building Lukey's Barn Lutheran Church Machinery, abandoned
Motueka Hardy St (Manse) Poole St, Motueka Brooklyn Woodlands Ave, Motueka Little Kaiteri Teal Valley Dovedale Alton St ~ b Tasman/Man~ka Sts .oc-l".+·) Nile St Tasman St Bridge St Britannia Heights Blackbird Valley Princes Drive Erin St Collingwood Takaka Wakefield Ranui St, Stoke Dorset St, Richmond Brightwater Takaka, Upper Takaka Bronte St Marahau Stanley Brook Stanley Brook Reefton Teapot Valley Brightwater Riwaka Takaka Pohara Collingwood St nr Hardy St Richardson St Denniston South St Neudorf Upper Moutere Foxhill Hotel Collingwood St Westport Queen's Gardens Onekaka Isel Park, Stoke Motueka Ranzau Waimea West Kohatu Riwaka Boulder Bank Westport Collingwood Pigeon Valley Trafalgar St Sherry River Upper Moutere Westport, south of
78
1 132
139
129
245
22 22 22 23 23 25 25 27 31 74 97 97 98 25 22 22 22 90 91 33 22 24 33 90 98 25 25 25 76 23 23 23 92 86 72 74 80 93 42 42 42 32 78 71 84 50 60 56 34 38 25 60 80 89 24 46 34 54 79
Magazine Albion Square Maisey Homestead Redwoods Valley Malt House Buxton Car Park Malt House Harley St Brightwater Malthouse Farm Brightwater Malthouse Farm Marble Creek coal mine Golden Bay Marsden Ch~rch Hall roof Nile St East Masonic Hall Collingwood St Masonic Lodge Reefton Collingwood St Masonic Temple Matariki School Sherry River Valley McKay, James, barn Glen McKay's (H & J's) Bridge St Melrose Brougham St Memorial Motueka Merrijigs Reefton Metropolitan Hotel Bridge St Mill Lower Queen St, Richmond Mill house for chaff cutting Golden Bay Mill , modem Lower Moutere Millstone from Baigent Mill (flour) Montrose House Montrose Drive, Atawhai Murchison Theatre Murchison Muritai Whakapuaka, Main Rd Mutual Life Bldg (vig) Hardy StlChurch Lane 154 Selwyn Place Nelson Club Nelson College for Girls' Trafalgar St South Nelson Evening Mail Building Bridge St, Lower Nelson Institute 1911 building Hardy St Nelson Provincial Buildings Bridge St Nelson Provincial Buildings Bridge St Nelson Prov incial Buildings Bridge St Nelson Savings Bank Trafalgar St Newman's Building Hardy St Observation post Gun Emplacement The Ciffs Oliver's Mill Tapawera Oliver's Mill, Interior Tapawera Onkekaka wharf Onekaka Oriel window - Nn Institute Bldg (vigHardy St Ornamentation Mount St Outhouse Stafford Place Outhouses no location Oven, brick Brunner Pannelling Collingwood St Park Store Trafalgar St north Parklands School Motueka Pelorus bridge Pelorus, Marlborough Philippe Homestead Sherry River Phyllis Moffat Memorial Hospital Motueka Hardy St Pillar box Pillar Box (vig) Hardy St Pioneer Memorial Riwaka Pioneer Memorial Takaka Pitt Gates Queen's Gardens Plunket Rooms and Harley House Trafalgar Square Poly1ech Hardy St Porch - built by Garry Robilliard Golden Bay Porch - gothic Nile St
48 35 98 98 18 41 81 54 49 76 73 59 33 47 96 57
77 42 68 83 67 67 97 75 18 44 50 96 99 48 10 93 100 94 45 62 67 67 84 8 28 36 36 79 11 70 59 65 97 29 71 70 57 92 71 74 9 86 96
"
Post post Post Office Post Office Post Office Post Office Post Office Post Office - new building (1970's) Post Office and customs building Presbyterian Church Prince Albert Hotel Pulley, wooden, Petersen's Mill Quarry Railings Railings Railings, Masonic Hotel Railings, Masonic Hotel Railway crossing Railway house Redwood Stables Renwick House Rhodes House Rifle butts Ronaki Roof structure, old Suter Gallery Royal Hotel Rutherford Hotel Rutherford Memorial Rutterglen S .S. Pelorus (scow) School of Mines School of Mines School of Music - exterior School of Music - interior School of Music turret School of Music ventilator Scow 1970's Seat (vig) Seymour Oak Shed Shed Shed - totara roof Shedwood Shopfront Slaters Creek Donkey Engine Sluice gate - Druggan's Dam Snodgrass Building Sparrow House St Andrews gravestones St Barnabas Church St John in the Wilderness (vig) St Johns church St John's Church St John's Church (chimney) St Johns church Hall St Josephs Church St Marys Catholic Church St Michaels Church St Paul's church porch
Bridge St Delaware Bay cemetery Havelock Takaka, East Takaka Bainham Collingwood Takaka Trafalgar/Halifax Sts Trafalgar/Halifax Sts Nile St East Nile St Hamama Takaka Hill Bank of NZ School of Music Trafalgar/Hardy St Bronte St, 24 -relocated Spring Grove Brightwater Appleby Manuka St Motueka Nelson Haven Endeavour St Bridge St Bridge/Collingwood St Trafalgar Square Brightwater Whitby Rd Havelock Reefton Bridge St Nile StiCollingwood St Nile StiCollingwood St Nile St Nile St Port Nelson Queen's Gardens Seymour Ave Hamama Saxton's Road Clifton, Golden Bay Tapawera Westport Slater's Creek Golden Bay Hardy/Collingwood Sts Golden Bay Whakapuaka Stoke Wakefield Wakefield Hardy St Hira Hardy St Appleby Manuka St Waimea West Brightwater
80
5
290
103 103 51 87 89 89 92 101 101 55 42 81 68 71 71 71 71 63 65 38 31 23 61 19 48 42 100 57 21 61 76 98 49 49 32 32 61 103 73 90 97 86 22 78 69 82 47 90 56 56 52 52 54 53 50 53 55 52 11
St Peters by-the-Strand Founder's Park Stamper and mill - Lankey's Creek Reefton Stanley Brook School Stanley Brook Stapes Brewery (vig) Riwaka Staple Brewery c.1972 Riwaka State Theatre Trafalgar/Halifax Sts Station building Kawatiri Juction Stonework Denniston Sunnyside SEE Warwick House Suspension bridge Wairoa River (Irvine's Farm) Suter Gallery Porch Bridge St Swage block Teal Valley Symonds Lamp - replica Trafalgar St Tadmor Store, carving over door Tadmor Tarakoe cement works Tarakoe, Golden Bay Tasman St spindels Tasman St Thackwood Whakapuaka Theatre Royal Rutherford St Theatre Royal (vig) Rutherford St TNL Building Selwyn Place Stanley Brook Tobacco kiln Toilet, outside dunny Takaka Tophouse (vig) St Arnaud Town hall Westport Trafalgar Hotel Trafalgar/Hardy St Trask House ColHngwood St Trathen's building Trafalgar St Treadle saw Founder's Park Tree Charleston Tui Overbridge (vig) Tui Tadmor Valley Turner cottage Carluke, "Rai Valley Turret Haven Rd Tyree House Richardson St Venturer (ship) Awaroa Verandah brackets Wakefield Verandah brackets Farewell Spit Verandah corner detail Takaka Verandah post & brackets Poole St, Motueka Vicarage, Westport Westport Victorian Rose Hotel SEE Glasgow's View Upper Takaka Vineyard Neudorf Rd Vineyard Upper Moutere Wadsworth House Tapawera Wadsworths Hop Kiln ? Wagon wheels Wainui Rd, Upper Takaka Waimea west School Waimea West Wainui House Nile St Eilst Waiuta Poppet Head Golden Bay Waiuta Poppet Head (vig) Waiuta Wakefield Post Office Wakefield Wakefield School Wakefield Warwick House Scotland St Warwick House - turret Scotland St Waterwheel Wainui Rd, Upper Takaka Waterwheel - Hickmotts Rd Golden Bay Watts cottage Domett St Westport Library Westport Westport News building Westport
54
77 59 39 39
72
78
63 80 19 65 9 61 74 31 82 10 18 50 48 46 36 92 12 78 42 29 46 31 80 63 15 32 26 62 27 88 91 31 78 49 81 43 43 23 39 83 59
72 77 66 51 59 19 32 83 88 9 78 78
q Wharariki Beach Wharf Wharf piles Wharfinger's house Wheel and shed Whitcoulls building Wilkins & Field Winding gear Winding gear Windmill Wire cable Wooden trough Woodlands, bargeboard Woodvale Wool presses
Golden Bay Wakefield Quay PupOnga, Golden Bay Onekaka Pokoror Trafalgar St Hardy St Denniston Marble Creek Belgrave Cable Bay Golden Bay Old House Rd The Glen no location
196
88 62 88 84 66 46 45 80 81 64 65 83 27 18 37
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