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From issue: May 2001

An Industrial Icon

by David Reynolds

A unique industrial landmark in Mount Eden, the country’s only surviving shot tower, faces an uncertain future.

The Auckland shot tower, as pictured in a pre-World War I catalogue of the Colonial Ammunition Company. Picture: Historic Places Trust Collection

It is remarkable that Auckland’s shot tower celebrated its eighty-seventh Christmas last year. The tower ceased production thirteen years ago and has been left to rust ever since. A Mount Eden icon, like the prison next door, the tower was built in 1914 for making lead shot. Today it is the most prominent structure surviving from a home-grown munitions industry that once sprawled over a huge site tucked under the mountain.

The Colonial Ammunition Company, commonly known as “CAC”, was established in 1885 by Major John Whitney, whose family maintained a connection with the firm until 1959. Whitney arrived in New Zealand from England in 1884. Early in 1885 he entered into a partnership with W.H. Hazard to manufacture ammunition and established the Mount Eden works on land granted by the Crown during the “Russian Scare”. Jingoistic colonials convinced themselves that a Russian invasion was imminent and wanted the country to be prepared with a local source of ammunition. CAC quickly established itself in New Zealand as an innovator in ammunition manufacture and development and in 1889 founded Australia’s munitions industry by establishing the Footscray factory in Melbourne.

The tower process for making lead shot was developed in England by William Watts. The first shot tower was erected in Bristol in 1782. The process greatly increased the speed of manufacture and improved the quality of shot which had previously been cast in moulds. The process changed little during the seventy-three years the CAC tower was in use. Bars of lead were hoisted up to a melting pot. The molten lead was poured into a pan with hundreds of holes in its base. As the lead flowed through, it formed into droplets and fell thirty-one metres (the height of the tower) into soapy water at the bottom. The recovered shot was then polished and loaded into cartridges. Few shot towers were built after the nineteenth century and the CAC tower is thought to be unique internationally in being fabricated from riveted steel. All the other surviving towers, four inthe United States, three in Australia and two in the United Kingdom, are built of masonry.

The shot tower is the most prominent survivor of a major industrial complex, but several large related buildings - the general office, the planing mill and box store - still survive in retailing or industrial use. All the buildings associated with the shot making process, the tower, the lead store and the rather ominous sounding “lead squirting works”, still stand in curious juxtaposition with a yard full of outsized polystyrene rocks and iron cages left over from the making of Xena, Warrior Princess.

Over the years the CAC shot tower became a prominent landmark. The tower’s promotional potential was not lost on the company which in 1953 marked the Coronation by erecting a huge steel-framed crown on the tower, lit with 900 sixty-watt bulbs.

The area around the former works has changed rapidly in the last five years. Mixed commercial-residential uses now predominate. Apartments have sprung up where joinery factories once stood, bringing with them cafés and retail stores. Early in 2000 the shot tower site was the subject of an application for consent to demolish the tower and subdivide its site. Late in 2000, before any hearing, the land changed hands and is now believed to be owned by a developer whose previous Auckland projects include inner city residential terraces.

Overseas, as in New Zealand, enlightened and imaginative owners and local authorities have recognised the special contribution industrial structures can make to the identity of a neighbourhood: the Gasworks Park in Seattle, Amalgamated Brick’s down-draught kiln in Auckland, the State University’s Marston water tower in Iowa, and Sydney’s Homebush brickworks are examples of redundant industrial structures that have been preserved, appreciated for their sculptural qualities as well as for their heritage value. Given the current height restrictions in the area, the shot tower’s new owner may recognise the tower’s potential as a beacon to focus attention on the change taking place below it.

The Auckand Shot Tower has been registered by the Historic Places Trust as a category 1 historic place.

David Reynolds is the Auckland Area Co-ordinator of the Historic Places Trust.