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From issue: February 2002

The Places Important to Us

by Peter Richardson

The Historic Places Trust's Register of Historic Places - Rarangi Taonga - is being steadily improved and goes on-line this month.

Children of Worser Bay School in Wellington exploring the Historic Places Trust's new Register website Picture: Dean Whiting

If the internet had not been invented in 1960s Cold War America, it would surely have had to be created to display peace-time heritage registers. At every meeting of the Trust's Maori Heritage Council and Board, more entries are added to the Historic Places Trust's Register, the statutory list of New Zealand's heritage places. In an effort to make Registers available to the public some national heritage agencies have published their nation's Registers as books. Typically around a thousand pages long and encyclopaedic in format, they present a country's official list of its heritage at the date of publication. However, they soon become about as useful as last year's telephone book; published Registers are rarely complete or entirely accurate for long.

The Gables, New Plymouth. Picture: Historic Places Trust

As a result, many heritage agencies responsible for identifying and promoting their nation's heritage have recently made register information available on the internet. The New South Wales' heritage register was launched on the internet in 1997; Western Australia's as recently as December 2000. Stage one of New Zealand's Register "goes live" this month (February).

The Trust's Register has been established under the Historic Places Act 1993. It informs property owners and the public about New Zealand's heritage places and assists protection of heritage places under the Resource Management Act. Councils are required to "have regard" to the Register when developing regional and district plans, and to notify the Trust as an affected party to resource consent applications that affect registered places. Through these processes, the Trust plays a critical role in decision-making about the future of registered heritage places*.

Christchurch Boys' High School Picture: Historic Places Trust

To ensure that the most effective use of the Register is being made, the Trust has completed an extensive review of its registration processes. The review confirmed the importance of the Register as a "foundation document in heritage management" but identified a range of initiatives needed to improve registration practices. The recommendations of the review are now being implemented: a new Register database has been developed with improved search functions; new registration proposal forms have been devised (available in electronic format); guidelines for interpreting the registration criteria in the Historic Places Act 1993 have been prepared; a Board registration sub-committee has been formed to assess registration proposals; a research inventory of heritage places is being established and the Trust is exploring the development of a list of "themes" as a tool to assist identification of heritage places.

The railway workshops water tower, Addington, Christchurch. Picture: Historic Places Trust

The review also identified that more is required to improve records on places that are already included on the Register. The amount of information the Trust holds on these places varies widely. The Register has more than 6,000 entries compiled over more than thirty years to meet changing legislative and other requirements. The trend is towards more documentation. Initially only very simple citations were required to classify historic buildings. During the 1980s building boom the paper work required to justify classification proposals increased dramatically. Introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 led to a further review of documentation standards.

The Colonial Ammunition Company's shot tower, Auckland. Picture: Historic Places Trust

Even now legislative requirements vary between parts of the Register. The Register consists of places (such as archaeological sites, buildings, gardens, cemeteries and shipwrecks), historic areas (groups of related historic places such as precincts of buildings), wahi tapu (sites sacred to Maori) and wahi tapu areas (groups of wahi tapu). The historic places section of the Register originates mainly from the registers of archaeological sites (compiled by the Trust from 1975) and of historic buildings (classified by the Trust from 1980 onwards). The historic area section derives from an earlier list of classified areas, and the wahi tapu and wahi tapu area sections from a list of "traditional sites" which were re-assigned to the wahi tapu and historic places parts of the Register.

The Sign of the Takahe, Christchurch. Picture: Historic Places Trust

Although the amount of information held on individual entries varies, Trust filing cabinets and book cases are full to overflowing with reports and photographs that have their origins in the registration process. Efforts have been made to disseminate this information widely through publications. A series of booklets on classified buildings was published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But the potential of the Register to communicate the range of stories that lie behind the bald notations of street addresses, legal descriptions and grid references has not yet been fully realised. Trust reports can be consulted at Trust offices but many of them are not readily accessible elsewhere. In some cases, more work is required to document the importance of places before a full written account can be made available.

The High Court, Auckland. Picture: Historic Places Trust

These problems will soon be solved. In May 2000 the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. Helen Clark, announced that as part of the Government's Cultural Recovery Package, funds would be made available to the Trust to upgrade the quality of the National Register with the goal of making it more accessible. Work on development of processes for upgrading Register entries began immediately. Following consultation with local authorities and other Register users, standards and specifications were developed for data collection and presentation. Three heritage researchers were appointed to check register entries and to prepare reports on heritage places. One researcher joined each of the Trust's three regional teams: Martin Jones in the northern region, Helen McCracken in the Central Region and Melanie Lovell-Smith in the Southern. Heritage Policy Analyst Elizabeth Cox is responsible for implementing national processes, standards and overseeing development of the internet site.

Pencarrow Lighthouse, Wellington Heads. Picture: Historic Places Trust

On launch date, nearly 1,000 heritage places will appear on the Trust's internet site, with reports for about 300. The site, like the Register on which it is based, is a work in progress. Research to improve the quality of Register entries will continue after the launch of the website. Through 2002, more Register entries, reports and photographs will be added to the site.

The heritage places equivalent of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, the Register will also be an essential companion to the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand which is being developed within the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. The issues at the heart of the compilation of the Register are central to larger questions about our history and national and regional identities: what are the places that are so important to us, so typically belonging to New Zealand or a region of New Zealand, that their continued existence must be assured? By recognising through statutory listing the importance of the Treaty House, Waitangi, the Kerikeri Mission Station, Parliament Buildings, Wllington, and more than 5,900 other places, the Register is a remarkable effort to answer such questions - remarkable for a number of reasons.

To a greater degree than many other heritage schedules prepared by national heritage agencies, New Zealand's Register has been put together by voluntary effort. Among the largely unpaid "registrars" are the Trust's branch committees, Trust Board members (particularly those on the former Buildings Classification Committee of 1969-90), the Maori Heritage Council and the many organisations and people who have nominated places for registration. Many of these people have also contributed to the improvement of Trust records for the launch of the Register internet site.

It is very fitting that work on the production of an electronic Register began in the year 2001, the International Year of the Volunteer. The Register internet site is one of the more important and enduring tributes to the volunteer ethic, and to the work of Trust staff and volunteers identifying and promoting New Zealand's heritage. The technology being used to transmit this information to other New Zealanders, and to the world - the internet - may have developed out of a climate of fear and paranoia, but from February 2002 it will communicate data that has its origins in entirely different sentiments: the spirit of co-operation and respect for the past that has characterised more than thirty years' collective effort identifying, documenting and promoting the diverse range of places that communities value.

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Peter Richardson is the Historic Places Trust's Senior Heritage Policy Analyst.

*For further information about the legal requirements and nature of the Register, see the Historic Places Act 1993, Part II.