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From Heritage New Zealand, Winter 2005

1955-64: Learning to Walk

by Paul Christoffel

From the start, the Trust depended on volunteers to maintain momentum.

Trust work shifted in emphasis during the 1960s after
the opening of its first flagship properties, Te Waimate Mission House in 1966 and Pompallier House in 1967. It amassed the bulk of its property portfolio during the 1970s. A raft of Auckland and Northland early contact-era properties were purchased before the emphasis switched to South Island properties, transport structures and industrial estates from the mid 1970s.

First meeting of Trust in Parliament House, September 1955. Anticlockwise from right: Gordon Wilson (Government Architect), R.Wheeler (Minister’s Secretary), J.D.H. Buchanan (Wanganui schoolmaster),V.F. Fisher (Auckland Museum), Mrs Ruth Allan (Historian),A.G .Harper,Hon. C.M. Bowden, Hon. S.W. Smith, J.D. Pascoe, E.J. Fairway (Internal Affairs), C.J. Read (Treasurer. Internal Affairs), Rev. P Temuera,A.G. Bagnall, D.M. Greig. Photo: NZHPT

he National Historic Places Trust officially came into
existence on 1 April 1955, and the Board held its first
meeting five months later. The Board was chaired for
its first three years by Charles Bowden, the former
Minister of Internal Affairs who had guided the Historic Places Bill through Parliament.The preamble to the Act expressed a hope the Trust would “arouse and maintain a healthy public interest in places and things of national or local historic interest within New Zealand” and would “mark, maintain, and preserve such places and things”.However, the Trust was given limited powers and resources to carry out these functions.

The Board spent much time in its early meetings on
administrative issues, including determining rules for the new
organisation. Setting up the Trust took several years, and much of the responsibility for helping establish 17 regional committees fell on the shoulders of Trust Secretary John Pascoe. Pascoe was a wellknown mountaineer, writer, photographer and history buff who transferred from the War History branch of Internal Affairs. He was the Trust’s sole full-time employee for much of the time and put in copious amounts of overtime, requiring many of his other activities to be put on hold. Despite this, Pascoe’s interest in history
and his commitment to the aims of the Trust kept him in the job for over five years.

The legacy of one decision the Board took at its first meeting
survives to this day – it commissioned Wellington artist E. Mervyn Taylor, a well-known engraver, to design a Trust logo. Board members agreed they wanted a common seal incorporating a typical early colonial house and a Maori design, which is exactly what Taylor delivered. His design has graced the Trust’s correspondence and publications ever since, with only minor alterations.

Internal Affairs Minister S.W. Smith attended that first meeting, perhaps symbolising a Government commitment to the new body. However, it was to be some years before that commitment was to be transformed from a symbolic to a financial one. The grant from Government in the Trust’s first full year was £8,200 ($325,000 in 2004 dollar values), rising to just double that by the end of the first decade. As a result, the members of regional committees often had to put in a tremendous amount of work without even their expenses being met. The importance to the Trust of the work of these regional committees was shown by the fact that Charles Bowden travelled to the launch of every committee outside of Wellington, and John Pascoe attended all but one. Civic dignitaries commonly attended these official launches.

Early Days

A river steamer alongside the beach at Pipiriki. Photo: Alexander Turnball Library PAQ-q- 158-27 Mantell Collection*

Don Wilson, who chaired the original Wanganui branch committee, recalls the effort put in by committee members, which often meant donning gumboots and getting their hands dirty.The district covered a huge area, extending as far north as Taupo and as far south as Foxton.Wilson considers the Trust came into being just in time as “a tremendous amount had already been lost”. He recalls travelling as a lad on the Wanganui River in the 1920s on the paddle steamer that stopped at pa sites and a boarding house at Pipiriki. By the 1950s, the steamer had been replaced by road transport, the old sites had fallen into disrepair and the boarding house burnt down.

The whole district was full of ruined hilltop pa and military redoubts. Little was left of the old flourmills that Governor Grey had ordered to be built for local Maori in the 1850s. Just recording historic sites was a huge amount of work.

In other regions, the workload on committee members was
less onerous. The 1957 Annual Report of the Nelson Branch stated that “after we have marked a very limited number of historic sites and maybe purchased an old cob cottage and taken over an old Methodist church for restoration, there would be very little for the Branch to do”. However, the Nelson experience was not typical.

The Wanganui committee gave a particular prominence
to Maori heritage, not only because there was so much of it in the district but also because of the enthusiasm of committee member Max Smart, who had researched and written on local Maori history, and the important contacts of another board member,Rangi Metekingi.

In fact, it was in the Wanganui district that the Historic Places Trust acquired its first site – Te Porere pa near Mt Tongariro, the site of Te Kooti’s defeat in the last major engagement of the wars of the 1860s, was vested in the Trust.The Trust had negotiated with Ngati Tuwharetoa that it would take control of Te Porere in November 1958. The work of clearing the site was undertaken almost entirely by volunteers, including members of the local branch committee and recruits from tramping clubs.Governor General Lord Cobham officially opened Te Porere to the public in February 1961, although restoration work continued for many years after.

Dendroglyph (tree carving) on the Chatham Islands, c. 1900. Photo: Alexander Turnball Library PAColl-1964-27 Kathleen Silcock Collection*

Preserving and marking historic Maori heritage was an important focus for the Trust in its early years, including protecting Maori rock drawings from vandalism or destruction by hydro-electric projects and recording drawings that could not be saved or were difficult to access. Reports on rock paintings to be affected by hydro-electric schemes on the Waikato and Waitaki Rivers were included in the Trust’s annual reports of 1957 to 1959, effectively making them the Trust’s first publications.Grants were provided to protect Maori rock carvings near Waverly and in the Kaingaroa Forest from vandals, and to make replicas of the Kaingaroa canoe carvings. Work was carried out to preserve and protect rock art near Lake Tarawera. The Trust commissioned artist Tony Fomison to record South Island rock drawings. In 1962, the Trust was appointed to manage a private reserve for rock shelter art sites at Frenchman’s Gully in South Canterbury.

Many of the early plaques erected by the Trust marked
sites associated with Maori heritage or the New Zealand
Wars. Annual grants were made to the newly formed
New Zealand Archaeological Association so it could
undertake appropriate investigation of Maori and
Pakeha sites.

Won…

Although protecting Maori heritage remained a significant aspect of the Trust’s work during its first decade, it became increasingly occupied with importantissues of Pakeha heritage – particularly the threat to St Paul’s Cathedral near Parliament Buildings. Ormond Wilson, who chaired the
Trust for most of its first 15 years, later described saving Old St Paul’s as the Trust’s finest achievement.

But, for many years, the survival of the church seemed unlikely. Indeed, at a Board meeting in 1956, the first chairman, Charles Bowden, stated that preservation of the church as a separate building “is not a live issue in Wellington today”. In the 1950s, the Anglican Church reconfirmed its pre-war decision to demolish St Paul’s and build a new cathedral that incorporated part of the old church as a lady chapel in the new building. The issue for the Church came down to money – it could not afford to repair and maintain an old cathedral that was no longer needed in addition to building a new one.Those who wanted the church to remain intact on its original site formed a pressure group, the Society for the Preservation of the Cathedral of St Paul’s.

The Trust initially accepted the Church’s decision as a fait accompli. After meeting with Church officials, it felt there was little it could do without the consent of the Church
authorities. Despite the strong reservations of some members, the Board passed a motion in May 1956 agreeing to the lady chapel plan on the basis that this would at least preserve some of the building. The Board even commissioned photographs and drawings to record the church for posterity before it was lost forever. Among those who argued that the Trust should continue to fight for on-site
preservation was the chief government architect Gordon Wilson, who had been married in St Paul’s, but he was a minority voice and the church appeared doomed.

A landmark victory - Old St Paul’s saved from demolition. Photo: Grant Sheehan

Without the return of John Beaglehole from overseas, it may well have been. Beaglehole had been appointed to the Board from the start but was unable to attend any meetings until November 1956 because he was overseas. Before he left for England, he had addressed a public meeting in support of preserving St Paul’s, and was clearly infuriated at the turn events had taken during his absence.He told the Board that the church “might as well lie in ruins” as be incorporated into another building. Popular outcry had prevented the destruction of city churches in London and the same could happen in New Zealand, he said. He convinced members to rescind their earlier decision and to pursue all possible avenues to retain the building intact on its original site. The Historic Places Trust was thereafter at the forefront of efforts to save Old St Paul’s as it soon became known.

Over the next few years the Trust had meetings with Church
officials, sought assistance from an unsympathetic Wellington City Council and even appealed to the Prime Minister.These actions had little immediate success but they did gain media attention and helped fuel public support. In addition, the preservation society and Trust members ran a vigorous publicity campaign to ensure the issue featured regularly in the news pages and letters to the editor.

The Trust lobbied the Bishop of Singapore, who was shortly to become the new Bishop of Wellington, for support. He appeared willing to compromise and a breakthrough finally came in 1961.When he took up the new position, the bishop submitted the issue to church parishioners, who voted to rescind the lady chapel plan, granting a temporary stay of execution until the new cathedral was completed and new parish offices had been built. When this work was finally
finished in 1964, the Anglican Church made it clear that, if the Trust or the Government were not willing to buy Old St Paul’s, then it would almost certainly be demolished or moved.

As the Trust did not have the resources to buy and renovate the building,Ormond Wilson wrote to Prime Minister Keith Holyoake in December 1964 seeking Government help, pointing out that “a critical stage in the life of Old St Paul’s has been reached”. By the end of its first decade, the Trust
had helped gain a temporary reprieve for the historic church. Even if its future was still far from certain, the fact that Old St Paul’s was still intact was a significant victory in itself.

... And lost

However, the Trust failed in its efforts to save another old Wellington building – the Exchange building in Bond Street that was commonly called the Bethune and Hunter building, after a long-term tenant. It was built in the 1840s on the waterfront as a customs house and was later used for a variety of purposes, including an auction room and public meeting place. Reclamation had long since changed its
waterfront location and in more recent times it had been let out to a variety of businesses by the city council.An axe had hung over the building for many years as its condition deteriorated, and in 1957 the council decided to demolish it once the current lease expired.

The Trust was slow to act, and it was not until March 1958 that the Wellington Regional Committee recommended that the building should be preserved “if that should prove to be physically possible”. This effectively left the judgment up to the city council, which claimed that the cost of restoring the building was prohibitive.

The Early Settler’s and Historical Association disputed this claim after commissioning reports from builders, borer treatment specialists and other experts to demonstrate that the Exchange could be salvaged.While this was enough to convince the Trust Board that the building was worth saving, it did not convince the city council, which decided at its June meeting to demolish it.

In response, the Trust Board sent a deputation to the mayor to plead for a reprieve. On 11 August 1958, board members met with mayor Frank Kitts and two councillors, who gave
them the impression that demolition would at least be postponed.They had been misled, for demolition work began as scheduled just three days later. By the end of August, one of Wellington’s oldest buildings had made way for a car park. The following year, the Trust’s annual report recorded that the experience underlined the need for additional
powers “if the work and purposes of the Trust are to
be made effective”.

Waimate Warriors

Perhaps stung by the loss of one of Wellington’s oldest buildings, in 1959, the Trust decided to take firm action to preserve and restore New Zealand’s second oldest building, the former Church Missionary Society mission house at Waimate North.

After lengthy negotiations, the house and surrounding land and buildings were eventually purchased from the Anglican Church. Professor Cyril Knight, the former dean of architecture at Auckland University, was appointed consulting architect on the restoration project, and his initial
plans were approved in 1961. The Trust launched a public appeal to raise funds to restore the building, and the work finally began in March 1963. The restoration project was the start of a long and fruitful partnership between the Trust and the Ministry of Works, which undertook the work.

The revamp of the Waimate Mission House did not always run smoothly in the early years. As renovation progressed, the increasing array of people involved in the project began to raise concerns about the direction the restoration was taking. Among them was Ruth Ross, an historian and member of the Northland Regional Committee. By mid 1964,
Ross was questioning the philosophical basis of the renovations. She pointed out that important decisions had been overlooked in planning the refurbishment. The building’s structure had undergone significant changes even in its early decades.Although the property had started out as a mission station, the house served for two years as a
palace for Bishop Selwyn, New Zealand’s first Anglican bishop.The mission closed shortly after and the house eventually became a parish vicarage and remained so for over a century.

So, what was the house to be restored as? A mission station? A bishop’s palace? Or as a church vicarage, as it had been for most of its lifetime? Two Trust working parties visited the site in 1964 to assess progress and address the questions that Ross had raised.The second working party agreed that the restoration should aim to return the building, as far as practicable, to the way it had been in the early missionary period and recommended a number of changes to the original restoration plans. Ruth Ross and Trust Secretary Bob Burnett, also an historian, continued to criticise aspects of the renovations.Not surprisingly, Cyril Knight resigned from the project early in 1965.

John Stacpoole, who took over the project as architect for the Ministry of Works, agrees with some of the criticisms of the earlier restoration. In his view, the building had been made to look like “a rather superior state house”, and not enough research had been done to ensure the building’s original features were accurately reproduced whenever possible.

The situation was even worse at Pompallier, which had been
“restored” in the 1940s with no understanding of its origins.

Reaching out

The Waimate North renovations were greatly helped by more than £8,000 ($16,000) that was raised through the public appeal, a lottery grant and a special one-off Government grant. But Stacpoole recalls that for other projects there was often no money for anything other than “holding work”.The practical implications of this lack of funds came to light as early as 1956, when the Trust
was offered Governor Grey’s Mansion House on Kawau Island for two-thirds its valuation but had to decline the offer for financial reasons. Instead, the Trust allocated its limited funds to cost effective activities such as erecting plaques, which helped raise historical awareness and increased public appreciation of historic sites.

Endeavour replica at Anaura Bay, the site of Cook’s landing. Photo: PhotoNew Zealand.com/Geoff Mason

The first of these, marking Cook’s landing site at Anaura Bay, was unveiled at a ceremony in June 1958.Within five years, the Trust had erected more than 50 plaques and noticeboards.

Scrupulous attention was always paid to ensure accuracy in the wording of these historical pointers to avoid the errors that some MPs had drawn attention to in Parliament in 1954.However, there was the occasional slip-up – in 1961, a plaque on the Mahia peninsula had to be replaced because it gave an inaccurate date for missionary William William’s first visit there. The annual report noted that the incident “confirms the Trust’s conviction that intensive research must precede any positive action”.

The Trust’s activities were not solely confined to mainland
New Zealand. In 1957, three plaques were erected at Scott and Shackleton’s Antarctic huts once it had been confirmed that the Ross Dependency did indeed come within the Trust’s marking of places of historic importance within the purpose of the Historic Places Act at that time.The Navy and the DSIR carried out ongoing restoration work on the huts at the Trust’s request. On the Chatham Islands, the Trust funded work to protect and record Moriori tree carvings.

Nor did the Trust confine itself to marking, maintaining and preserving sites and buildings. In February 1960, the Board agreed to publish “appropriate historical studies” in recognition of the importance of historical scholarship for the Trust’s work.

The first such publication was issued eight months later – P.B. Maling’s booklet Samuel Butler at Mesopotamia. Booklets shortly followed on Te Porere pa, the Waimate Mission House and on the Paremata Barracks near
Wellington, the ruins of which were being restored by an
archaeological team.

Mansion House Kawau Island, circa 1910s. Photo: Alexander Turnball Library C-23299-1/2*

As in later years, the Trust regularly intervened to try to protect historic sites. It made representations to the Minister of Lands regarding the possible threat to the Mt Roskill volcanic cone from proposed railway works. In 1957, the Trust successfully supported preservation of the Otawhiao Mission site at Te Awamutu, which was threatened by a subdivision. In 1959 and again in 1962, it made representations opposing a proposed aerial cableway and restaurant on Mt Maunganui.

The Trust combined with the New Plymouth City Council to save the Richmond stone cottage from destruction by having it moved to a new site near the Taranaki Museum. The project was funded jointly by the Trust, the Council and private donations, and the work was completed in 1963. In other cases, the Trust had to settle for providing funds to assist archaeological work, for example, when reservoir work threatened historic Maori sites on Mt Wellington.

In 1963, the Trust’s name was changed to the New Zealand
Historic Places Trust to avoid confusion with National Trusts in other countries. By the end of its first decade, 17 regional
committees had been established and 641 members recruited.The demolition of St Paul’s had been postponed and restoration work was underway on the country’s second-oldest building.

The Trust’s annual report to March 1965 contained some philosophical reflections on the organisation’s role and its progress to date. The report noted that restoration tended to freeze the history of a once inhabited or used building at a possibly arbitrary date, and quoted Ruskin, who wrote in 1849,“take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them”. It reflected, perhaps with excessive pessimism, on “the delays and failures that mount up over the years, the magnitude of our responsibilities, and the smallness of our resources”. However, the Trust also saw encouragement from “the evidence of a community slowly but perceptibly emerging from its indifference to the value
of its national inheritance”. A solid foundation had been laid for the future.

* Photo: Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image