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From Heritage New Zealand, Autumn 2006

Ell of a Job

by Geraldine Johns

The Construction of the Port Hills road became a magnificent obsession for the man behind it.

Cyclists enjoying a ride along the Summit Road. Photo: Photo New Zealand /Rob Brown

Picture the young Harry Ell in his Christchurch hometown. He would leap on his horse and thunder up Kennedys Bush Road, as many young boys in the late 1880s no doubt did. Ell's horseback journeys took him to Kennedys Bush itself, where he would stop to absorb the atmosphere of the abundant bush and bird life about him.

But the vista that unfolded before him was different from that which his contemporaries saw. If the landscape they revelled in offered a window to instant boyhood delights, Harry Ell looked into the future - and he did not like what he could see.

"He realised that Kennedys Bush was being cut up to provide wood for the growing city," says his grandson, John Jameson. And he was right: much of the 120 hectares of virgin bush on that hillside was indeed milled by early settlers. It was to be a pivotal part of his life.

Henry George (Harry) Ell (1862-1934) is the founder of the Summit Road in Christchurch. He was responsible for the whole concept of the Port Hills-to-Akaroa Summit Road: his vision was a network of scenic reserves along the route, connected by a purpose-built road, and dotted with rest houses where travellers could stop for refreshment. He is the personificiation of the Port Hills story.

He was also a politician, winning the Christchurch South seat when 27 and serving for almost 20 years, and it's in that role that his early childhood memories bore lasting effect in the national interest.

One of Harry Ell's first, and most notable, achievements as an MP was the introduction of the Scenery Preservation Bill in 1903. Driven by his boyhood memories of the destruction of Kennedys Bush, he resolved to save the country's diminishing bush land for future generations. The passage of that Bill, and subsequent Act two years later achieved that goal.

Three years after the introduction of the first Bill, Harry Ell was able to purchase a patch of Kennedys Bush after its owner offered 72 hectares for sale. As would be the case with later land acquisitions as part of the Port Hills project, the money came through a form of creative funding: part gift, part purchase (sometimes personal), and the rest on a "wait-and-see" basis.

The initial block of land was financed partly through a Government subsidy; the rest through the personal fund-raising efforts of Harry Ell, plus a small honorary committee. Money always came second to the cause, as would be demonstrated when Summit Road construction got underway in 1908.

Sign of the Kiwi, Summit Road. Photo: Photo New Zealand /Rob Brown

Much of the land had been gifted; Harry had secured the rest with a deposit - leaving an outstanding sum to be paid at a later date.

"He never waited for money to come to hand and always created debt," says Jameson of his maternal grandfather. " This approach would not be tolerated these days."

He also wouldn't allow any interference in his plans - which was the source of much friction. Because he did so much of the work himself, Harry Ell felt he was not answerable to other parties. When a committee was called for, he had great difficulty maintaining it: "They wouldn't always say 'tally ho'."

A brass plaque inside the entrance to the Sign of the Takahe restaurant on the Port Hills Road bears the following inscription: "A monument to the genius and enterprise of Harry George Ell, Founder of the Summit Road." This was the fourth rest house in Harry Ell's vision - and it is the one he did not see completed. (The other three, the Sign of the Bellbird, the Sign of the Kiwi and the Sign of the Packhorse, were all built by him.)

Jameson can remember walking to the Sign of the Takahe with his parents and two brothers when he was a young child. His grandfather would often be working there.

"He was a man of extraordinary vision," says Jameson, who is himself a founding member of the Summit Road Society, and who has been on the committee ever since its formation in 1948. Now an honorary life member, he says he's very pleased the family association with the Port Hills project has been maintained since his grandfather's initial forays.

Harry Ell, 1904 Photo: Christchurch City Library

Harry Ell's unquestioned drive and vision, however, came at some considerable personal cost. Money was always tight. Family was often neglected. And so was his health. "He had the blinkers-on approach," says Jameson. "No-one could interfere with his plan - although he did know where to go for help when it was needed for planning, for example, to the Lands and Survey Department."

The Labour Department also came to his aid on occasions, and, although Harry Ell accepted its contribution in the form of people power, he also invited a degree of controversy.
Explains Jameson: "The Labour Department did agree to have Depression relief labour employed to build his Summit Road, which had been declared a road of national importance under the Relief Labour scheme.

"He was able to get that labour, and then he'd find people employed who were woodcarvers or craftsmen, who had been sent to dig gravel. So, he'd bring them down to work on the Sign of the Takahe [pursuing their true crafts] until the Labour Department caught up with them." At that point, bureaucracy would meet Ell head-on. The department would want to send the men back to their shovels; their employer would fight for them to stay true to their vocation.

According to Jameson, his grandfather would argue with the department that these people were now properly employed. "Their soul-burning days of pick and shovel were over."

Although Harry Ell is remembered primarily for his Port Hills work, his interests ranged much wider than the creation of this road. He left Canterbury for Taranaki in his late teens and was a member of the Armed Constabulary there from 1881 to 1884. During this spell, he served at Parihaka. Later, he would be highly critical of the race policies during the years he spent there. On returning to Christchurch, he held down a variety of jobs, including as a printer with The Press.

It was after he got into politics that his true leanings shone through. A Liberal, with strong social welfare and education interests, he championed the cause of the mentally ill and those who came before the courts. Thanks to his interest in the welfare of tubercular patients, it is Harry Ell we have to thank for the introduction of legislation to provide sanatoriums throughout New Zealand. He also introduced cottage-home care of psychiatric patients, and was responsible for abolishing the term "lunatic" to describe patients receiving psychiatric care. He was moved to do so after he learned the term was inscribed on china used by such patients.

Mrs Ell cutting the ribbon at the opening of the Summit Rd. Photo: Christchurch City Library

Central government responsibilities did not deter Harry Ell from local politics. During his time as an MP, he also served, at various times, as a union representative, also as committee member of the Canterbury Children's Aid Society, the Canterbury Prohibition Council and the Prohibition League. He also served as a Christchurch City councillor from 1917 to 1919.

"Right through, he was interested in social legislation and the rights of the people. He was definitely inclined to look after the needs of the less fortunate," says John Jameson.

His grandfather also had a one-track mind, he adds - best illustrated by his Port Hills project. Harry Ell realised the need to protect the Port Hills from development and provide facilities for recreation within them, Jameson explains. "His drive and vision and personality was an inborn thing." When applied to his pet project, that combination of talents fuelled an urge to get as much as could be done as quickly as possible. "Overall, he had this feeling of: 'I'm not immortal. I've got to get this past the point of no return.'"

Obituary writers remember him as "active, virile, tenacious and often tempestuous". By his own description, Harry Ell had little patience with anybody who tried to curb his ways. Consider this self-penned observation of 1923: "I will not yield up to the keeping of others, the ideals and sentiments which I have always associated with this public work. It is my work and I intend to continue with it."

As a child, Jameson remembers his grandfather visiting his family home in Opawa. "He'd come down off the hill, having walked along the road being constructed. He'd come down for an evening meal and we'd drive him back to the Sign of the Takahe or wherever he was living." Harry Ell's wife, formerly Adelaide Eleanor Gee, who he married in 1892, sometimes managed the tearooms at the Sign of the Kiwi. "We stayed there, too," says Jameson.

The toll-gate to the Summit Road, c.1919. Photo: Christchurch City Library

Harry Ell did not live long enough to see his dream completed. He still had in mind the completion of the whole Summit Hills concept, although the introduction of buses and cars eliminated the need for the additional travellers' rests he had originally envisaged. In his last year, his Summit Road project became, says his grandson, a total obsession.

Jameson has a copy of a letter his grandfather wrote to workers building the Sign of the Takahe two nights before he died. He was in St George's Hospital awaiting surgery. The letter illustrates the drive that never abandoned him and the prevailing cash-strapped story behind the construction of the project.

In it, Harry Ell suggests the workers go to Tingey's decorating shop and get a half-inch stencil brush and a nine-penny bottle of mineral turpentine. "That should suffice for this week," wrote the ailing Ell, adding, "I felt sorry that you were short of money this week."

The next day, he was wheeled into theatre for an operation, and the day after that he was dead. The funeral cortege stretched the length of Moorhouse Avenue - some 2.5 kilometres - and the road was lined with people employed on the Summit Road.

Four years after Harry Ell's death, the Port Hills section of the Summit Road between Evans Pass and Byers Pass was opened. Soon after, war broke out. Neglect and vandalism took over, and the Summit Road Trust ceased to exist.

New life was breathed into the scheme when the trust was revived by the Christchurch City Council, which took over responsibility for the maintenance and integrity of the roads and reserves in 1948. The Sign of the Takahe, built solidly of volcanic stone, was re-opened in 1949 and, after assuming a variety of guises over the years, is once more a restaurant. "I am very thrilled to see the integrity of the building maintained," says Jameson.

And he thinks Harry Ell would be happy with the way things have turned out too - with one proviso. "He would be happy because his vision has been pretty much achieved. But he had a concept of this going right through to Akaroa and that has never been completed - even though it has been pegged out. The present Summit Road Society has no policy aimed at completion of that road, Jameson adds.