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From Heritage New Zealand Winter 2006

Move it or Lose it.

by Shelly Howells

The small town of Waihi is embarking on its own think big scheme to save an almost unique structure, its Cornish pumphouse

The pumphouse is an imposing legacy of miniing days. Photo: Newmont Wahi Gold Ltd

One way or another, Waihi’s landmark historic building, the Category I registered Cornish pumphouse, is on the move.
The stately structure is currently standing, as the song says, on shaky ground.

Completed in 1904, the building, based on a design used in the tin mines in Cornwall, England (there is one other example in New Zealand, on Kawau Island) was used to house the steam engines and pumps to keep the 400-metre deep No. 5 mine shaft dry. The pump was designed to shift 6375 litres of water per minute and was used until 1913, when electric centrifugal pumps replaced it, though it was kept in working order until 1929, on account of miners’ deep mistrust of that newfangled electricity. Today it is a gorgeous shell, Gothic-looking,with its tall, imposing lines and cathedral-scale windows, and has become a symbol for the town. But it lives a perilous existence.

Since 1878, when John McCombie and Robert Lee discovered gold at Pukewa (Martha Hill) in Waihi, miners have been digging, tunnelling, blasting and constructing in the area, leaving a honeycomb-like trail of tunnels and mine shafts beneath the ground. The pumphouse sits right next to No. 5 shaft, which is none too stable – it has already suffered collapses and movement that helped it develop a jaunty tilt of around 280mm, and, according to geotechnical experts, at some stage it will fall (literally) victim to any one of a range of possible events, from the “very likely” collapse of No. 5 shaft through to the “not impossible” pit slope failure – wall collapse or movement – of the nearby open-cast Martha mine. Add the fact that the building is suffering from general dilapidation, and it’s clear that the symbol of Waihi’s rich history needs help.

New beams have been joined to what was left of the original ones. Photo: Shelly Howells

Aware that time was of the essence, the pumphouse’s owners, the Historic Places Trust, Land Information NZ, Crown Minerals, the Hauraki District Council and the Newmont Waihi Gold company, took many months to chew over the problem, keeping the local community in the loop all the while.The options were clear, says Trust area manager Gail Henry. “We could do nothing. Leave it where it is, strengthen the structure so that it withstands the continued tilting for longer, and accept that, one day, it’s going to slide quietly – or noisily and dramatically – into a big hole.” Or, they could move all 2000 tonnes of it to safer ground. That’s the equivalent of taking three fully laden truck and trailer units parked side by side, piling them 15 layers high and then shifting them. And that’s exactly what they are going to do, but it wasn’t an easy decision.

“We looked very hard at leaving it to its own destiny, because, for us, relocating a place off its own site takes away quite a lot of its heritage value. So it is never the best option, ever,” says Henry. “But the science and associated risk analysis was compelling”, and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) New Zealand Charter states it’s acceptable to move a heritage building if it’s the sole means of saving it. “So, in the end,” says Henry, “between that and what appeared to us to be a strong community lobby to save the pumphouse, we supported that it did need to be relocated if that could be done with a reasonable level of safety.

Pumphouse interior before the move, showing new steel beams. Photo: Shelly Howells

”Footing the $3.2 million-plus bill is Newmont Waihi Gold, obliged to take care of the structure under Condition 46 of their mining licence, which states that they must “take whatever precautions are necessary to protect the Cornish pumphouse”.They are not so much picking it up and carrying it to the new site as sliding it there. Five tunnels (1.5 metres wide by 1 metre high) will be dug through the walls of the pumphouse. In each will sit two 450mm-diameter, 8mm-thick Teflon pot bearings. Between bearing and pumphouse will be flat jacks, 450mm envelopes that can be inflated with hydraulic fluid. Below that will be a greased stainless plate sitting on 800mm-thick concrete runway beams. Once the tunnels, bearings, flat jacks, etc, are progressively installed and the load balanced, they will cut out the concrete between the tunnels so that the pumphouse will be sitting on the bearings and concrete beams. Five pairs of hydraulic rams will be fired up and shunt the whole shebang, slowly and gently, to its final resting place, 26.5 metres to the south and 275 metres to the west, with the flat jacks’ hydraulics adjusting every step of the way to keep the building level and correct the existing tilt.

There have been months of preparation for the big move, expected to take place in July. It will take about
a week to move it over the first leg. At least 50,000 cubic metres of dirt have been shifted, with some ground needing to be levelled and some filled in on the 20-metre wide route.

Preloading areas of soft ground on the route, so that it will not move under the weight of the building, involves material heaped on top to simulate the weight of the pumphouse passing over it. The route is proved and the ground settles before the big move.

China from 1914, found on the pumphouses's new site. Photo: Shelly Howells

The building has had to be prepared too, strengthened to withstand the move, as well as for future earthquake resistance. It now sports new steel beams that, in places, have been artfully joined to what was left of the original beams, which were scavenged for scrap back in the 1930s. “It now looks like it did in 1930,” says project manager Peter Bawden.

The choice of the pumphouse’s new location, not far from the end of Waihi’s main street, took in many factors, the primary one being long-term stability of the final site. The path had to be flat, too. A slope of more than a few degrees might have meant the building would move by itself. The team wanted to avoid transporting it over very unstable parts of land, which is why they are not going in a straight line, and they wanted it to be easily accessible to the community and visitors. There were also various licensing constraints to be accommodated.

“We evaluated all the potential sites,” says Bawden. “Is it a safe and stable site? Can we get the building there? What is the cost? It was a process of elimination.

Consulting archaeologist Ray Hooker with a find from the new site Photo: Shelly Howells

”Monitoring all the excavations in and around the pumphouse and its future site has been consulting archaeologist Ray Hooker, whose Waihi office/shed is piled high with pieces he and field assistant Ian Keys have uncovered. From around the pumphouse’s current site he has found an industrial treasure trove, including many tools, drill steels, bits of tram line and pieces of mine trucks.

Miners’ cottages and a boarding house once sat on the pumphouse’s new site, and nearby were printers’, plumbers’ and electricians’ workshops. Excavating around the area revealed a wealth of domestic artefacts from the late 19th century through to World War II. Early ink bottles, ornaments, china eggs, toothpaste jars, matchbox tins, teapots, chamber pots, grog bottles. One house had little in its trash pit other than gin and painkiller bottles – early neighbours from hell?

What surprised Hooker about the finds was the quality of the china. “The miners must have been paid quite well to be able to afford Royal Doulton,” he says. His favourite pieces include a 1914 plate and cup with a picture of Waihi on it and, amazingly, an aspirin bottle still full of pills.

So the pumphouse’s past has been catalogued, and at present it’s moving home (photos of the action can be found online at marthamine.co.nz). But what of the future?

At the time of writing, LINZ was still pondering. Paul Jackson, manager, Crown Property Management, says: “Discussions about the future protection of the Cornish pumphouse, once it is relocated, are at the very early stages. These discussions involve LINZ, Vision Waihi Trust, the Historic Places Trust, Hauraki District Council and Newmont Waihi Gold Ltd.”

The pumphouse is Waihi’s most prominent building and has stood watch over much of the town’s history, from the booming days in the early 1900s, when the original Martha Mine was one of the most important gold and silver mines on the planet, to the six-month long 1912 miners’ strike, New Zealand’s first outside television broadcast (rugby, of course) in 1954, and some spectacular house-eating subsidence (1962, 1999 and 2001).

The least it deserves is a protected retirement, standing, as the song says, on solid rock.