Remembering Miss Newey

Further to Miss Newey's Cottage.

Last night, Trevor Pollard (immediate past-president of West Auckland Historical Society), Graham Foster (president of the Henderson & District Garden Club) and I attended the first meeting of the Henderson-Massey Local Board for the year, to ask for their help in preserving Miss Newey's cottage. We presented a submission from Graham, a letter of support-in-principle from West Auckland Historical Society, and a brief summary about Miss Newey and her family I put together from Archives New Zealand sources, as well as West Auckland Council Archives, BDMs, death notices, electoral rolls -- whatever I was able to scrap together in as quick a time as possible.

The result was Remembering Miss Newey, now loaded up on Scribd. If anyone wants a copy, but has a bit of a hard time with Scribd, drop me a line at waitemata@gmail.com. I can either email the .pdf to you (11mb +), or send the text.

Right now, our action committee of three would really appreciate public assistance in the way of any memories of Miss Newey and her time at Henderson School. Our next step is to await the publication of the Board's minutes from the meeting (they've asked Council staff for a report as to the feasibility of shifting the cottage to Tui Glen), then we'll make contact with the current owner of the cottage, and start work on preparing a funding application from the likes of the Waitakere Trust.

I, for one, am crossing my fingers in the hope that we can see a 90-year-old piece of Henderson's story come back home.

4 March 2012: An update.