Our Warden of the Hundred: William Edgecombe

Image from NZ Graphic.

Updated: 30 April 2013

Arguably, Edgecombe was Rosebank's first gardener. It was he who placed the following advertisement in the Southern Cross in March of 1855:

Turnips and Potatoes Grown at the Wahu

Parties interested in bets respecting the measurement and weight of Turnips and Potatoes grown on Mr. Edgecombe's Farm at the Wahu, to be decided at the Exchange Hotel, Auckland, on Saturday, 31st inst. May see the same growing on the Farm as above, on Friday, 30th inst.
March 27th, 1855.

At the time he had his Avondale farm on Rosebank up for sale in October 1858, it was described as:

"A choice Farm of 200 acres, on the Whau, far and favourably known as Edgecombe's Farm. This is a property of no common description, Fenced and Cultivated, well and picturesquely Wooded, and abundantly Watered, bounded on one side by the Whau River, in which a vessel of 30 tons may load alongside the banks."

Even taking into account the exaggerations of land agents of that time and this, Edgecombe does seem to have created from an area where sheep farming was probably the best commercial use anyone could get out of the area (both John Kelly and Robert Chisholm were sheep farming in the early 1850s and 1860s-1870s respectively) -- a veritable farming paradise.

William Edgecombe (1814-1895) was born and christened in North Devon, the township of Milton Damerel, according to a family historian, Alan Taylor. According to Taylor, Edgecombe sailed to New Zealand with his wife Ann and arrived at New Plymouth in 1841, leaving in 1846 for Auckland. Another William Edgecombe had preceded him to New Plymouth, but remained there. The Auckland William Edgecombe eventually made his way north, setting himself up first as a butcher at Mechanics Bay, then a storekeeper, then as a cattle owner. He left the colony for a time in 1850, heading to California, but was back by 1852. Around that time he may have taken out a lease on Allotment 10 of the Parish of Titirangi, which was to become his Whau Farm, purchasing it outright in 1856. Certainly in March 1854, he was successful in the election for the Wardens of Auckland (sharing the job with John Russell and Benjamin Turner). In that position, he administered the isthmus cattle runs, particularly those in the Whau district. During a court case in 1854, where one Samuel Fleming breached a new bylaw made by the Wardens of the Hundred, Edgecombe deposed:

"I am a settler living at the Wahu; I am a licensed cattle holder for the district of Auckland; my cattle are mostly all running at the Wahu..."

(Note the spelling of "Whau" in those days of the mid-1850s.)

So, in amongst his cattle-dealing, his warden duties -- William Edgecombe found the time to grow some turnips and potatoes. "So what?" some today might say, but this was a very important thing back then, considering the Whau, along with much of West Auckland, was considered inhospitable to crop growing in any form back then, the soils declared to be "sour" and only good for grazing (hence the cattle and the sheep). It could be, ironically, that very system of agriculture which provided the start of the fertilisation and redevelopment of the Rosebank Peninsula into the later market gardening goldmine it became by the end of the 19th century. Back in 1855, Edgecombe was advertising a diversified land use for the cattle and sheep paddocks of Avondale which, one day, would prove to be an icon for our history.

But, by 1858, Edgecombe had had another career change come to mind. Land at what would become Western Springs, opposite Low and Motion's mill, came onto the market, so he put his Whau Farm up for sale and purchased the site of his Great Northern Hotel. (The buyer was Dr. Thomas Aickin, another experimenter in the agricultural field amongst others -- and in the 20th century, after subdivisions, Hayward Wright was to use 10 acres of the former Edgecombe land to develop new commercial fruits and plants, including the Hayward cultivar of kiwifruit.) Edgecombe's story doesn't stop there, of course -- his fame hit even greater heights with his hotel, fondly known still as the Old Stone Jug. But even there, on the scoria outcrops of Western Springs, he never quite forgot about the Whau. The initial boundaries of the Whau Highway District in 1868, at his instigation, included his Western Springs land for a time.

An additional note (21 January 2009): William Edgecombe's surname, over the course of his lifetime, went through a variety of spellings. This may have been due to assumptions, or changes in style -- one version, in the 1881 Newton electoral roll, is simply a straight-out typo. Here's a brief list of the varieties:

Southern Cross, 8 March 1850, p. 2 (public notice inserted by him) - "Edgcombe"
In the deed between him and Dr. Aickin back in 1859, his name is spelled Edgecombe.
In the 3 May 1879 death notice for his son (also named William) (NZH), it's "Edgcumbe".
Boylan & Lundon's plan of the purchase of his property (waterworks reserve) - "Edgecombe"
1881 Newton electoral roll: "Edgemnbe"
NZ Graphic 22 October 1892, p. 1046 -- "Edgcombe"
His own death notice: "Edgcombe"
Auckland Provincial Index offers "Edgecombe" and "Edgcombe"

His isn't the only name this happened to (Bernard "Barney" Keane is another -- Keane / Kean / Kane and probably also King). Ah, the joys of historical / genealogical research ...

The Ah Chee family on Rosebank

In 1904, as the result of two purchases from the Wymer family, a man known only as Ah Chee on the land titles purchased just over 26 acres at the corner of Eastdale and Rosebank Road. His sons William and Clement Ah Chee purchased another 10 acres or so on the other side of Eastdale Road in 1917, and then received title to the original 1904 purchases from their father in 1922, two years after he had returned home to China. By 1929, the family had lost all the Rosebank property due to defaulted mortgages to Turners & Growers, and the Ah Chee name passed into Avondale legend.

The Ah Chee family had quite a bit in common with Turners & Growers, apart from both being associated with the fruit and vegetable line. Both owned sections of land in Auckland on which produce was grown (Turners getting more into that field in Avondale from the late 1920s). Both had outlets for their produce, and were involved with the markets in the city. By 1913, according to the Evening Post who interviewed William Ah Chee, Auckland had 250 Chinese market gardeners, many working for the Ah Chee family, including overseers.

The family’s actual surname is Chan – the Ah Chee who emerged as a successful merchant and market garden owner was known as Chan Dar Chee (1851-1931) in his native village of Tarp Gwong. He arrived in New Zealand in 1877, became a naturalised citizen in 1882 (the year he took out a mortgage on a piece of Domain land which is part of the old Carlaw Park, site of recent archaeological investigations), and brought his wife-to-be Rain See to New Zealand from Canton to marry her in 1886. He was fined in 1892 for receiving stolen marine stores. But, for the 1890 jubilee celebrations, he and other Chinese businessmen contributed two barrow-loads of Chinese crackers for the occasion, and by 1896 he proudly displayed a sign in his shop window: “Ah Chee, you are appointed Purveyor of Fruit and Vegetables to the Earl of Glasgow.”

In 1907, possibly including his Avondale property, his workers were charged with gardening on a Sunday. The charge was later dismissed, by explanation of necessity rather than any flagrant disregard of the Sabbath.

He left New Zealand, never to return, in 1920. His son William died in 1929, possibly sparking the mortgage crisis. William had managed the firm since 1914; his son, Alec, served in the RNZAF during World War II. A grandson of Chan Dar Chee, Thomas Ah Chee, would become one of the founders of the Foodtown chain of supermarkets, begun back in 1958.

Part of the old Ah Chee market garden on Rosebank became the fields facing Eastdale Road for Avondale College. Apart from that, and some brief notes in Road Board and Borough Council minutes over the years complaining about Ah Chee and his overhanging trees, there’s little left to remind us of a piece of early Chinese New Zealand history in our own suburb.

Update and correction, 25 April 2009:
Originally, going by the newspaper references from Papers Past, I had written as part of the above post "His grocery store in Wakefield Street was the subject of police raids over the years; in 1887, they found and seized cases of Chinese brandy and other liquors, as well as finding an opium den in the back room and another used for fan tan gaming." But, as Ah Chee is not noted as being on Wakefield Street at any time during the 19th century, and an actual shop owner there named Ah Yeal Gong (according to directories) is probably the same as one there named Ah Gong Kee (Observer, 4 July 1885), then it is likely the newspapers of the time mixed up "Kee" with "Chee". My thanks to David Wong, who inspired me to look further into the Ah Chee story. (This information now known to be incorrect - Ah Chee did have a Wakefield Street shop. See further post).

The first settler on Rosebank?

Image from NZ Observer, 1 October 1881.

According to research for a history of the Kelly family in 2003 by Warwick Clay, and from what I’ve found as well in LINZ records, John Kelly (c1806-1883) purchased four allotments by Crown Grant in the Parish of Titirangi (2 at Rosebank, 2 on the Mt Albert side of Oakley Creek) from 1843-1845. There was at least a fifth purchase from a crown grant holder in 1847, Allotment 3 on Rosebank, which completed his landholdings there just alongside the government reserve at the tip. Up until 1849, he lived at Mt Eden, but then, in September 1849, his wife gave birth to a son “at the Wahu.” That son was John Stewart Kelly who advised reporters on the occasion of his 87th birthday at his home in Mt Eden that he had been born at Avondale.

“There was not a house within miles of their Avondale home, and he remembers how the furniture was carried out across the countryside on horse-drawn drays. There was no bridge across Oakley’s Creek in those days, and the drays had to be hauled across one at a time with a full team of horses. There was no school within reasonable distance, and so a teacher lived at the house and gave the children their daily lessons.” (Auckland Star, 26 September 1936, p. 10)

In describing coming across the Oakley Creek, it seems that Mr. Kelly was indeed describing a home to the west of that waterway – and from what is known of John Kelly’s land dealings (of which there were many, all over Auckland, North Shore, East Tamaki, Howick and West Auckland), Rosebank may have fitted that description. In 1855, all three Rosebank allotments were sold by Kelly to Daniel Pollen (a former partner of Kelly’s from days at Kororeka, according to Warwick Clay), and the Kelly family moved west to Waitakere. Perhaps Pollen’s home at the Whau had once been Kelly’s home? Hard to say, this far away from the 1850s.

John Kelly was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, entering the Royal Engineers as a young man, learning the trade of surveying. He journeyed to Australia to oversee government works in Tasmania, New South Wales and other colonies, before retiring in 1836 from the service and coming to New Zealand, in the days before we were even a colony. He witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and acted as guide on one occasion for a British regiment during the threat of a Ngapuhi attack on Kororareka. With Hobson transferring the capital to Auckland, Kelly arrived in the young township and began buying land almost immediately. He built a house at Mt Eden, where he lived, off and on, for over 46 years until he died. Another influential partnership of his was with Frederick Whitaker, who was to become Premier of New Zealand (as was Pollen for a time). Even his Rosebank land had a story of its own. Part of John Kelly's Rosebank farm was become, from c.1860, West Auckland's first brickyard.

He certainly led a colourful life, did this early settler in Avondale. At Kororareka, he was involved in not just one duel, but two, and with the same opponent, William Brewer. At the first event, Kelly’s wig was shot away. At the second, the ball from Brewer’s pistol passed through Kelly’s left whisker.

(More information on duelling in New Zealand, including the Kelly-Brewer duels, at Te Ara, and The Smell of Gunpowder, A History of Duelling in New Zealand by Donald Kerr (2006).)

Pt Chevalier history group newsletter 1

Same good friend who convinced me that Blogger is a good thing (and she was right) has also waxed lyrical about Scribd. Well, I listened, and today I signed up, to put the first Pt Chevalier Times newsletter online: Point Chevalier Times.

I'm hoping that this initiative might assist the earlier initiative begun by the Pt Chevalier Community Library on 25 September to spark interest in a history group forming in Pt. Chevalier. It's definitely worth a shot. Hopefully, I'll get the hard copies out in the post today.

If anyone reads this and is interested in joining the group -- sing out. My email's in the profile.

Memories of a Monkey Apple tree

(Photo credit: Western Leader, 12 June 1984.)

I well remember the Monkey Apple tree (acmena floribunda) on Rosebank Road, outside the old (1904) Methodist Church. It gave us shelter as we waited for the bus into town, with its 10-metre height and broad expanse. It was a landmark as I made my way up the hill each day, walking up from Avondale Intermediate and Avondale College to home. Come 1984, though, it was felled and disappeared from our view forever, along with the church behind, both replaced by the modern-day Nafanua Church and hall complex for the Avondale Union Parish. The present church is a nice one, but -- there are still times when I look out across at that part of Rosebank Road, and can't help remembering a very lovely tall tree.

View from "Banwell" early 20th century

Possibly the same company picnic -- the view is down the slope towards the north-west, over the railway reserve area, towards Avondale township and Rosebank.

History of "Banwell" (part 3)

Above: Grey & Menzies company picnic at "Banwell", Avondale, turn of the 20th century. Photo from Avondale-Waterview Historical Society collection.

James Palmer took out a series of mortgages on the property from 1867 through to 1879 – from a Mr Russell for 2 months in 1867, Mr Lyell in 1868 (perhaps to build the second hotel?), from Mr Greenway in 1873 (perhaps to build the third hotel?), and finally from John Grey and Mr Campbell in 1878. By the time John Grey (of John Grey & Sons, “aerated water manufacturers”) bought the northern sections from Palmer in 1879, the house on the sections was described as “mature”, even if only four rooms.

Perhaps, the sale of the northern sections of Allotment 85 to the Grey family, later creating “Banwell”, came about as part of a mortgagee sale.

(It would appear likely that the four-roomed house appeared sometime between 1849 and 1879. J Comrie could well have started it, and James Palmer added slightly to it, until the Grey family extended it further in the early 2oth century.)

From this point on, James Palmer was involved with either selling off his property in the Whau district (1882, selling the southern end of Allotment 85 to William Hunt, who created a brickworks there – now Lansford Crescent industrial estate), or giving it away (1884, donated land to the Anglican Church in order that the church could build St Judes). By 1887, he was in financial trouble, unable to pay the local Roads Board rates on his property, and having to be helped out by a friend and offered a discount for his previous community donations of land. He died, in 1893, while the Great Slump of the late 19th century was still rolling on (1886-1897).

John Grey apparently arrived in Auckland relatively late, in 1869. He founded John Grey & Sons, operating from Eden Crescent from 1874, which later became Grey & Menzies in 1902 until close down in 1964.

John Grey died in 1898, leaving his estate to his son Charles who went on to run Grey & Menzies, become a Mayor of Auckland, and passed away in 1925. His widow Fanny lived at Banwell for many years, until the late 1950s. According to Ron Oates in Challenge of the Whau, it was Charles Grey who named the estate “Banwell”.

In 1960, the four sections were subdivided into residential lots, and Acton Place was formed.

History of "Banwell" (part 2)

(Updated 14 January 2015)

From 1849 to 1865 apparently came a succession of occupiers of the land at Allotment 85 who, unlike John S Adam, certainly made their mark on the history of the district. There was first Mr James Comrie:

Among the early settlers in the Whau district were several members of St. Andrew's congregation, but the distance was so great and the roads and the means of transport so poor that regular attendance at the central Church was not possible, and services were desired in their own neighbourhood. The first of these of which there is a record were held in the dwelling house of Mr. James Comrie (later of Pukekohe during the 2nd New Zealand War in 1860s), and were conducted by his brother, Rev. Wm. Comrie, of Auckland, who preached on 16th January and 6th February, 1859, from the texts John 3 :7 and Phil. 3 :13, 14. From that time a weekly service was aimed at, and, subject to a good many breaks owing to weather and other conditions, services were held there until the Church was built. Mr. McCall and other laymen from Auckland gave valuable assistance.

(From The Presbytery of Auckland, by W J Comrie, A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1939)

Later, another elder of the Church, Mr John Buchanan, who also ran a warehousing business on Karangahape Road in the city, is listed as having been a tenant of Adam on the allotment. From 1863, he was on the Whau School Committee. He was later the first Chairman of the Mt Albert Highways District (1867) and on the Whau Highways District Board from 1868. Along with an elder from Riverhead, he donated land to the Presbyterian Church, in order that the present-day St Ninians Hall could be built for services.

Part of Allotment 85, Sections 5, 6 and 7 were sold by John Adam to Buchanan on 2 July 1866. These were the central portions of the allotment.

And finally, just before 1865, James Palmer came to the site.

James Palmer (1819-1893) left Plymouth bound for New Zealand on 4 December 1842 on the Westminster, arriving 31 March 1843. He gave his age as 22, and that of a “Maria Palmer” as 18. Before coming to the Whau in the mid 1860s, he was the keeper of the Royal Hotel in Eden Crescent. He is more noted, however, as being the owner of two of the three Whau Hotels – one built in the 1860s before he arrived in Avondale, and the replacement in 1873 after the first one burned down, (See The (first) Whau Hotel.)

He would also be known as the donor of land for the Whau Public Hall (1867), and for St Jude’s Church (1884). Present-day Donegal Street was once called Palmer Street after him.

In 1866, it became necessary for John Adam, absent in Australia, to arrange the subdivision and sale of his lands in the Whau. The Government Road had been formed (present day Chalmers Street-New Windsor Road, around 1863) and had changed the holdings. Wolseley Street (Wolverton) was formed to the south, while Manukau Rd (Blockhouse Bay Road) and St Georges Rd remained the east and west boundaries respectively. While selling sections 5 to 7 to Buchanan, he sold 1 to 4, along the Government Road line, to James Palmer on 27 February 1866. The future “Banwell” possibly sat on Section 2, the second from off the Manukau Road.

It appears likely, from looking at later title documents, that Palmer also owned the Wolseley third of the allotment (south end), but possibly bought this from the Adam family at a later date.

Adam is recorded as having ownership interests which he transferred to Palmer in Allotment 13 also around this time, possibly including the site of the two Hotels Palmer would erect in the village-to-be. (Adam and his sisters, according to Challenge of the Whau also sold parts of Allotment 13 to William Forsyth, builder of the Public Hall, and John Tait, father of future Avondale Mayor W J Tait.)

In February 1867, Palmer is noted as having land in the village centre which he lent out in order that the Whau Minstrels stage their inaugural public performance, and another in early March which helped fund-raise toward the building of a Public Hall. In April, he donated land (site of the present-day Hollywood Cinema) for the new Hall to the community. By late 1870, the second Whau hotel was built on the corner of Windsor Road (Wingate Street) and Great North Road – this was to burn down in December 1872, only to rise again and be reopened on July 4 1873.

On 22 May 1878, part of the sections was taken by the government for the railway (completed 1880).

History of "Banwell" (part 1)

(Note from 2003) While interviewing for "Heart of the Whau" in 2001, a resident living next door to "Banwell" contacted me, and invited me around to her place to view papers she had borrowed especially from the current owners of the house. To Mary Fitzpatrick, I remain infinitely grateful. Part of the following formed a contributing source for the book.

The “Banwell” story begins in 1836, with the reason why John Shedden Adam and his brother and sisters would have come to a land half a world away from their home in Scotland.

On 11 January 1836, soon after Ngati Whatua had returned to the pa called Karangahape near Puponga Point on the north shore of the Manukau, one Thomas Mitchell, assisted by the Methodist missionary, William White, secured the marks of Apihai Te Kawau, Kauwae, and Tinana Te Tamaki to a deed purporting to sell forever the whole of the Tamaki Isthmus between the Manukau and Tamaki `rivers' on the south and the ‘Waitemata `river' on the north, and from the Tasman sea to the Hauraki Gulf. The price was 1000 pounds of tobacco, 100 dozen pipes, and six muskets.

On 3 November 1838, following Mitchell's death by drowning, the title was purchased from his widow for £500 by a group of largely Scottish entrepreneurs under the name of the New Zealand Manukau and Waitemata Land Company.

(www.knowledge-basket.co.nz, sighted 2001)

With wonderful promises of mild climate and fruitful harvests, the Scottish businessmen, led by Patrick Matthews, set out glowing prospectuses in 1839 to their fellow Scots, who bought shares in land in a country they had never seen. It was expected by one and all that Cornwallis was to be the future for the Auckland isthmus. The transport offered to the new land, however, was less than expected.

The first chartered ship, the barque Brilliant, was little better than a coffin ship. It left Glasgow on 31 December 1840 and was almost wrecked before clearing the coast of Scotland. The captain put into Cork Harbour where he and all the crew – except for an apprentice and the cook – walked off. Some passengers followed. A less particular captain was found, on one account a more sober one, another crew was signed on and the longest voyage made by any ship at any time sailing between Britain and New Zealand was again underway. With calls at Sierra Leone (and here the cook deserted), Cape Town, Melbourne (where more passengers left) and Hobart, the Brilliant did not reach the New Zealand coast until 27 October 1841 – 301 days after leaving the Clyde.

(Fire on the Clay, by Dick Scott)

While James Adam arrived on the Brilliant after that interminable voyage, his brother John Shedden Adam (1822-1906) arrived on the Jane Gifford, accompanied by his sister Elizabeth. The Adams family had come with £1200 total land shares from the Land Company. But almost immediately they were met with disappointment. The settlement at Cornwallis was scarcely that – no fine roads, no houses ready to be lived in. Instead, local Maori took pity on the hapless immigrants, building huts for them as shelter.

And also, there were questions as to the true ownership of the land at Puponga Point.

Following the establishment of British sovereignty the company's claims were presented to the Land Claims Commission by Captain W C Symonds, its New Zealand agent. But no Maori witnesses appeared before the land claims commission in 1841 to certify the deed. Meanwhile the company had sold subdivision sections to settlers in the United Kingdom, as if it did have title, and immigrants were actually on their way out in the ship Brilliant. At the request of the Secretary of State in London, Lord John Russell, the executive council in New Zealand, decided, on 18 October 1841, that the Manukau Company would be granted four acres for every £1 it had spent on colonisation, in the area where it had any proven valid claim. The formula of the Pennington awards to the New Zealand Company was thus applied to the Manukau Company. On the figures of expenditure presented this would have entitled to them to 19,924 acres. However, soon after this decision, W C Symonds was drowned and, lacking an effective local agent, the company's claims before the land claims commission languished.



On 3 July 1843 the commission reported that no Maori witnesses having presented themselves during three advertised hearings, the company's claims were not proven. Meanwhile the settlers of the Brilliant had arrived, distressed and bitter at having no titles. The New Zealand administration gave them permission to squat on a defined area at Karangahape, pending the hearing of their claim (which at the time, was expected to be at least in part in their favour). Many dispersed but about 30 settlers huddled in bush material huts on the land, presumably with Ngati Whatua agreement

(www.knowledge-basket.co.nz)

By now, James Adam had drowned (in the same incident as Symonds), and John S Adam decided to cut his losses. In 1843, the immigrants were offered an acre of Crown “waste land” for every 4 acres they held in Cornwallis. John S Adam took up the offer, and was granted Allotment 85 in the Parish of Titirangi, in the Whau District. This is a remarkable fact, in that previously the earliest known settlement of the Whau District, which included modern day Avondale, had been after the Auckland Land Sales of 1844, waiting for 1845 before men such as Henry Walton and Daniel Pollen started building their homesteads in the district. But, it would seem, due to the connections of either Adams, the rest of the Cornwallis settlers, or both – the government of the day gave part of their “waste land” area as a grant ahead of schedule.

According to A Man of Many Parts by Graeme Adam, John S Adam was “determined to make a life for himself and to help his sister and James’ widow … had a small farm and a house on the hill to match.”

It has been theorised that this original house on the site was a kit house, with kauri beams having been shipped to England, dressed to size, roofing and other items added and then everything shipped right back to New Zealand, with a design close to that of Australian styles of the era, with deep verandahs. However, considering that the Adam family were “well-established” by 1844/1845, I question the amount of time the above arrangements would have taken. Adam most likely had a small, colonial-style house, perhaps similar to Acacia Cottage (presently in Cornwall Park, the dwelling built by Campbell and Brown). After all, in other notes found in the T. Lowe papers from 9 Acton Place, it is said that John Adam “had a powerful lobby of friends” which included John Logan Campbell, the builder of Acacia Cottage. It is said that the building had 3 fireplaces, timber-beamed floors and “an overall feeling of homely elegance”. This would have been Adam putting his skills to work – as he was “a skilled surveyor and architect of considerable wealth”.

On 1 December 1845, his father wrote to him from Edinburgh:

I am glad to see that you are at work with potatoes and pumpkins. I wish I had the opportunity of giving you lessons on farming.

I do not think the place you have chosen is as pleasant as one would be with plenty of water.

I think if you decide on remaining in New Zealand at all, you should look out for a pleasant situation of about 50-100 acres near the seaside, and having a stream of water, and purchase it and sell your ownership.

As it was, John Adam felt his talents were wasted as a “yeoman farmer”. In 1846, he settled up his affairs in New Zealand, and moved to Sydney, never to return. However, his allotments, now including much of allotments 83, 84 and 13 (much of New Windsor and Avondale Central bought during the actual land sales of 1845), still remained in the combined ownership of himself and his sisters.

In the Lowe papers, there is a brief reference to the house being removed and sent to a Mr Russell, apparently a business partner of Adam, perhaps in Australia. If so, then Allotment 85 holds no real remnant of that early 2 year occupancy of J. S. Adam.

Avondale Racing Pigeon Club

Update 22 May 2021 -- the Pigeon Club building was demolished in April 2021.

 An update to this post.

I contacted a couple of members of the Avondale Racing Pigeon Club this morning. Ron Tucker told me that the building presently at Trent Street was originally a small clubhouse building, constructed by the members themselves, before 1963. It was located initially on the railway land along Rosebank (perhaps the site of what was once the firewood dealer before this year, or the composting depot, near the old goods shed.) In 1963, they obtained permission from Railways to shift the clubhouse to Trent Street, and then they extended the building.

He didn't know exactly how long the club had been on Rosebank Road -- that may have to be some delving for another day.

Avondale Station, c.1954. Courtesy Les Downey.

16 January 2018

This, from a Facebook comment by Verdun Douglas Haig Lake:

During the 1940s & 1950s the Avondale Racing Pigeon Club used this station [Avondale] as its club room. Pigeons had a numbered rubber ring placed on a leg, all were locked in a large box and transported by train to various towns across the country where they were released by railway staff at a given time and place which was on a Saturday morning. Well trained birds would go straight into the loft on arriving home, we took the ring off the leg and inserted it into the sealed timing clock, slid the cover closed which started the clock going. 

We all attended the Station room where the time showing on the clocks were read to determine the winner of the race. ( the clocks could not be tampered with as they were sealed, the seal had to be broken to obtain the numbered ring). I still have some certificates of race wins plus some Champion Show Certificates. Dad was a fanatical Pigeon fancier, we had two lofts with 120 birds, Dad kept the breeding history in a large book. Dad was the only person ever to specifically breed yellow racing pigeons!! We lived at Range View Road, Mount Albert........ Lovely memories of an exciting era/lifestyle of the post war years, 40s/50s.

(His father also drove Transport Bus Service buses, and taxis.)

An inventive district

Yesterday was one of those times when, as I look in a resource for one subject (a blockhouse in Otahuhu, by the way), I find something completely different. And then, as this is the way I think, I then go chasing off across the paddock of knowledge after this new, tantalising bit of info.

The product of this latest diversion is this post.

I found a set of names of people who lived in the Avondale, Waterview (and Blockhouse Bay) areas who had taken out patents for their ideas and inventions. Now, I have next to no further information just yet on these people in most cases, but here's the list (from NZ Gazettes):

John Drummond Anderson (New Zealand Distiller)
1896: An invention entitled "Anderson's Hydrochloride Gold-saving Process."

Alfred Jerome Cadman
(nominee of James Lyle, Surrey, England)
1903: "An improved continuous retort for the destruction of small or finely divided vegetable substances".
1903: "An improved process and combination of ingredients to produce smokeless fuel briquettes."

J. Ellis
(no date): game

James Ferguson, farmer
1894: "An invention for an improved weed-extractor."
1894: "An invention for improvements in seed-sowing implements."
1897: A railway-crossing automatic electric alarm.

Edward Gifford (of Avondale South)
1902: With Robert Ridley Holmes of Newmarket, "An improved wire-strainer, staple-drawer, and wire-cutter."

John Henry Grattan
1902: Saw stripper and regulator.
1902: Single and multi purchase [purpose?] attachable gear for controlling horses and other animals.

C. D. Grey (well-known manager of Grey & Menzies, Mayor of Auckland 1909-1910)
1910: Packing-case lining

John James Haslam (of Wharf Road)
1887: "A Horse-power Earth-elevator and Self-acting Tipper."
1887: "Patent for an Invention for receiving and conveying Silt, Sand, Gravel, Scoria, Rock, or Stone, &c., named 'Haslam's Twin Self-discharging Hydraulic Hopper Pontoon.'"
1889: "... an invention for improvements in Haslam's patent twin self-discharging hydraulic hopper pontoon for receiving and conveying silt, sand, gravel, scoria, rock, stone, or other such material, and self-discharging same."
1897: "A duplex self-discharging silt-punt."

Daniel Pollen of Whau Flat

In the George Maxwell Memorial Cemetery at Orchard Street and Rosebank Road, there is a headstone for one of the colony of New Zealand's Premiers: Daniel Pollen. He held the position only from July 1875 to February 1876, but fulfilled a number of other important roles, including that of Colonial Secretary (equivalent to today's Minister of Internal Affairs). He also lived on the Rosebank Peninsula for part of his life, dying at his homestead near the tip of the area in 1896.

His Avondale story begins in 1855, after he had served as a medical officer on Kawau Island for the copper mining companies, and as he was beginning his political career in the Auckland Provincial Council. That year, he purchased from Mr. Kelly Allotments 2, 3 and 4, just down from the reserve area at the end (which is the present-day karting track). One of his sons was born on the property a year later. By mid 1860, however, a daughter was born at Eden Crescent -- possibly an apartment used by Pollen while he was engaged in his political career.

Around 1860, he had engaged John Malam as manager/brickmaker on his Rosebank property, facing the Whau River. By 1863, Malam's position belonged to John Ringrose. In the same year, a time when the Waikato War was beginning and the government sought a means to maintain good lines of communication with the troops heading to Ngaruawahia and beyond, another opportunity presented itself to Pollen: pottery. More precisely, telegraph insulators. A potter of skill arrived in Auckland in September 1863: James Wright. Pollen snapped him up and put him in charge of his pottery kilns, responsible for meeting the contract requirements. By 1865, this proved a failure. James Wright seemed to be more interested in using Pollen's kilns to produce fancy goods for display in exhibitions than he was the more humdrum work of insulator manufacture. The arrangement between Wright and Pollen ceased, and Wright went his own way, starting potteries in New Lynn, Ngaruawahia and Paparoa.

In 1864, Pollen had lost a tender for producing 900,000 bricks of various colours and shapes for the new Lunatic Asylum, but picked up much of the contract from 1865 after the winning brickmaker, John Thomas of the Star Mill, defaulted. Later that year, his brick yard was in full production, and a cutter named Whau carried the product to Auckland, where it helped to fill a need for bricks for new buildings under construction during the small war boom in the local economy. By 1866, advertisements for "10,000 bricks, Pollen's best Auckland make" appeared as far away as the Taranaki Herald.

By 1868, a potter named Storey, originally from Onehunga, had set up at Pollen's yards producing domestic earthenware and the insulators. By then, however, competition was fierce in both the brick and pottery field, with John Malam setting up just across the Whau River, and Joshua Carder's Waitemata Pottery Works producing good quality pottery. The latest advertisement I've found so far for Pollen's bricks in 1871; it is quite likely that his works beside the Whau River operated only from 1860 to that date.

Daniel Pollen has left his legend behind in Avondale's history. Basic knowledge of our past almost always includes a mention of Pollen's Brick Yards, even if none of the other brickmakers are recalled. Whether he began the enterprise just to see if he could, or as an attempt at a canny investment -- he certainly left his mark on our story.

An update (18 December 2008) here.

Further update: the Pigeon Club building

Previous post here.

Just a brief update: seems the pigeon club in 1963 obtained the building from the railway yard (according to Council records), so I take it that it may have originally been one of the station's outbuildings. Hard to date how old that original part might be, with rail records still a bit fragmented, but -- there you go.

Post updated 9 October here.

"The Life and Times of Auckland"

Launched last week, Gordon McLauchlan's The Life and Times of Auckland has me hooked. A popular history of Auckland and its origins, so far it's a very good read, and well written. Check it out at the library to see what I mean.

Actually, on impulse (and because I've been waiting for it since I heard it was in the pipeline), I've also recently bought Urban Village, the history of Ponsonby, Freeman's Bay and St Mary's Bay. A massive 444 pages doesn't quite manage to cover the area in as much depth as it should at first glance, but this is still a creditable effort and certainly helps to fill in a gap in our knowledge of the history of Auckland isthmus.

An update (5 November): I've finished Gordon McLauchlan's book -- and one word describes it -- disappointing. This was how a friend of mine and fellow Auckland historian referred to it,. and I have to agree. It is patchy in detail, the most written about are the topics that appear to hold McLauchlan's interest. But the book is a collection of essays, rather than a cohesive whole, and the essays are riddled with errors and historical inaccuracies. I now see why he has sub-titled it "The Colourful Story of a City" -- "colourful", but without real substance except in isolated patches of clarity.

Fracas in New Lynn

This is one of my favourite stories from early New Lynn. Comes from the Evening Star, 21 January 1886.

The Police Court was occupied for some time to-day with a prosecution for assault arising out of a neighbours' quarrel between Messrs Smith and Meurant, residents of New Lynn. Henry Meurant was charged with assaulting Henry Smith on January 14th by striking him with a stick and knocking him down.

Mr. Thorpe appeared for complainant and Mr. S. Hesketh for defendant.

The facts, as stated for the prosecution, are these. Complainant is the owner of an orchard, and is annoyed by frequent pilferings of fruit. Not only is the fruit stolen, but the branches of trees are broken down and the trees themselves injured. Smith believed that Meurant's children were the offenders, and he remonstrated with him on the subject. Meurant asked him to let him know which of the children had committed the depredations and he would correct them for the offence.

Next day complainant was told by a little girl that Meurant's children were going down the road with apples which must have been taken from his orchard. He went to Meurant's house again, and after some words, Smith expressed his conviction that Meurant was encouraging his children in the alleged thefts.

Blows were then struck, and Smith found himself outside of Meurant's house. He was, however, minus his chapeau, and called to Meurant asking him for it. He alleged that Meurant got the hat and threw it at him, at the same time striking him a heavy blow on the head, which injured his skull and knocked him down.

Dr. Girdler deposed that he found complainant suffering from a wound about an inch and a half long over the left eyebrow. The bone was injured, but not seriously, while the patient was suffering from slight concussion of the brain.

Alice Goldie, a little girl, related the circumstances of the fracas. The defence was that Smith used anything but pleasant language, and after some words, Smith, either accidentally or otherwise, trod on Meurant's bare foot. In stooping down to examine his foot Meurant was pushed over. A scuffle took place, and subsequently Smith used very offensive epithets towards defendant.

The two men had a second tussle, pea-sticks being used as weapons. Meurant did strike Smith on the forehead with a pea-stick, but throughout the whole affair Smith was the aggressor. Meurant and his son Edward related the story for the defence.

The case was dismissed, each party to pay their own costs.

Update: the truth behind the Coast Guard Hall

Updated from this earlier post ...

In 1922, with the formation of the Avondale Road Board District into a borough, the council agreed to find a place in the district for the new volunteer fire brigade to call a headquarters. There was a triangle of land alongside Trent Street, itself once the way that vehicles and people could cross the railway lines before 1913-1914 and the building of the overhead bridge. The Railways department agreed to lease the land to the borough council, and a two-storey fire station and bell tower were constructed.

"Outside was a tower which held the fire bell. This bell was rung to call to duty from their homes and workplaces the voluntary brigadesmen. There was some confusion because of the similarity of the sound of this bell to those used by some Chinese market gardeners. In 1926 Mr. Ah Chee was asked to change the tone of his to make it distinct from the fire brigade's." (Challenge of the Whau, 1994, p. 102)

Once Avondale amalgamated with Auckland City in September 1927, the volunteer brigade disbanded, and the district came under the command of the Auckland Fire Board. In 1933, a new brick and concrete fire station was built further along Blockhouse Bay Road, but by 1929, Auckland City Council had assumed the lease agreement (No. 14287) which the Avondale Borough Council had taken out with NZR. Both Challenge of the Whau and some later council staff members were incorrect when it was thought that the city council owned the land -- it was and still is a railway reserve.

In 1932, Stanley H James of the Avondale Unemployment Association applied to use the old hall. After correspondence among councillors and staff members, during which it was discovered that although the building could in theory seat 60 people, with dodgy foundations and insufficient bracing for the walls, 30 was by far the safer number to allow in the room at any one time. The Association were also advised that there was to be no dancing, drilling, or similar actions; four casement windows had to be altered to allow the sashes to open; and suitable bracing was required for the front of the building. The records remain silent as to whether the Association took up the offer after all.

In 1933, the Council sub-leased the building instead to a Mr. Finlay, a bootmaker, then in 1939 a painter named McPhail used the building. The Coast Guards came into the picture around 1941, with a 10/- sub-lease agreement. During World War II, an EPS shed was also on the site, adjacent to Trent Street.

From 1945 until its demolition, the hall became the home for the Waterview Scout Group, another (like the Coast Guards) who seemed a distance from their area of operations with a headquarters next to the Blockhouse Bay Road overhead bridge. In 1946, W J Lydiard did try to apply to the Council to use the hall "for the purpose of manufacturing footwear uppers," but he was turned down for two main reasons: that the hall was in a residential area, and the Council had no intention of turfing out the Scouts. "The building," wrote the City Engineer, "is supplying an important need of the youth of the district ..."

In early 1948, calamity: a piece of steel from the old bell tower broke off and lacerated the arm of a railway worker below. The Council took action and authorised the demolition of the tower, what materials as could be salvaged to be taken to the council's depot.

In May 1949, the Scouts wrote to the Council, aware of plans being considered for a new railway scheme (perhaps the later realignment in the 1950s) and asked the Council if an alternative site was available should they lose the hall. Council offered them a site on a plantation reserve at Seaside Avenue, but eventually the Scouts settled on a property at Fairlands Avenue. By 1957, though, the Scouts were still in the old fire station building at Trent Street, although their new hall was under construction. Now even the combined branch of the NZ Labour Party in the Grey Lynn Electorate expressed keenness to take over the lease in place of the Scouts, but by now the Council had had just about enough of the old building. The City Engineer recommended demolition in August 1957, and this finally happened once the Scouts moved out at the end of 1958.

Challenge of the Whau had it that this same building continued on but in 1963 the Avondale Racing Pigeon Club took out a permit "to erect and extend a club house" at Trent Street. The rather forlorn building there today is the 1963 replacement for the old volunteer fire brigade building. Hopefully, some time, old photos of the building may surface from out of someone's collection.

Of course, all this back-story will become meaningless when the temporary platform is created there at Trent around December or so. But, it's still history.

(Information obtained from Auckland City Archives files on the old Avondale Fire Station building at Trent Street, plans and permits, and valuation field sheets.)

Updated 8 October here.

A furry story from the Old Stone Jug hotel

A recent post in The Mad Bush Chronicles regarding certain four-legged Aussie immigrant overstayers from the 19th century brought the following little bit of lore from the Great Northern Hotel (aka the Old Stone Jug) in Western Springs to mind:

Strange bedfellows are sometimes met with. This was exemplified the other night in the Northern Hotel. A son of Mr. Edgecombe, the proprietor, went to bed as usual in the upper story — three stairs up — but during the night, or early in the morning he was awakened by more than ordinary warmth on one side of his head and near his throat. He felt something unusual beside him and was slightly alarmed. However he got up and lighted a candle. On examining the bed he discovered an oppossum lying coiled up in the bed, under the bed clothes. This is the first occasion on which such an animal has been seen in the neighbourhood, and how it got there, is at present a mystery . Some time ago, however, an animal having the appearance of a cross between an opossum and some other animal was shot amongst the scoria rocks near Mr. Edgecombe's hotel. Some people entertain the idea that opossums exist in the locality in a wild state, but this has not yet been proved. The animal was captured, and is being well cared for by Mr. Edgecombe. The family were once of opinion that the opossum found in bed may have been the one belonging to the Acclimatisation Society's gardens, but it is stated that they have since learned that such is not the case, and the whence of the opossum at Mr. Edgecombe's hotel still remains to be answered.

(Southern Cross, 16 August 1873, p. 2)

The Acclimatisation Gardens were those at the Domain here in Auckland from the late 1860s to the early 1880s. This piece is interesting to me, in that it comes from a time when Aussie possums were seen as a curiosity and valuable commodity, rather than the out-and-out pest we know them as today.

That, and the son was lucky not to have been clawed to ribbons ...

The Deliverymen

In these days of supermarket shopping and combined malls, where we expect to have to go and pick up groceries ourselves (except for the new services over the Internet, of course!), we know little of the days when butchers, bakers, dairymen and grocers would all have deliverymen and boys who would bring your order out to your door -- and sometimes even to the kitchen bench.

Albert Mason (left) was one such deliveryman, carting the bread from out of the Gibson Bakery (later Burton's) on Great North Road to all across Avondale, Waterview and Rosebank in the 1920s to 1930s. His son Ron would help him after school had finished for the day, and fondly remembered the days of horses, carts, stables, and the bread:

"My Dad was a man, with so much Horse
He taught me the Ropes, at the Stables of course
I could handle the Horses, almost like Dad.
Considering I was only a lad.

He taught me to pick, their moods by sight
By the crafty look in their eye
And when to expect, a kick or a bite
And to sense, when a horse might shy.

My father’s name was Albert, but he was Dad to me
To Avondale & New Lynn folk, he was just Alby.
He delivered their daily bread with a smile that all could see,
I shan’t forget how he called me “Son” whatever his mood might be."

(from "Dad" by Ron Mason)

There are tales to be had of the delivery horses who would bolt and pulled the customers gate behind them as they cantered back for home, cart and all (the Amos' "One-Eye") And of black Nugget, Alby Mason's horse with the wicked temper, who bit his arm one day almost to the bone. I've heard recounted how Rosebank Road was quite spooky during the escaped leopard scare of 1925, when every shadow could be imagined to conceal the fugitive big cat.

In the days of rutted roads and little or no personal transport other than feet -- the deliverymen reigned supreme. But with the coming of the motorcar and sealed thoroughfares, the days of the billy can at the gate and the meat and grocery parcels wrapped and delivered right to your door were over.

Preparations for the new (temporary) platform

The goods track now gone from the western side of the overbridge, the diggers and men were hard at work today on the eastern side. To the left, that grassy bank will be where the new platform just alongside Trent Street will go, due for completion in December this year. The old goods track bed is now a road for the trucks heading between the western and eastern sides.

I'm going to try to keep an eye on what happens -- convenient indeed that my main bus stop into town is right alongside the railway station (and then, of course, now and then I go to places by rail, anyway).

When I took a picture of the existing station shelter (I won't be sorry to see that go, truly) -- an inquisitive young lad got into the shot, then went to excitedly tell his Mum "There's a lady taking photos!" I spotted him after the shot, deleted it, and then spoke to his Mum, explaining that as the photo may get published online, I was trying not to immortalise his son as well. She helped out by holding onto him for a bit while I took another shot.

An update (9 December) here.

The old ... Coast Guard Hall?

I've always known this building as the Pigeon Club. In recent times, it's been an anti-State Highway 20 billboard, and as can be seen in these photos taken today (in the teeth of a gale force wind blowing up Station Hill, I might add) hosts other advertising and tagging.

In the 1920s, during the Avondale Borough Council period, this was the site of our volunteer fire brigade's HQ. Whether the building dates from that period, or has been altered so much it's something completely different, I don't yet know.

But in the early 1950s, an Auckland City Council cadastral map I've obtained a digital copy of says it was a "Coast Gd Hall". If that abbreviation does mean Coast Guard Hall ... oh, I do seriously need to look into this when I have the chance. It does look like something a boating club (or coast guard) would have. Well, nearer the actual coast, of course, but -- odder things have been found in Avondale's history, and odder things are yet to be discovered. One of the reasons why I just love the history of my home suburb. Stay tuned -- when I find out more, I'll let you know.

Post now updated here. (6/10/2008)

The old goods line

At one point, in 1914, there were three goods lines as well as two passenger lines. Very soon, within the next day or so, there will only be the passenger/main lines. The existing platform will be widened temporarily, while a temporary station is constructed alongside Trent Street to the east of the overhead bridge. Then, it will be slimmed down again, as the lines lead around the bend and into the straight at Crayford Street.

Folks probably thought the removal of the old station in 1995 was the biggest change to happen to our 129-year-old railway link. No. This will be the biggest change of all.

The old goods shed, Avondale Railway Station

Could be 1920s, maybe, could be later. I'm gathering info on the old station all the time, putting pieces into place still. That old shed is a bit of a landmark around here, but it was looking sad before the firewood business leased the railway land here, and now, there's bits coming off it and long grass growing in the roof. It'll be gone, soon.

The sign, still up there after all this time, from the period when Avondale was a busy goods station (in the 19th century, that was its raison d'etre, more than anything else):

AVONDALE
OUTWARD GOODS
8AM-12NOON 12.30PM-4PM

Update: the shed was demolished 26 October 2008, over Labour Weekend. An updated post here.

Removal of the old goods line, Avondale

Sometimes, through being oblivious to what's happening around you, due to thoughts of what needs to happen in your life that day, or even in the next few hours, you may miss history happening. Well, this nearly happened to me today -- but going over the old Crayford Street pedestrian crossing over the railway, I stopped. I heard trucks, a number of them, just to my left, but a short distance away. I stopped, looked, and saw a digger with a long fork attachment carefully carrying long pieces of something, and then carefully laying them in a pile.

Something inside my head "said": "Listen for the clang." They looked like bits of wood, I just assumed it was part of the process of starting the realignment of the station platform. But ... I heard the distant *clang*.

That did it. I fished for my camera, while taking in the whole view, and realised that, after 129 years, the last of the old goods lines was being ripped up.

The next few posts will have some of the photos I took today, plus a bit of an explanation. I was going to go up Crayford Street, but instead I dodged along Layard, listening for the clanging and the sound of saws cutting through the long-run metal, chopping up the old line. Headed up Rosebank Road, and caught probably the last we'll see of the old goods shed as well.

Up on the overhead bridge, I was taking shots, when someone who knows me around here stopped with her mobility scooter right beside me and asked, "You're doing historical stuff, aren't you?"

Yes, indeed I was.

Harry Turnbull: a “Sly Grogger” in Avondale

It was during World War One, in Avondale, October 1915. The NZ Corps of engineers (known as the “Avondale” Tunnelling Company) were stationed at the Avondale Racecourse for training in the ways of Army discipline for their stint later on out on the battlefields of France. An entrepreneurial sort named Harry Turnbull saw a golden opportunity and a market waiting to be capitalised on. Which was the reason police raided his shop.

In August that year Turnbull came to Avondale township, and opened a “fish and soft drinks shop”, somewhere in the present-day Mainstreet area. He had once been a hotelkeeper. Within two months of his arrival on the scene in the growing shopping centre, the Defence Department chose Avondale Racecourse as the site for the Tunneller’s training, and nearly 400 members of the Expeditionary Force swelled the township’s population from October to December. Men who found themselves camped in a “dry” district, six miles by train from the pubs in the central city, and with wartime regulations which banned the selling of liquor to members of the “Defence Forces” or Expeditionary Force for consumption off-premises. The Turnbull case was to become the first tried before the courts in Auckland under these regulations.

Turnbull claimed in court that he had a “friend in camp” who could not keep whiskey and beer for his own consumption there, so Turnbull took it upon himself to supply the necessary liquid refreshment from his shop. He claimed that he didn’t wish to take any money for the alcohol from the soldiers who came to his shop (on hearing the news of a liquor supplier in “dry” Avondale, so close to the camp), but took it anyway after they insisted. He claimed before the magistrate that he had “very little liquor out at his shop” (a jar of whisky and six bottles of beer, it was said). The constables who raided the premises with a search warrant after a complaint from camp officers and a trip in disguise to buy alcohol there along with a real soldier, stated that, in fact, “his shop was fitted up like a miniature bar, with glasses on the counter and in the back room.” The police found “a number of empty beer and whisky bottles strewn about.” The undercover policeman and the soldier “were supplied with drink without the slightest trouble, getting three rounds of whisky, while the soldier was given a little in a bottle to take away, the price being a shilling.” Turnbull also took money for the alcohol, and gave change, “without demur.”

His legal counsel, who did not stay for the rest of the court proceedings after making one argument (leaving Turnbull to plead his own case), asked the magistrate to consider that “the intention of the legislature was that the regulation should apply to licensees of hotels” only. This, however, was dismissed. “Outside of licensees,” Mr. F. V. Frazier, S.M. said, “there are barmen and all sorts of people, to say nothing of barmaids, that might sell liquor to the soldiers, and the intention was to put down a particularly harmful practice.”

Turnbull then challenged the charges, stating that he had not admitted to selling alcohol to a soldier in uniform, claiming that the charges couldn’t stand as it had been the undercover policeman who had paid for the liquor. This was denied by the corporal there, who stated he paid the shilling, not the policeman. Turnbull was convicted and sentenced to one month’s hard labour for selling liquor to uniformed members of the Expeditionary Force.

Avondale racetrain sidings update

On going back into the vaults to hunt up the sheep on the racecourse story, I found a bit of extra info I had included back in 2001-2003 while putting together Heart of the Whau, about the provisions for racetrains in Avondale (posted previously).

Apparently, according to the minutes of the Avondale Road Board in 1899, the rail authorities had installed a "special racecourse platform" on their land between Cracroft (Crayford) Street and Blake (St Judes) Street. (November 1899 when all this was being reported by the Board's clerk, was the first time Blake Street had been called that in 31 years, but I digress.) The Road Board had a problem with this, and they intended opening up Layard Street (whether they meant opening it up to development, or doing something about the part between St Judes Street and Chalmers Street that is still, today, just an unformed if still official road -- I have no idea.)

There were also issues with the raceday trains stopping at St Judes' crossing to let the patrons off so they could make their way down to the races. This practice tended to block traffic. The platform, and sidings, ideas were abandoned.

A plea for an Archives New Zealand bus stop

If anyone reads this, please spread the word.

The Auckland office of Archives New Zealand is at Mangere. Their new building is great, the service fantastic, the staff utterly choice, and Timespanner's a big fan of their tea-room and the honesty-cow system of $1 for a cuppa and a chance to have your bring-your-own lunch when visiting all day there. And with the amount of really cool stuff on offer to peruse and research, an "all day" is kind of mandatory. Time flies, believe me.

One bug-bear though -- and that is the lack of public transport to the archives. They're down the end of Richard Pearse Drive, and the nearest bus stop is more than a kilometre away. Those of you who drive wouldn't have a big problem, but older researchers, and non-drivers like me, have either a hike on our hands, maybe a cadged lift, but if we want real independence, it means a taxi there and back to Onehunga or Mangere Town Centre.

A friend of mine is starting an awareness campaign among researchers about this. I've left a message with Maxx on their website. Anyone else reading this who thinks we should have a bus stop closer than the existing services to enable easier access to some of our part of the North Island's heritage records -- let them know.

Cheers.

Additional, 11 February 2016:

They did finally put in a bus stop after the Super City amalgamation of 2010. The Auckland office of Archives NZ is today accessible via the Airporter route between Onehunga and Manukau City.

The 1914 Night Soil Protest at Waterview

The following is from notes of a speech I gave in 2004.

Just outside where the Waterview Church stands today, across the width of the Great North Road, a protest was staged in 1914 against the use of the Cadman Estate (now part of Heron Park) as a night soil depot. It was a sure sign that settlement had picked up markedly in Waterview – settlers here were not going to put up with what might have gone unnoticed in a more rural environment.

The Tamaki night soil depot was closed in late 1913, and Health Department officials went looking for alternative sites. The local authorities on the isthmus were all keen that there should be another depot, but not at all keen that it should be in their districts. It was decided that the Cadman Estate would be ideal, and legislation put through meant that the Department didn’t have to listen to local authority concerns.

20 January 1914, Auckland Star.

“Forced to look for a new site, the Public Health Dept. decided that Avondale provided a satisfactory way out. The residents of that district received an unpleasant surprise yesterday, when it was discovered that the sanitary carts had during the night been brought into the township, & the matter had been distributed over a well-known property, on which was situated a large boarding house. The owner of this property, it is further stated, runs cows over his land, & holds a license to supply milk throughout the district.

“A member of the Avondale Road Board, in imparting this information to a Star representative this morning, said it was obvious that the site was an impossible one for the purpose. The ground was too hard in that locality to permit of proper ploughing, with the result that the matter was only partially covered, & with the prevailing wind blowing in the direction of a fairly thickly populated area, the residents were considerably alarmed. Already the member for the district has been interviewed, & asked to intercede with the Minister of Public Health.

“The Board's solicitors have also been instructed to take immediate action, & a public indignation meeting is to be held forthwith. When inquiry was made at the Public Health Office this morning it was ascertained that the site was regarded as the best available. The information was further imparted that it was only to be used as a temporary depot, though no idea could be given as to how long it would be necessary to continue sending Auckland night soil into the Avondale district.”

23 January 1914, Auckland Star

“During the small hours of Monday morning last residents in Waterview, a portion of the Avondale district, were rudely disturbed by rumbling noises & queer odours emanating from no one knew where.

“At the back of a property, the estate of the late Sir A J Cadman, & presently leased to Mr Harrison, several loads of nightsoil had been deposited, & a man was busily employed in ploughing it in. It was soon apparent that Pt Chevalier had succeeded in getting rid of their sanitary depot, & that Avondale had been chosen to replace it. At a meeting of the Road Board last evening, ratepayers attended in large numbers & expressed their indignation in an unmistakable manner.”

On the 26th of January, an open air meeting was held outside the Avondale Post Office, at the present day Avondale Roundabout. 200 men attended, angrily demanding that the Avondale Road Board do something. On 28 January, the Brownes Road and Cameron Street barricades went up.

From the NZ Herald:

“Residents of Avondale erected two barricades on the roads used by the sanitary contractors & since Friday last the deposits have had to be placed elsewhere. At each barrier was a notice to the effect that the road was closed to traffic. Counter moves were made last night, under the direction of the District Health Officer, Dr. Makgill.

“Accompanied by Senior-sergeant Rutledge & four constables, the health officer proceeded to the locality where the barricades had been erected, in order to remove them.

“Browne's Road, at the extremity of which one of the obstacles was placed, was reached by motor-car shortly before midnight. The party then went afoot to the second one, situated in Cameron Road, about a quarter of a mile nearer to the foreshore. Heavy timbers had been used in the building of both barricades, and though the police were reinforced by the mounted constables stationed in the district, they could not commence operations, being without tools. After a brief interval, however, the contractor (Mr Burke) arrived with two assistants who brought crowbars & other implements with them.

“Dr Makgill, in order to place the subsequent procedure on a legal basis, was the first to make an attack upon the formidable barrier, which was roughly nailed together here & there with 6in nails. This done, the contractor’s men and the constables soon made short work of the remainder, & a gap was made through which, 20 minutes or so later, the first of six sanitary carts passed safely to the depot. No opposition was experienced in the work of demolition of the first obstacle, though one individual from behind an adjacent hedge uttered a warning to the effect that the police had better not touch the barricade unless they produced their authority. Some female voices also were raised in protest from the outer darkness.

“At the Browne's Road barricade, half a dozen residents appeared on the scene & raised verbal objections to the proposed removal of it. The Health Officer thereupon proceeded to the residence of the chairman of the Road Board (Mr J Potter) with whom he was conferring at an early hour this a.m.”

More barricades were erected on subsequent nights. I haven’t yet found out exactly how things turned out, but I’d say the depot turned out to be very temporary indeed.

The Day the Sheep raced at the Avondale Jockey Club

The author of the Mad Bush Chronicles Blog requested this story during a comments discussion at the end of the James MacKenzie post. Well, here's the tale, from Heart of the Whau (2003):

Everyone thinks only horses race at the Avondale Jockey Club but in 1962 all that changed. You see at 1883 Great North Road behind Arthur H. Nathan Home Appliances (now Westforce Credit Union) George Pilkington, the building owner, used to graze two sheep called Snowy and Dolly.

Well that summer the two sheep decided they liked the look of the vegetable garden over the fence. With considerable determination they both pushed their way under the wire fence and after a lovely time they exited onto Elm Street.

They soon spotted the green grass of the Avondale Race Course and a fine banquet of food. So off they went slowly nibbling down the main straight and were somewhere near the start line. By now it was just after 3'o'clock and unfortunately for Dolly and Snowy some children returning home from school discovered this unusual sight. That's when the first race on the card got under way! It was led by Snowy and Dolly and followed by six excited children. The sheep fleeced the field on the first lap but on the second were caught by the children who knew to where they should be returned.

Snowy and Dolly were led up Elm Street into Great North Road and the front door of Arthur H. Nathan Home Appliances. Snowy was an obedient sheep and went through the shop and out the back door returning to her original pasture. Dolly however was very stubborn and eventually a little force had to be used to encourage her to go through the shop and out the back door. Well the fun of the big day had made Dolly a little loose and she left an unwelcome trail from the front door to the back door. The proud store manager could certainly see a line that separated the white ware from the brown ware of that home appliance shop.

And so ended the day that Snowy and Dolly the sheep raced at the Avondale Jockey Club.

["The Day the Sheep raced at the Avondale Jockey Club", Bruce Pilkington, December 2001 (email to the author)]

Death of a publican: the suicide of John Rebbick Stych (1845-1898)

An old tale that floated around Avondale for years, from whispers in the playground to legends recounted to wide-eyed visitors, was that the last publican of the Avondale Hotel committed suicide by hanging himself in the basement when the hotel lost its license in 1909. Thanks to Mrs. Vera Crawford, in an interview while I researched Heart of the Whau, the legend was disproved: to a point.

The last publican didn’t kill himself in 1909 or in 1910 when the hotel closed its doors that year. It was another man, just before Christmas in 1898, who in a dazed and desperate state headed down to the cellars to end his life with a shotgun blast.

Serious trouble came to the Avondale Hotel and its licensee on the afternoon of 20 December. John Abbott, a financier from Parnell, had asked his son that day to present a cheque for £125 at the National Bank in Onehunga, one signed by a Mr. Clark of Onehunga, and endorsed by John R Stych of Avondale, but the cheque was found to be a forgery. Abbott hastened to Avondale with his son, arriving at 4.30 pm to find that Stych was already talking with another man, an agent William J Boylan, regarding financial matters. Boylan stated later that “he had not threatened to deal harshly” with Stych. Abbott interrupted this discussion, and met with Stych in a private room. During the next two minutes, Abbott later declared at the coroner’s hearing, he told Stych that steps had to be taken to clear up the matter of the forgery. Stych, according to Abbott, gave no answer. “He appeared”, according to Abbott, “to be in a dazed and dejected state, with a wildness in his eye.”

Abbott thus came to the conclusion that it was going to take longer than he had thought to discuss the matter of the cheque with Stych. He asked for help detaching his horse from his trap waiting outside, so that his son could come in, and everything could be further discussed calmly. The last words Stych said to Abbott was that he’d send a boy out to help sort out the horse, a few minutes before 5 pm.

Coming back from taking his horse to the stable, Abbott said he saw Stych come out the back door of the hotel (possibly Wingate Street side) and then go back in again. Shortly after that, Abbott claimed he heard a “faint explosion, like the shooting of a cork.” He didn’t hear the full blast, as he was hard of hearing. Going back into the hotel, he asked Emma Stych where her husband was. She thought he was still with Abbott, and sent one of the sons, Arthur, to look for his father.

Checking the cellar, Arthur discovered his father lying dead, a wound just below the right ear from a double-barrelled shotgun that had been held close to Stych’s skull. John Stych had made his way to the cellar, fully determined to end his life. In case the shotgun hadn’t worked, he had a loaded revolver in one pocket, and an extra shotgun cartridge in another. A Dr. Girdler was summoned by telephone to the scene (the nearest telephone in those days was miles away), and pronounced that death was instantaneous, while Constable Crean took charge of the weapons found with the body, and reported the tragedy to the district coroner, John Bollard (then MP for Eden). The inquest was held on the afternoon of the next day.

John Bollard was a good friend of Stych, and objected to Abbott’s use of the term “forgery” to describe the cheque which couldn’t be honoured at the Onehunga bank. Bollard declared that there was no evidence presented at the hearing that the cheque was a forgery, and that Abbott must have meant that the cheque had been returned unpaid, and marked in the corner “signature unlike”. Bollard said he raised this “in justice to the deceased.” Abbott, later in a letter to the NZ Herald. protested this strongly declaring that the coroner’s tribunal was not the place to determine whether the cheque had been forged or not. “However much I was disposed to soften its effect, so that his representatives might not be pained, I had no alternative but to speak of things as they were.”

The verdict of the inquiry was “suicide while suffering from temporary insanity, caused by financial difficulties.”

John Stych had been very popular in the Avondale district, not only as the village’s hotel publican, but also as an enthusiastic gardener and member of the local horticultural society. He used to carry off prize after prize at the local shows. For many years prior to moving to Avondale, he worked at the Bycroft mills in Auckland. He left his wife, Emma, and three sons. Emma continued on as the licensee of the hotel until June 1903, when she transferred the license to William Baker (who may, indeed, have been the last of the Avondale Hotel publicans). At the time, the police stated that the hotel was in good order and well conducted. Her husband was buried in Rosebank (now the George Maxwell) Cemetery, his headstone giving no indication of his sad, untimely demise.

The Country Chemist: Robert Joseph Allely

The early days of Avondale were marked by a strong sense of community, our area before the 1940s being little more than a semi-rural backwater, the typical “small town”. One story which underscores that now almost outdated aspect of life is that of Robert Joseph Allely (born c.1867). He was in business in Avondale possible only a little more than 10 years, but helped to save the community in a time of great crisis.

The only monument in our town to this man, our first local pharmacist, is the Allely Building at 2000 Great North Road. The older, two-storey section on the right hand side was the original chemist shop (ground) and dental surgery (top storey). Both were used by Allely because he was, indeed, a combination from time to time seen in his days: pharmacist, dentist, and first-aid doctor. After Dr Aitken in the previous century, he was Avondale’s second source of general medical help, Avondale’s “doctor” of the time.

Robert Allely was born around 1867, the son of immigrants from County Monaghan, Ireland, who had moved to Australia, where Allely was born. Mrs Vera Crawford told me in 2001 (while I interviewed her for Heart of the Whau) that Robert Allely was a little child on the same ship on which her grandmother MacDonald came on, the Queen of the Nations. His family apparently decided to try New Zealand around 1874 (the only time the Queen of Nations came to New Zealand).

They settled in Tauranga, where Allely became apprenticed to a pharmacist. According to Reg Combes in his 1981 book Pharmacy in New Zealand, Allely “showed a willing spirit and business aptitude, and in the late nineties became shop manager with a certificate of registration bearing the early number 548.” It was while he was at Tauranga that he would cycle forty-five kilometres over clay roads to receive tuition in dentistry in Waihi, and in time was granted authority to practice.

From there, he moved to Auckland. He declined an offer of a position in a Queen Street business, instead deciding to set up his own business in Avondale. As Reg Combes said in his article on Allely, the community doubly welcomed a man who was dentist as well as a pharmacist to their village.

In 1910 there was a wooden shop on the site at 2000 Great North Road, beside the (then) new police station. This was replaced by the brick building owned by Robert Alley in 1911. On July 22 that year, the first prescription is recorded as being filled there, on the day Allely’s original pharmacy opened. At the end of the first week, Allely began to have doubts as to the wisdom of turning down the Queen Street position, and a reliable income, for striking out on his own at Avondale. Takings for that first week were only £9. But his wife was apparently a tactful, persuasive soul. She convinced Allely to hang on and have patience with the situation. She was right. The community came to regard Robert Allely as part of the fabric of the town, and called him “Joe”.

His shop would be open until 9 pm. This meant long hours dragging between customers, so Allely invited friends to join him in the back room of the shop, and there they engaged in long, involved conversations on all manner of topics, both local and national. It became known as “The School”, and soon rumours abounded that the group might be “suspect”, a bed of conspiracy and dangerous intrigue. The local constable was sent next door to investigate and stopped to listen at the outside door to the room. During a lull on the conversation, the men inside heard a suspicious sound. Allely rose, opened the door with a rush, and found an embarrassed constable there. The policeman remained to become another member of “The School”.

Robert “Joe” Allely is a forgotten hero of Avondale. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, Allely stepped into the breach that existed in Avondale, with no resident doctor, the nearest hospital distant miles and rough roads away, and people around him living in fear of death striking them down. With volunteers, including his wife, he set up a field hospital on the grounds of the Avondale Racecourse, and called out from his shop to visit the sick in their homes, leaving his shop open and packaged up medicines on his counter for his customers to pick up. Those who could pay anything towards the cost of their medicine dutifully left money in the till. If they couldn’t, they remembered, and paid up honestly after the crisis was over.

Bruce McLaughlan, in his book Blockhouse Bay – A Village within a Town, recorded one memory from that time, about Allely, and his makeshift hospital out on the paddock: “Bob and Vera Blake were both attending school at the time of the influenza epidemic of 1918. A hospital was set up at Avondale racecourse and the local chemist of Avondale, a Mr Allely, ran it. Bob said of the epidemic: “People would go in and say, ‘Haven’t seen old Bill Brown about lately.’ So one of them’d take off and go down and they’d find old Bill Brown either dead in his hut or so ill that he couldn’t get out. And they’d get a cart and get him off to the hospital.”

According to Reg Combes, Allely standardised his formulas, made up bulk preparations, and travelled the length of the district (Blockhouse Bay, Avondale and Waterview) by bicycle with instructions on how to nurse the afflicted, and making arrangements to send the desperate cases to the emergency tent hospital he’d set up. “A Medical Officer of Health was despatched to inspect his makeshift hospital, set up in spite of regulations prohibiting such temporary quarters,” Combes wrote. ”But Robert Allely knew what he was about. The Medical Officer of Health unofficially congratulated him and gratefully left him to carry on in his own way, which he was able to do with the help of his voluntary aides.”

The district was grateful to a hard-working man who had done much to ease people through the epidemic, and helped to keep the death rate down for this area. Allely and his wife were duly presented with an illuminated address, a souvenir booklet containing the names of all the subscribers; a gold watch chain and pendent; and to Mrs. Alley a beautiful case of silver knives and forks. Arthur Morrish, editor of Avondale’s paper The News, wrote in the 25 January 1919 edition:

“The public presentation in Avondale on Wednesday evening … to Mr. R. J. Allely was a fitting tribute to a gentleman who for a period of several weeks during the late epidemic worked night and day in his endeavours to help suffering humanity. Avondale, in common with other places, was without the services of a medical man, but in Mr. Allely the district had a good substitute. His knowledge of medicine and his ability to diagnose symptoms were freely placed at the disposal of anyone needing his services, and it it no exaggeration to say that the number of visits he made to all parts of this and surrounding districts ran into the hundreds. Not one of these visits were charged for …”

The Auckland Star on 23 January 1919 reported on the presentation at the district’s Town Hall (present day Hollywood Cinema), and the comments made by Avondale Road Board chairman Mr. R. B. Nesbitt, who said, “… he was proud to be presiding at such a function, proud to be a friend and fellow citizen of a man who, through his untiring and unselfish labour had done so much for the sufferers of the disastrous epidemic. Towards the latter part of the visitation, Mr. Alley finally collapsed and had to take to his bed and it was with great difficulty his wife kept him there, for he wanted to be up and doing …”

It is sadly likely that the strain of his efforts during that epidemic took their toll on him. Early in the 1920s, he sold his business and left the district, never to return. The business he started still continues, passed from owner through the years and is now the Avondale Pharmacy. The old brick building still stands, remaining as Robert Allely’s only enduring mark upon the history of our suburb. That, and the story of the lives he helped to save in those dark days of 1918.

James MacKenzie statue at Fairlie

The above statue in honour of the legend of James MacKenzie was unveiled in Fairlie, South Canterbury, in 2003. The photo comes from a visit in March 2006, with other members of the executive committee of the NZ Federation of Historical Societies.

According to the sign alongside the statue, MacKenzie arrived in 1855, a Scottish immigrant seeking a better life. He took up a lease near Edendale in Southland, but one of the requirements of the lease was that he stocked the farm with sheep – which he didn’t have. He learned of a route through the mountains from Otago, leading to the basin which today bears his name.

He rustled 1000 sheep from the Rhodes Brothers of the Levels Station near Timaru in the dead of night, and this sparked off a high country pursuit with the law hot on his trail. He was caught a few days later, 4 March 1855, but made his escape. Eventually apprehended, he was sentenced in Lyttleton to 5 years hard labour. His case by now, though, had considerable national notoriety. His frequent escapes from custody added to the legend. He was pardoned in 1856, and left New Zealand forever.

450 kilograms of bronze was used by sculptor Sam Mahon to cast the statue, which is described as “James MacKenzie and his collie dog looking down upon their stolen flock. He faces into the wind, hand held above his valuable “eye dog” poised to do its instinctive duty of silently herding sheep.” The rock on which the statue stands came from the MacKenzie Pass.

"A Record Flight "... on the Kaipara rail line

From the Waitemata News, 19 June 1913.

"Regarding the fine recently imposed on a New Lynn settler, a good story is told of a contractor and the County Engineer, who were travelling on the Kaipara line, on which it is fitting that the incident should have taken place, owing to the velocity of the trains there.

"It is a regulation of the Railways Department that gelignite should not be carried at any cost, and it is a punishable offence for a passenger to take this explosive into a railway carriage. Gerald met Mac at the Auckland station, and both were carrying parcels of like size and wrapping. Gerald's contained gelignite and Mac's contained a plum cake, probably with which to regale the Helensville girls with. Both stood on the platform next the guard's van and placed their respective parcels at their feet.

"All went well, till the train was about to leave one of the way stations -- which we will call Whakapukatitree, for the sake of argument -- but here the starting jolt of the train caused one of the parcels to fall directly in front of the wheel of the guard's van. Both sports noticed this, and to the astonishment of the guard both hopped with alacrity off the train. Mac beating Gerald by an eyelash in a hundred yards sprint for safety.

"Fortunately, it was the plum cake that was cut in half and not the explosive, and a calamity was averted.

"On seeing what had really resulted, the pair speedily overhauled the train, now moving out of the station, and explained to the guard that they had simultaneously seen a coin lying in the road and had contested for its possession. They escaped a fine, but -- all men are liars."