Christopher Vine's obsession with old buildings has been almost lifelong. He was the first architect to enrol in the Hi...
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Christopher Vine's obsession with old buildings has been almost lifelong. He was the first architect to enrol in the Historic Buildings Conservation course set up by London University's Institute of Archeology, and he worked on the propping up of various venerable piles around Britain. Feeling during the Cuba crisis that Europe was a less than ideal place to raise four children, the family emigrated to New Zealand and settled in Nelson in 1964. The delightful Teal Valley, then sparsely occupied, has been his home ever since. He lives in a cottage reputedly built in 1845. Shortly after arriving in Nelson the Provincial Building fiasco blew up. The unsuccessful attempt
to save it rekindled the old building mania. He served on both the Broadgreen and Melrose committees, besides those of the Historic Places Trust. the Historical Society and the Suter Art Society, and was a Trustee of the Suter Gallery for many years. More recently the Nelson Institute has been a focus of attention. Between embellishing the several crumbling buildings and planting trees on his quasi-farm, he divides his time between writing, illustrating. and most especially, making things. Feeling that the description of our species as Homo Sapiens is a gross conceit, he prefers the term Homo Faber, Man the Maker.
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THE NELSON INSTITUTE Founded on a ship coming ou t to New Zealand in 1841, the Nelson Institute is older than the settlement that bears its name. It is also the oldest surviving Institution of its kind in the country and was incorporated through the Nelson Institute Act 1907. For many years it was active in promoting the cultural life of the region. The Museum and Library, formerly its domain, have been administered publicly since the 1960's. The Institute has initiated lectures and played a role in both Adult Education and town planning, and runs regular meetings where writers discuss their new works. This book is its first venture in the field of publishing, and marks the one hundred and. fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Nelson's first Reading Room and Library.
TABLEOF CONTENTS
Preamble ..................................................................... .. 8 Come Inside ....................................................... .. ........ 9 Earth to Earth .. .............. .................................... ......... 12 Home Sweet Home .............. ..................................... 15 The Icing on the Cake ............................................... 26 The Red Shed ............................................................. 33 The Demon Drink ..................................................... 39 Commerciai .. .. .. .. ........................... ............................. 44 Public Building ..........................................................48 Churches & Memorials ............................................ 52
Published by The Nelson Institute Inc, 470 Atawhai Drive,
Nelson, New Zealand
First published 1992
Schools .... ............ ........................................................58 The Sea .. ...................................................................... 60 Lines of Communication .......................................... 63
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Wheels of Industry .................................................... 66 Streetscape ....................................................... .. .. ....... 70 South and West ........................................ ................. 75
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Christopher B Vine
Colden Bay .................................................................81
ISBN 0-473-D1621-4
The Late Lamented .................................. ................. 93 Post-Amble ........... ................................................ .... 103
Colour Separations by Litho Laboratories, Wellington
Typeset by Progressive Printing Ltd, Nelson Printed by Stiles Printing Ltd, Nelson
DEDICATION To those who made what is drawn within.
FOREWORD C::::~=:::::::::=--I
ACKNOW1EDGEMENTS This collection has been made possible only because of the help and co-operation of a number of people. Firstly those who have had sufficient faith in the idea to help financially in the project, and to the Trust Bank Canterbury Community Trust and also the Mackee Trust due thanks are given. Also to Bruce Hancox and judi Lenart for their great encouragement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Books by the following authors have been invaluable, Ruth Allan, Lois Voller, jeff Newport, Shirley Horrocks, Mike johnson, Cyprian Brereton, Enga Washbourne, june Neale and P V and N L Wastney, and the compilers of Broad's jubilee History of Nelson and the journals of the Nelson Historical Society - and its cousin in Motueka 'And so it Began'.
Also I am greatly indebted to the Right Hon. Sir Geoffrey Palmer for his very pertinent Foreword. Besides these the committee of the Nelson Institute have put up with my harangues and obsessional promotion of the idea with kindly indulgence, in particular Colin Gunn who has kept track of my wayward ideas. Robbie Burton of Craig Potton Publishers who has helped with the intricacies of book production. Dawn Smith of the Provincial Museum has also been a provider of information. My thanks also to Graham Spencer who has cast his professional eye over my erratic script. But the most important has been the kindly help and interest of countless Nelsonians, who have tolerated my questions with a fund of good will and often fascinating anecdote. This is their book too.
Christopher Vine is a man of unusual talents. He sees in the "",__= 1 buildings around us qualities which so many miss and never bring to mind. This book contains a great deal of ~~_~_~~_~.~~~ discernment about I!! architecture, the hand-made environment fashioned out of the natural environment by the craftsmen among the early settlers in the Nelson region. To many this is a world we have lost, but not to Christopher Vine. Nelson's rich historical heritage of buildings has long been an outlet for Vine's drawings and his exquisi te taste for detail. He sees in the work of those who have gone before the essential human qualities of buildings. Those builders wanted something which was not only useful and practical but also expressed the pride of creativity and excellence of craft. These are qualities not always found in our contemporary buildings. Many of the buildings in this book are wooden - the material most easily to hand in the early days and a material of warmth and versatility. Wooden buildings reqUire maintenance, however, and there is a tendency to pull them down and start again rdlher than repair them. Often much of quality is lost when this happens. Christopher Vine has been observing Nelson for many years now. He has been here quite long enough to witness acts of architectural vandalism which have befallen some of Nelson's public buildings. Most notable of these was the demolition of the Nelson Provincial Chambers, a structure of the most remarkable symmetry and elegance. It is devoutly to be wished that his painstaking work on the architecture of Nelson will influence people to preserve and nurture what we have. Much that is
good remains as this book amply demonstra tes. This book represents the culmination of many patient years of seeking out, drawing and investigating the human history of many buildings both grand and humble in the Nelson province. The conservation of buildings is not some fad of extreme environmentalists. ' Buildings require money and resources. The next generation can never afford to replace everything built by the previous generation, not to mention the cultural deprivation such a policy would bring. As we arrive at the point of human history when a prime concern of public policy must be with sustainability - the need to ensure that the resources of the planet are not all used up so we do not leave sufficient resources for future generations to live in dignitycare for old buildings will become even more important than it is now. Christopher Vine may not relish the twentieth century, but he has lavished loving care on the richness of our nineteenth century heritage. Those people who built the buildings depicted in this book have something to say to us now through their work, something which is hard to hear in the noise of the many ct:mfused and multi-media voices of the late twentieth century. It is a message about there being in life as in buildings a sense of proportion, a pride in the beauty of things which have been well made, a conviction that simplicity and economy are not enemies of quality. This book, in short, is a celebration of values of human civilisation as they have been expressed in the earlier buildings of the Nelson region. It is a further demonstration, were any needed, of the grace and elegance of this most blessed part of New Zealand. Thank you, Christopher Vine. Geoffrey Palmer Patron Nelson Institute.
In case anyone should think that I have deliberately ignored the Maori tradition I should explain that I do not feel competent to comment. The vigorous resurgence of Maori culture whose most visible signs in Nelson are to the north of the city, are still in the process of taking shape. Others better versed than I shall have their say. It is good to experience diversity; this breadth can enrich us all.
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PREAMBLE ~
A few words of explanation. I can date my first drawing of Nelson to the day in July 196,4 after moving into a shack which was to be home for the first few months of living here. -;;::: ::::::: This drawing of the cottage L...~_ _ _"":::'_---l has, over nearly thirty years, been followed by several hundred others. Just how many times I have written or raved about the place I have long since stopped counting. It was a time when some of the older people still
referred to Britain as "home" even if they had never lived there, when old crocks and furniture were often just discarded, and the wooden fretwork which now fetches extravagant prices was being thrown out to save on the painting bills. The controversy over the old Provincial Building was raging and the historical societies and other bodies concerned with New Zealand's past were regarded by many as peculiar if not worse. Things have changed m the three decades since, but I was very fortunate to have arrived then, when the interest in things past was beginning to reach a wider public. A little later, Graham Spencer, the Editor of the Nelson Evening Mail suggested an illustrated series
for the paper. This, after a year's contributions, I felt had about covered the field. But there is something special about living in Nelson, it does not give up all its treasures at once. You can for instance, whisk around it for a few days wi th a camera and assemble a collection of photographs. But to me at any rate, much of the subtler qualities only reveal themselves slowly, to those who live here. So that first series has been followed by three others at irregular intervals. A bit like Dame Nellie Melba's 'last' concert, it happened over and over again. Why drawing you may ask. Firstly I am no great shakes as a photographer. Also 1 enjoy drawing, it forces you really to examine a scene, and features become evident over the time you spend putting pencil to paper. Also the things, mostly, that I am drawn to draw are themselves the product of hand and eye. This, in the building field is now less true; the production line and power tool, even the computer, have modified the techniques; buildings are less handmade objects than before. So to make this record by hand also seems to me appropriate. As a schoolboy I was urged to keep a commonplace book, a collection of bits and pieces that caught the imagination. This book too is a collection, a ' quite personal one, of Nelsoniana that have seemed to me noteworthy, and I very much hope that other people will gain pleasure too by perusing this record of a special place.
COME INSIDE Porches have at least two purposes. To make a comfortable transition between the inside and outside, a place
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unfurled, goodbyes exchanged and more earthily, gumboots _...,."" ......... .......... L..:....:...-_ _~_--I stacked. They also help to prevent rain driving within, and give emphasis to the entrance; an architectural way of saying 'Enter Here'. _~o.
Often they only serve the last purpose, such as the Ii ttle curved roof over the front doors of Broadgreen. Flanked by two strangely detailed columns it is some country carpenter's idea of ionic, very attenuated but all the more intriguing for that. The Technical School doorway is a particularly happy example of symbolism, at least I suppose that that's what it is. There are a couple of birds of prey (judging by their fierce beaks) supporting another curved canopy. They don't look like owls, which one might reasonably expect on a place of learning, more like vultures. Still they are a definite plus. Would that we could find the funds (and the fancy) to embellish our dull and utilitarian modem equivalent.
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u The only visible part of the once elaborate porch to the 1904 Suter Gallery Building is a small portion above the roof line, with stained glass which previously let light into the gallery but now merely illumines the roof space.
BI'hllhm,dlln vWDr1~ no notice and doodling will out, eventually. So this \=#~~ Wakefield Domain a stone one in memory of a doctor are among this category. There is a small pyramid on the old road to Kaiteriteri; which has - ----- - --
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two mill stones made from local granite incorporated in it, a suitable symbol for the establishment of a young colony when there were times when even bread, the very staff of life, was in desperately short supply. Nearby Motueka has a supreme example of multifunctionalism in the lamp on the old stone wharf. It not only lit the street, but commemorated the death (from dysentery) of Trooper Tarrant in the V' Boer War and the reign of Edward the Seventh, as . ~~~;tt~i9~ well as serving as a drinking fountain and horse ~~~~~jmj Ittrough. Value for money. ~
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SI ME that for many years would accompany ships through this passage. A few weather-beaten hulls sinking quietly the mud stir the imagination of some and seem merely an eyesore to others. The Janie Seddon off the old Motueka Wharf has drawn criticism from the tidy minded, yet to others, including me, it gives an added spice to the scene. The Venture, now only a rib or two, at Awaroa, is a reminder of the boatbuilding skills of the Hadfields who were pioneers here. Closer to Nelson, an iron skeleton rusts near Queen Elizabeth Drive. I'm told this was a Turkish pontoon, involved in an abortive crossing of the Suez Canal and brought back as a trophy from the First World War. Also near the road just before Havelock is the beached hull of the once proud steam ship Pelorus, which towed many a huge raft I of native logs to the sawmill which stood near this, its last resting place. Even further afield, in fact right outside Nelson's present boundary, is the Edwin Fox at Picton. Not quite cheating to include , it though as it was ships like this that brought out many of the immigrants. An ambitious scheme of restoration is proposed about which there are, as always, differing opinions. There is a point beyond which the restored object begins to make the viewer wonder just how much is genuine and how much replica . At present anyway the beautiful old teak hull, for she was built in India, leaves no doubt that this is the real McCoy.
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Another ship that has left its'mark on Nelson, if only in name and memory, is the brigantine Delaware that was wrecked in 1863, giving Delaware Bay its name. The tale of the daring rescue by Julia Matenga and her husband Hemi and other Maori of the Pa is a particularly happy one, in a history of interaction with the new settlers which has been so often muddied by misunderstanding. An anchor from the site of the wreck was dredged up some time ago and is now carefully preserved in a garden nearby. A ship's carpenter's swage block supposed to have come from the wreck as well as the bell are two other relics. Of the port of Nelson, the old sea walls of Adele Island granite are still visible along Wakefield Quay, but the pleasantly higgeldy piggeldy collection of pubs, ships chandlers, plumbers shops and other ship-related buildings that were still there twenty five years ago have now nearly all been tidied away. The power house building, with its well known trompe l'oeil mural and, opposite, the former Anchor Foundry are reminders of the industry that flourished here before the land reclamation allowed expansion on what had previously been the sea.
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LINES OF COMMUNICATION ~~~~~I O'os~f--._ _ ._- - -.,..... .. . . .
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, ;;.,_ Geology being so influential in determining 'here industry should be, it often happens that the .' ,reat engineering works connected with it are often o be found in quite unexpected places. As with the cowering poppet head on the high windy heath of Waiuta, the iron works in Golden Bay, the coke ovens, swing bridge and tall chimney at Brunner set in a lovely riverside spot, the setting seems contradictory.
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Of all these sites, the most unlikely to me is thc place that used to be called, with superb understatement, just "The Hill". Denniston, another instance where exhaustion followed quickly on the heels of exploration and exploitation, has still a few hardy inhabitants, though the mine and the famous incline, once claimed to be the eighth wonder of the world, are now merely curiosities. One or two forlorn and stumpy chimneys, and the works rusting away on this misty height may soon disappear. But at least two things remain and are likely to be around for quite a while. The beautifully built stone flue to the old boiler house made from rock quarried from the cliff behind so that it seems as much a natural as man-made feature, and the incline itself, sweeping in a narrow gash through the trees down hundreds of metres to the plains below. From beetling crag the laden trucks went down, pulling up the empty ones by counterbalance. It was not a journey without hazard, as a look at the excellent information boards at the top will tell; it took its toll, mostly of the very young. Westport, like other West Coast towns, is hard categorise. Isolated and sandwiched on a plain, sometimes no more than a shelf and never very wide, between high mountains and stormy sea, wet, warm and lush, it seems to me a vegetable kingdom where the works of man are half claimed by moss and lichen almost before they are completed. For that this is a town with a character very much its own. Coal and cement have supplanted gold as its mineral backbone. Westport seems to have a penchant for round headed windows. A surprising town hall in the 30's -:~~~Si~ idiom as well as some shop fronts in the same vein. _ Plenty of the cast iron verandah brackets, known in Australia as Sydney Lace. A bandstand too, and a splendid house, once a vicarage, with arching gothic gables.
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There are wheels and shafts and water tube boilers still dotting the paddocks leading towards that famous ghost town of Charleston. There it is the harbour which is the wonder. How could those frail craft be inched through that narrow gap, often only under sail, with no second chance if the captain miscalculated? The trees, swept into bonsai shape by the constant wind, are mute evidence of the hazards they ran.
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GOLDEN BAY I---:~~~;;;;:::-I
Just-as Nelson seems rather apart from the rest of New Zealand, even more I think, to those that live there, does r. Golden Bay. This sense of
~~~~rJ,~~~ separateness is welcome in I~ times of increasing uniformity. Natural barriers, the sea and mountains have a lot to do wi th this. For Golden Bay one frontier is the unearthly stonescape of Takaka Hill whose intricately weathered outcrops of marble could have inspired EI Greco's tortuous landscapes. From the summit the prospect of the Takaka Valley curling down towards the sea is best in winter with snow on the mountains. Bare rocks and wind buffeted beech give way to undulating pasture. It is easy to see why the sea provided the logical link for this islanded place before the road was carved out of the hill.
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'Over the hill' is the phrase used by the locals, and it has a metaphorical as well as geographical logic. The tempo and type of life are peculiar to Golden Bay. For an account of early days hereabouts, 'Courage and Camp Ovens' by Enga Washbourne gives a fascinating account. As with Nelson there were many attempts to turn the minerals of the bay to financial gain. But in spite of its name, happily changed from "Massacre" to "Golden" after the area was declared New Zealand's first official Gold Field, the story neither begins nor ends with gold. Down the West Coast at Maungarakau, the first shipload of coal was taken to Wellington in the Jewess in 1840. And at Puponga, the jetty piles point the way to mines from which millions of tons of coal were taken. The Marble Creek mines high up on Mount Burnett have left as a legacy wheels, a boiler, even a sizeable tunnel through which the cable hauled tramway ran its precipitous way down to the flats below. The Washournes had a mighty overshot wheel at Para para where haematite was ground for making paint. This same iron oxide was the basis for a great enterprise at Onekaka.
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Together with local coke and limestone it was fed into the smelter, and the ingots and iron castings were taken down to the coast in a long overhead cableway. Massive cog wheels and other more or less imperishable left overs still lay on the site till the 70's but have since been recycled, as have many of the massive fire bricks from the old coke ovens whose gorse covered hemispheres resembled Roman Baths. The old wharf still juts out to sea and is currently home to an intrepid dolphin, swimming nonchalantly among wondering and slightly bemused landlubbers. Very recently, the cement works at Tarakohe closed. They also used local raw m3terials. I hope the huge cement silos, perched like Tintagel Castle on a crag overlooking the sea will remain; they are spectacular. Marble too had been quarried in the Bay, but the only stone now worked commercially is at Mount Burnett where dolomite is won for use, among other things, in glass making and agriculture. Asbestos was found in the Cobb and many other minerals in small amounts. Electricity perhaps hardly qualifies as a mineral but it's certainly an export, and has resulted in a large lake as well behind the dam. A smaller hydro electric plant above Pupu Springs is a source not only of power but pleasure, at any rate for those who enjoy walking beside the water-race snaking along the mountainside, where it was originally dug to supply water for gold sluicing. So at last to gold. For all that it was a flourishing field, it has left few visible signs. In the Aorere Valley, where it all started, there is a good walkway, which gives easy access to the artificial lake called Druggans Dam, and the fern shadowed, though mostly dry race that flowed from this is cleared again. There are huge spoil heaps and, more remotely, stamper batteries too. To bring it right up to date there are present day gold seekers equipped with less back breaking methods of wresting those thinly scattered flecks of that yellow human magnet out of the gravel with front end loaders and rotating screens.
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