Putt’s Ponies, Bethlehem

Darren Beard sits on Peanuts, one of the miniature horses at Bethlehem, being held by Mr A. M. Putt
120-format film negative, published in the Bay of Plenty Times, 1 Sep 1972
Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. gca-20903

I came across these images recently and it brought back great memories of pony riding when I was about twelve years of age and a wannabe horsey girl. A lovely man, Mr Putt and his family had several miniature horses on their property in Bethlehem Road in the 1970s (and possibly even before my time) and for a small fee we could be led or let loose depending on the rider’s ability and experience. Both my mother and grandmother took us children (four girls) for a treat on more than one occasion.

Woman rides one of Mr A. M Putt's miniature horses at Bethlehem
120-format film negative, published in the Bay of Plenty Times, 1 Sep 1972
Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. gca-20900

In these images you can see the homestead in the background and the trees surrounding it. For those readers familiar with the Bethlehem Town Centre, the trees behind the house are still there — between Liquorland and Patrick’s Pies. They are well established natives and I am delighted they were retained by the developers. The whole site was for some years a kiwifruit orchard owned by the Thompson Brothers and also for quite a period just bare land awaiting the development.

Mayfield House

J.W. Oliver homestead, Moffats Road, Bethlehem, Tauranga, c. 1905-1909
The house during Oliver family occupation
Courtesy of Pae Koroki Tauranga Library. Ref. 02-569

Since 1995 Mayfield House has stood in the Tauranga Boys’ College grounds on the corner of Cameron Road and Fifteenth Avenue due to the generosity of Sir Paul Adams. The house, built in 1905 for a farmer J W Oliver on 144 acres adjacent to the main road in Bethlehem is now 115 years old. Gordon Cummings had the first farm of 820 acres that ran from Cambridge Road to the sea and sold it to Oliver’s father who subdivided the land into farms for his sons.

Mayfield homestead, Bethlehem, Tauranga. Front view
The house Hawkridge during Mayfield family occupation
Courtesy of Pae Koroki Tauranga Library. Ref. 03-290

The building was typical of houses of that period in New Zealand with weatherboard cladding and a corrugated iron roof. A gable fronted room on the left and a verandah across the remainder of the building that ended with a side gable. There were three sash windows onto the verandah and a finial on each gable. There were two brick chimneys on the rear pitch of the roof, probably one for a fireplace and the other in the kitchen. JW Oliver farmed a dairy herd and planted an orchard.

"The kauri timber from which the house was constructed was brought from Mercury Bay in the Coromandel down the coast by the scow Pearl and through the harbour to the Wairoa Bridge where it was loaded on to a horse-drawn dray and taken to the site. The price for timber and deliver was between ten and fifteen shillings per one hundred feet.   Puriri blocks were used for the foundations. The iron for the roof and the guttering came from Chappell’s Hardware on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Cameron Road."

Colonel and Mrs. Mayfield and family
Courtesy of Pae Koroki Tauranga Library & The Elms Foundation. Ref. 2008.0455

In 1909 Major Edwin Mayfield bought the property named it Hawkridge and added on a gable fronted extension on the right-hand end of the house. He and his partner Neil Chater bought the original Golden Queen peach cuttings from the Reeve family and set up a canning factory at the orchard.  Unfortunately, by 1926 rot and fire blight brought the orchard to an end and the peaches and pear trees were pulled out. They had been canned under the brand Tauranga Peaches, Hawkridge Orchards.

Hawkridge Orchards label for canned Golden Queen peaches, Bethlehem, c 1920s
Courtesy of Pae Koroki Tauranga Library. Ref. 10-085

By 1966 all of the land except for the house and two and a quarter acres had been sold and it was then  owned by Mr T Gower. Later Sir Paul Adams bought the property and removed the old house in order to make space to build a new home. Today Mayfield House is a sports pavilion overlooking the cricket pitch at Tauranga Boys’ College.

Mayfield House, Tauranga Boys College, Cameron Road, 4 January 2022
Photograph copyright and courtesy of Shirley Arabin

Sources

Mayfield House History in https://www.tbc.school.nz/mayfield-house-history. Accessed 16/12/2021

Traill, Mrs R.G., Memories of Bethlehem, in Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, No. 49, Dec 1973, p5

Recollections of Dennis George Marsh - Part 2

Second part of a series contributed by guest author Dennis Marsh
(continued from Part 1)

Dennis Marsh, 2 years old, c1941, Photograph by Rupert Connell
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

Some of my earliest recollections of our family was when we were living on an orchard on Moffat Road where Decor Greenworld is now located. Dad was away at the Second World War and stationed at Guadalcanal. Our neighbours across the road were Clarrie and Edith Kiddie and alongside the orchard towards the Kaimais were the Sheeley family.

Dennis Marsh at Bell’s Farm, Cambridge Road
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

Dad was manpowered out of the army to take up a sharemilking contract on Mrs. Kathrine McAlister Bell’s property on Cambridge Road right opposite the old family farm. We had a brand-new house to live in (it cost the Bells £600 to build) and Mum and Dad used to milk about 100 cows and send the cream in to the Tauranga Dairy Factory located on the corner of 12th Avenue and Devonport Road. Later they were founding members of the Town Milk Supply Association. The raw milk was sent for processing and redistribution to the consumers via the milkmen. During the later war years the Government subsidised farm labour with land girls and Mrs. Bell’s daughter Margaret worked for Dad. Our neighbours were Tom Ridder and family on the Judea side and Mrs Pruden on the Kaimai side. Mrs. Pruden had a daughter who lived with her but there seemed to be no Mr. Pruden.

George Marsh, Cambridge Road
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

Dad worked the farm with horses named Molly and Dell most of the time he was on the farm.  I remember when the first tractor arrived – a Farmall – and the fuss the neighbours made when they came to see it. At this time the old family farm had been taken over by Tom Fowler who had married Dad’s sister Mavis. Both the Fowlers and the Ridders had tractors but not as new as Dad’s.

Pop Marsh used to come out and help on the farm with things like haymaking and the young calves when he was needed and I remember one time when he was using the horse sweep when we were haymaking and he caught a wasp nest in the sweep. Boy, it wasn’t just the horses that were jumping around! Pop was a great stack maker. This was an art learnt over the years. How to stack loose hay and finish it off with a gable roof and how to make it rain proof by having all the hay lying in a line from top to bottom. We used to make covers out of old ‘super’(phosphate) sacks. We would split the sacks so that they were opened in to a single piece and we would hand sew with twine and sack needles all the many sacks until we had a cover big enough to cover the haystack. This went over the top of the haystack to hold the hay in place. Over the next months, until it was time to feed out, the cover would rot. By the time that had happened, the hay had settled in to place and the stacks seldom got wet. This is probably why the rats and mice were found when we opened the stacks in the winter.

Dad at Main Road Farm
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

I contracted Scarlet Fever and was hospitalised in isolation for a time. I don’t know how long, but it seemed a long time to a young child. Mum and Dad were not allowed to visit until the risk of spreading had passed. When they did visit, they used to buy me an ice cream from the dairy by the hospital. An old guy called Eddie Christmas used to bring ice creams but Mum and Dad frowned upon it– he may have been an unsavoury character but his ice creams were great!

Anything out past the hospital was considered to be in the country. Cambridge Road was metalled, not sealed. I remember going to visit Cyril Doidge and family who lived at Tauriko but on the other side of the Wairoa River. Driving up to the old mill wharf was like going for a major ride in the car. When we got there, Dad would whistle out to the Doidge family and one of them would row across the river in the boat and take us all over to visit. The Kaimai Rd was also just all metal.

(to be continued)

Recollections of Dennis George Marsh

Part 1 of a series contributed by guest author Dennis Marsh

“Bill Rolfe and George Marsh”
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

My Dad George Ascot Marsh was born in Tauranga, as was his father, as was I. He lived on the Cambridge Road farm - located where the water tanks now stand – and from an early age was required by his parents to help milk morning and night, along with other members of the family as they became old enough.

“George's School Photo, Old Otumoetai School, top of hill where current school is located”
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

He did his schooling at the Otumoetai Primary School that was situated not far from its present day location.

Image collection of Dennis Marsh

To get to school, they used a horse and in later years the family had a bike. One child would go to a pre-arranged point leave the bike and start to walk. Two of the other kids would ride the horse form home to where the bike had been left, and they would leave the horse and ride the bike to the next pre-arranged point passing the walking kids on their way. They other kids would start walking from home, get to where the horse was and ride it to where the bike had been left – the second stop. The kids on the horse at the second stop would then walk to school, the kids on the bike would bike to school and the kids on the horse rode the horse to school and tied him up in a paddock provided for the purpose. After school they did the whole thing in reverse.

“Cot Marsh (Pop), Tom Tanner, Ron Brown, Dad, Ted Tammel, First Farm”
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

Dad did all his schooling there, I do not know how old he was when he left. He started working as a drover with a couple of his mates Cyril Griffiths and Sam Sherman.

“Mum and Dad”
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

He met my Mum, Nola Morine, while she was working in a milk bar on the corner of McLean Street and The Strand  — owned by the Harrison family. It was a large shop for its time and was like a corner dairy which specialised in ice creams and milk shakes. Mum and Dad used to attend dances that were sometimes held in the Town Hall in Wharf Street between Durham and Willow Street. They also used to go to the weekly dances held in Hayman’s Hall opposite the Boys College on Cameron Road. Mum’s family had a dance band and they used to provide the music for the dances at Hayman’s Hall.

“Dennis and George Marsh with 1939 Ford V8 truck at first farm”
Image collection of Dennis Marsh

I can recall going to the dances on a Saturday night, Mum and Dad would put us to sleep on the back seat of the Ford V8 that they owned at that time.

(To be continued)

Brain Behind the Boats and the Bridges

Joseph Denham Brain
Loose print from Album (BWH2004-0958), Brain-Watkins House Collection

In 1844 Joseph Denham Brain was born into a family of shipwrights on the Isle of Wight. He sailed to New Zealand, married Kate, sister of Auckland shipwright William Bishop, and came to Tauranga in 1881, taking over the shipyard of Mr Charles Wood on the northern end of the Strand. He constructed not only his own home but that of his eldest daughter Ada and built for himself three coastal boats, the Ventnor, Vectus and Dream. He also owned two whaleboats, the Esther and Tarawera. The General Gordon was another boat built by this man.

Brain's boatyard, c1900
Tauranga City Library Collection. Ref. 99-751

A quick read of Papers Past could lead one to believe that he was actually more of a bridge and wharf builder. In the BOP Times he was recorded as the contractor for at least 6 bridges: the Waetou and Atuaroa No.1 bridges on the Te Puke road, the Tarawera Bridge on the Rotorua-Te Teko route, the Waitekohe Bridge near Katikati (1882), the Kopurerua Bridge in Judea (1886) and the Wairoa Bridge at Bethlehem (1892). He tendered unsuccessfully for a couple more bridges and even tried to win the contract to construct the first bathing enclosure off Tunks Point (First Ave) in 1885. He later built the Ruahihi Bridge, the Hairini Bridge (1897) and the Omanawa Bridge (1906). He certainly knew how to build the much needed bridges for this district.

Bridge in Kaimai area built by Joseph Brain, c1900
Tauranga City Library Collection. Ref. 02-064

It is also recorded that he was responsible for the concrete seawall on the Strand and the Horseshoe Wharf at Mount Maunganui in 1913, as part of the East Coast rail project. Other structures he was responsible for were Tauranga’s first fire station and bell tower in Durham Street in 1911, a 250 ft tramway on Motiti Island for loading cattle, and his last, the Memorial Gates opposite the present courthouse in 1921, only 3 years prior to his death at 80.

The years shortly after his arrival in Tauranga must have been tough as he applied to have his section, Lot 147, assessed at a lower valuation in 1881 and asked for the annual rent for his portion of the foreshore to be reduced from 3 pounds to 5 shillings. He certainly did his civic duty, serving on the school board (1891), the Borough Council (1893), the Mount Domain Board (1894) and was nominated for the mayoralty in 1895. Brain was integral part of this town’s growth, a successful and much respected man, passing away in 1924 leaving an estate of seven thousand pounds.   

Sources
Papers Past — BOP Times 1881-1924
Historical Review  May 2003
Pae Koroki

The Yerexes of Kelston

Most Tauranga residents will have heard of Kelston Way near Tauriko but I wonder how many know anything of the Kelston Estate? In the course of researching the origins of our own 100 year old house nearby I have learned quite a bit and would like share a ‘taste’ with fellow history buffs. The original homestead has gone but there is another home on the site under the large Norfolk pines.

Kelston, Cambridge Road, Tauranga
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries/Pae Koroki, Ref. 03-077

The land was granted to Lieutenant Colonel Harington as part of his allocation for military service in the 1860s. I am not sure what it’s acreage was at the time but by 1906 when the Yerex family of Wellington took over it comprised of 800 acres and occupied the strip of land between Cambridge Rd and the Wairoa River. 200 acres fronted onto Moffat Road which was then just a farm track. In 1886 it was sold to W.N. Ley and in 1904 F.W. Wood purchased it for 1,150 pounds.

George Yerex had 4 sons and 3 daughters and though the homestead was roomy he extended the dining room and also the back porch for summer dining. A bathroom and hot water system were also added. There was a panoramic view of the river from the coach house and many other outbuildings included stables for 6 horses. Hay and oats were grown and there was a 16-acre apple orchard.

Kelston stables, Cambridge Road, Tauranga
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library/Pae Koroki, Ref. 03-076

The roads were typical of the day, boggy and dusty by turns, but they had a launch, and later a barge. The Wairoa River became their highway and their marine craft were made good use of by others, for example the transportation of machinery up river for the Omanawa power station.

Each of the four sons had their own area of skill and responsibility. Lincoln the eldest was the boatman and engineer, cutting and transporting hundreds of bales of chaff. Frank was the stockman caring for horses, beef and dairy cattle, and sheep. Lowell was the ploughman until he went to America with Lincoln to complete his education and was later a noted WWI pilot. Max, the youngest, fed the 40 or so calves and about 50 pigs. He devised a system of wooden rails running from the dairy shed to the pens along which he propelled the skim milk in an old barrel mounted on a chassis and four wheels.

To finish, a quote from Max Yerex himself, who wrote an article for one of our much earlier journals:

 

Sources
Pae Koroki, Tauranga Archives online
My Life at Kelston by Max Yerex, Tauranga Historical Society Journal, No. 57, Sept 1976
Maritime Tauranga 1826-1970, by Max Avery, self published, 2013
Map New Zealand - 100 magnificent maps from the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Random House NZ, 2006

Bell Common Today

I took some pictures of the Bell Common for a previous post but decided maybe it needed its own dedicated article.

As one walks up the driveway (which formerly led to the homestead) there are many large old camellia and a rhododendron on the slope. Near the site of the original gate are a myrtle, a very substantial bay tree and the largest holly I have ever come across.

On the frontage to Cambridge Road there are a kauri and totara planted to commemorate the coronation of the present Queen’s parents, George VI and Elizabeth, on 12th May 1937. There is also a medium-sized walnut and to the west a large sweet chestnut and handsome Atlas cedar.

Moreton bay fig, planted in the 1930s

However the most handsome and spreading tree in this small arboretum is beyond the popular little playground. It is a Moreton Bay fig which fully occupies its own section of the Common and measures approximately 120 metres in circumference.

Bay of Plenty Times, 4 May 1933

Margaret Mackersey (née Bell) told me of her late father William Poole Bell arriving home in the 1930s intensely angry having witnessed the demise of the second of two large Moreton Bay figs in town. At the first opportunity he planted two more on the farm to compensate for their loss.

Moreton Bay fig, root system

Not many years passed and a tank trap was to be constructed across the farm during WW2 to stop the Japanese should they invade. The Bell family realised the matching tree down next to Cambridge Road (about opposite the present day shops) was in the way. William contacted the County Engineer who quietly came at night and moved the survey pegs to save it from destruction. Unfortunately 30 years later it really did have to be sacrificed to make way for the drainage systems when Townhead Farm was finally subdivided.

Moreton Bay fig - fruit developing
All images copyright Julie Green

SO 424 of 1865

Left of centre, near the bottom of this beautiful, poignant old map, in letters too small to be seen in the image, is the word, MILL. The map was made in 1865 and endorsed by an eminent surveyor, Theophilus Heal: “I certify that all the inland lines coloured red on this map have been properly cut, all corners marked with circles properly pegged and lockspitted, and all the map accurately represents all the work done.”

A half-size colour copy of the original document is in the Tauranga Library. The map itself is in the public domain, obtainable from Land Information New Zealand if you care to penetrate its arcane and frustrating file systems (I used a professional search agency). SO 424 is the first map of Te Puna, Peterehema (modern Bethlehem) and Otumoetai to be made after the raupatu that followed the battles of Gate Pa and Te Ranga. It is the landscape we know, drawn after a war. Elsewhere, in similarly tiny letters, are place names we also know, and still use: Epeha, Waikaraka, Oikimoke.  There are more, and they are all Maori. Perhaps influenced by Crown Commissioner H T Clarke, surveyors did not invent names for an already well-populated geography.

Names of landowning families appear. Roha Borel survived the sack of Rangiaowhia and married Emile, who twice [1]  persuaded the Crown to make a grant of land to her. The “Nicholls children” are perhaps the Nicholas family whose marae is Tawhitinui. The one pākeha name, R C Fraser, requires further research into some tantalising leads.

Beside those already noted, ‘MILL’ is the only other pākeha word. How did such modern technology - a water-wheel, alongside a substantial building housing the shafts, chutes and stones that ground wheat into flour – come to be alongside a riverbank in the valley of the Wairoa? Who built it, and when? How long was it used?

The Wairoa River near Tauranga, circa 1918
Photograph by Frederick George Radcliffe
Courtesy of the F G Radcliffe Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library (G-6933-1/2)

This much later image of the riverbank offers no clues. A horse drinks from the river alongside a reed-thatched hut. Something that looks like a cooking pot sits alongside something that looks like a cookstand. There is nothing to indicate what might be cooked.

Nevertheless, in the mid-1860s, there was a flour mill at Pukekonui. And mills were very much the thing for entrepreneurs: Te Ara tells us [2] that “between 1846 and 1860, 37 flour mills were built for Maori owners in the Auckland province alone.” Ours stood almost exactly where the boat ramp is now, just upstream from the road bridge, south-west across the river from Potariwhi on the Bethlehem bank. (Colonists mangled the name into “Point Relief”.)  Maori and pākeha alike moored their river scows there. 

Ngati Kahu owned the mill. The New Zealander newspaper of 31 May 1864 described it, admittedly as a site recently abandoned to the oncoming Colonial Defence Corps, as “an extensive corn mill worked by water… the whole neighbourhood is covered with plantations of potatoes, corn [ie, wheat], pumpkins and melons… [the natives’] retreat must have been a hurried one, to have sacrificed so much food.”

The loss of such abundantly fertile land after 1865 must have been especially grievous. But the mill survived in Maori ownership, possibly because the status of the river and its bed were, until the passage of the Coal Mines Act 1903, debatable; at a less abstract level, post-confiscation native reserves were mainly in the vicinity of the river mouth. [3] Theophilus Heal’s 1865 field book notes the hapu of Matehaere residing at the Mill, Wairoa. [4] It was too valuable an investment to be abandoned for long.

And its value was well-understood. In 1872 Commisioner Clarke was reported in the Waikato Times as hearing an “important native case [that] has lasted two days. It was concerning the ownership of the mill at Wairoa. The litigants are leading chiefs of the district. The decision of the Court may lead to bloodshed.”

Bloodshed was fortunately avoided, and by 1888 [5] our old friend Mr Lundon was involved in some kind of partnership deal between one Mr Blundell and the native owners:

The parochial hopes of the editor of the Bay of Plenty Times were not to be borne out. David Borell blamed the sparrows. [6]  Perhaps an imported shipment of Australian seed, or just a prevalence of strong north-westerly winds [7], meant that local wheat crops succumbed to rust. Or maybe it was simple economics: the wide dry plains of Canterbury were much better suited to producing flour for even North Island bakers. Mr Blundell turned his attention to a new project, the flour mill at Waimapu, and the Wairoa mill’s grindstones were taken there in 1893. [8]

And the mill building? During the early 1880s it may have been, briefly, repurposed.  Longtime Wairoa Road farmer Doug Harrison provides this reminiscence: “… there was a Flour Mill built near the end of the Wairoa River Bridge.  This had a very checkered career, standing idle for most of its life, eventually being used as a school for a few years. When the Bethlehem school opened about 1900 the pupils from the Mill transferred to the Bethlehem school.”

This sits tantalisingly alongside Antoine Coffin’s remark that “some schools were initially set up on temporary sites, for example the Paeroa Native School [the original name for Bethlehem School] started out in an old mill and moved several years later once attendances had been confirmed.” [9] Paeroa Native School officially opened in 1884, but before that had been operating “as a half-time school along with that at Huria.” [10] It is just possible that, before Mr Blundell got the grindstones moving again, the mill had been a makeshift classroom.

References

[1] The first allocation, around today’s Snodgrass Road/Wallace Road area, met with resistance from settler neighbours and was replaced with a grant on the other side of the Waikaraka estuary, where Borells still live.
[2] https://teara.govt.nz/en/agricultural-processing-industries/page-5
[3] https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_93499720/Wai%20215%2C%20A033.pdf , p.28
[4] https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_93406645/Wai%20215%2C%20A076.pdf, Appendix 6
[5] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18880406.2.6
[6] https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_93406645/Wai%20215%2C%20A076.pdf, p.35
[7] For a mid-twentieth century account of rust infections in wheat, see  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00288233.1966.10431548
[8] https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_93406645/Wai%20215%2C%20A076.pdf, citing Bellamy, A.C. 1982. Tauranga 1882-1982. Flour Mills, ed A.C. Bellamy. Tauranga County Council. pp204-207
[9] https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_93406645/Wai%20215%2C%20A076.pdf, citing Nightingale, Tony.March 1996.History of the Economic and Social Conditions Affecting Tauranga Maori.Crown Forestry Rental Trust. p81
[10] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/parliamentary/AJHR1885-I.2.2.3.6