McCARTHY | Elegance and excesses: War, Gold and Borrowings: New Zealand architecture in the 1860s AHA: Architectural History Aotearoa (2010) vol 7:1-12 Elegance and excesses: War, Gold and Borrowings: New Zealand Architecture in the 1860s Christine McCarthy The 1860s were an eventful time for construction. 3 important drivers: architecture in New Zealand. On the eve of the decade, in 1859, William Mason became The population of New Zealand in 1858 was By 1861 the government had purchased two-thirds of 115,461. By 1874 it was 344,985. The change New Zealand, mainly in the South Island, where Grey the first person to be a registered architect in in population was not only one of increase. acquired huge tracts such as by the Kemp purchase in New Zealand.1 The scene was thus set for the 1848 ... By contrast the government had alienated less This was the decade when the ratio of English idea of architecture as a profession to than a quarter of the North Island by 1861, thwarting more substantially impact on our land. From Māori:Pākehā population shifted such that government and settler aspirations. Frustrated, in 1860 4 Governor Thomas Gore Browne sent in imperial troops the decade's beginning were the start of civil Pākehā settlers outnumbered Māori and no doubt encouraged an increasing sense of to enforce the claim to a disputed purchase of land at wars and the discovery of gold, with New Waitara in Taranaki, long coverted by settlers. The Pākehā entitlement. This shift in population, Zealand's first major gold rush in Otago.2 It claim contravened the rights of a majority of owners ... was war and gold which crudely added to the state of New Zealand's existing and in doing so fired the opening round in the New 7 distinguished the decade's histories of the Pākehā architecture. One of the most Zealand wars of the 1860s. North Island and South Islands. As Salmond important shifts in the decade though, must The resulting loss of land for Māori caused Te notes: have been the shift of the colony's capital from 5 Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi with Auckland to Wellington in 1865. It is no accident that the events which marked the others to move to Parihaka in c1866. As beginning of this period in New Zealand were the gold The civil wars began in Taranaki,6 moved to Brown describes it: rushes of the 1860s and the land wars. As Maoris [sic] the Waikato, and by mid-decade had spread became less willingly to sell their land, European settlers Here they established a self-sufficient religious took large areas by occupation or by force, and in the to the East Coast. The concentration of war in community, which was purposefully isolated from towns traditional Maori houses were banned by law. the North Island was not a co-incidence. Pākehā influence. The law of the Hebrews ... was Many of the settlers who arrived in the 1860s came in Smith describes settlement aspirations as evident in the community's architecture. Parihaka was search of gold, and as the European population confiscated land, and its settlement was seen as an act of expanded (from 26,000 in 1850 to 80,000 in 1860, and defiance by the government. However, Te Whiti and 100,000 a year later), more houses were needed on more Tohu believed that they had ancestral, political and 3 Salmond Old New Zealand Houses p 89. See also Brown land, and more timber was needed for their Christian claims to this land. The consequential cross- Māori Architecture p 55. cultural conflict that developed was expressed through 4 Smith A Concise History of New Zealand p 70. Parihaka's architectural construction, destruction and 1 Knight & Wales Buildings of Dunedin p 25. 5 Keith & McRobie Historical Dictionary of New Zealand p 2 Keith & McRobie Historical Dictionary of New Zealand p 5. 4. 6 McLean 100 Historic Places in New Zealand p 69. 7 Smith A Concise History of New Zealand p 68. 1 McCARTHY | Elegance and excesses: War, Gold and Borrowings: New Zealand architecture in the 1860s AHA: Architectural History Aotearoa (2010) vol 7:1-12 revival.8 which was confiscated, in 1867 Te-Hau-ki- which were "significantly greater than earlier Tūranga (1840s) was taken and now resides in Māori buildings and often equalled the Gore Browne's "bungling" of this first the National Museum.14 proportions of Christian churches. Not only Taranaki war resulted in the British were the Ringatū meeting houses large government bringing George Grey from Cape The war moved to Tauranga and the wider enough to walk around inside, they were also 9 Town to replace him. Grey was more East Coast, its most famous battle occurring at able to accommodate Te Kooti's religious aggressive and used more explicitly Gate Pā (Pukehinahina) in 1864, before services, which were based on those architectural means to support his attack, moving back to Taranaki. This period of performed by the Anglican Church."17 Roger building the Great South Road to Hamilton to fighting involved the followers of Pai Mārire Neich described the radical changes in convey military troops.10 Architecture was or Hauhau. As in other parts of the country meeting house size as follows: not simply used asymmetrically in New the fighting significantly changed the socio- Zealand's civil warfare. Māori revived and political landscape many Māori lived in. The evidence collected here from Land Court records and from the histories of known houses demonstrates developed the modern pā, first designed and Architectural innovation operated in parallel used in the 1840s by Te Ruki Kawiti at that major changes in house size, function and amount to support change, most explicitly apparent in of ornamentation began around Rotoiti and Maketu Ōhaeawai and Ruapekapeka.11 The battle was Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki's development during the 1860s. Possibly the years of wars, first with fought on the land and over the land, in the of the wharenui, which Brown locates as Ngapuhi, Waikato and Tauranga, and then the New legislative chamber, as much as in the battle Zealand Wars, inhibited the full development of the continuing "a practice of building begun by meeting house until this later date. All of the whare landscape. The New Zealand Settlements Act 15 other East Coast tohunga whakairo." Te whakairo-type meeting houses constructed by Ngati 1863, for example, was passed. It allowed the Kooti, the founder of Ringatū, was exiled to Tarawhai date from after the later 1860s, with a major government to confiscate 1.2 million acres the Chatham Islands in 1865, but he escaped, increase in the 1870s. This was the period when the from Kīngitanga for "public purposes," which returning to mainland New Zealand in 1868, wars were coming to a close, a period of intense political and religious activity and realignment. The new large effected the more colonial settlement in the the year George Grey had been dismissed as North Island.12 In 1865 the Native Land Court meeting houses were built to accommodate meetings Governor and retired to his Kawau Island discussing land and land sales, political meetings, tribal was established, renamed at the time the mansion, which had been enlarged by designs committees of all sorts, religious meetings, and to 13 "land-taking court." It was not only land by Frederick Thatcher.16 Over 40 Ringatū provide sleeping accommodation for the guests who travelled to these meetings. The carved and decorated meeting houses were built between 1869-1908, 8 Brown Māori Architecture p 71. house simply known as Whare Manuhiri, built at Te 9 Smith A Concise History of New Zealand p 71. Taheke in the 1860s by Ngati Hinerangi as an 10 Smith A Concise History of New Zealand p 71. 14 Brown Māori Architecture p 49. accommodation house for visitors, including travelling 11 "Ohaeawai - Northern War" n.p. 15 Brown Māori Architecture p 58. 12 Smith A Concise History of New Zealand p 72. 16 Keith & McRobie Historical Dictionary of New Zealand p 13 Smith A Concise History of New Zealand p 73. 6; England "The Story of Mansion House" p 70. 17 Brown Māori Architecture pp 59-60. 2 McCARTHY | Elegance and excesses: War, Gold and Borrowings: New Zealand architecture in the 1860s AHA: Architectural History Aotearoa (2010) vol 7:1-12 Europeans, was probably an important development in in the mid-1860s and they established several belong the Supreme Court ... by Edward Rumsey ... the the evolution of the modern meeting house in the settlements, one of the best known being in coolly classical Bank of New Zealand ... and James Rotorua area. Thus the new meeting house incorporated Wrigley's Mental Hospital at Avondale ... There were 25 the functions of the chief's house, the guest house and Arrowtown. Before the end of the decade oil also many hotels, commercial buildings, and private the church under one roof. 18 would be discovered in Taranaki (in 1866), houses of considerable quality and substance.28 and gold in the Coromandel peninsular, a Equally significant was the innovation of year later.26 Likewise, refering to the south of New polychromatic carving and figurative painting Zealand, Knight and Wales note that: "The characteristic of these houses.19 These events resulted in population prosperity of the 1860s led to the appreciation movements across the country and influenced of a quality of elegance that the pioneers of Meanwhile in the South Island Gabriel Read's the architecture built at this time. They also the previous decade had not been aware of."29 discovery of gold at Waitehuna in 1861 drew commence and money to specific Smaller towns also grew in their architectural initiated the Otago rush.20 1864 was the colonial centres.