Page 1

THE ARCHAEOLOGY AND EUROPEAN HISTORY OF MORRISON’s, POPHAM’s AND MONEYMORE BLOCKS

Dr Jill Hamel, 42 Ann Street, . July 1985

Contents Introduction Topography, vegetation and climate Maori occupation European occupation: Popham’s and Morrison's Blocks The Ferry and the Port of Taieri The town of Beauly, the school and store The Sinclairs The other farms on Popham’s Block Morrison's Block The Moneymore Block Conclusions Recommendations References Site record form

Introduction Morrison's and Popham's Blocks lie on the south side of the , an important water route into the from the coast for both the Maoris and early European settlers CFig.1). Popham's Block lies beside the at the point where it turns away from the Taieri Plain and runs through the coastal hills. The Moneymore Block (Fig.2) .lies about 30 kilometres to the south on a separate block of hills to the south of the Tokomairiro River, but like the other two blocks rises from the level of the plains up on to the slopes of the coastal hills. The three blocks are unified by their topography they were close to major early European roads, but the history of Popham’s and Morrison's Blocks will be quite distinct from that of Moneymore because of the proximity of the Taieri River to the first two.

All three blocks have been cultivated on the open spurs and faces and most of the gullies and dark faces carry gorse and scrub. Uncultivated grassland was the only area worth searching in detail for sites and the most likely spurs were searched for ovens. The river edges of Popham’s and Morrison’s Blocks were searched for midden sites where grass growth was not too dense. After ascertaining the history of European farm titles, old homestead sites were looked for and other traces of early European occupation.

Topography, vegetation and climate All three blocks lie on dissected hillsides rising from sea level to 280 and 216m respectively for the Morrison's and Popham's blocks and from 100 to 300m for the Moneymore Block. The annual rainfall of 700 - 850mm would have been marginal for the survival of podocarp/broadleaf forest in the face of repeated fires after the arrival of Polynesian man. The north and west facing spurs in particular are dry, and during the period of Maori occupation it is unlikely that they ever carried Page 2

closed canopy forest. The most probable pattern of vegetation at this stage is likely to have been a mosaic of grassland/shrubland on the spurs and sunny faces with patches of forest in the gullies steadily decreasing in size and number over the centuries. At the time of European contact, there were only three or four patches of podocarp forest on the hillslopes running from Saddle Hill to Lake (Tuckett 1844), but there does seem to have been plenty of manuka shrubland. There is some evidence for kahikatea forest on the swampy ground of the plain. As well as carrying a very mixed range of vegetation types all three blocks are adjacent either to a river or to swampy lowlands.

The hill soils of the district were recognised as "sour" by the first European settlers. The soil types are yellow-grey earths and intergrades to yellow-brown earths. Most of the slopes are Class VI land, and would never have been arable, even with horse-drawn implements.

Maori Occupation: Taieri Gorge The proximity of a range of vegetation types along the edge of the useful water way of the Taieri River and close to the lakes and wetlands of the Taieri Plain suggests that the eastern end of the Taieri Gorge could have been a prime occupation site for Maori people. The Maoris of Southland and Otago followed a fairly regular annual round of collecting wild foods and other resources at appropriate seasons. Shortland mentions that the eels of were considered to be particularly delicate in flavour (Shortland 1844), and there would have been a season of the year when eels were caught in large numbers and dried for later consumption.

There was a settlement at Mataipapa on the north side of the Taieri Ferry Bridge in the 1840s (Fig.3) but this may not have been a major settlement throughout the prehistoric period. By 1840 Maori settlement patterns had been affected by the distribution of whaling stations and the availability of the Irish potato as a crop plant. The distribution of settlements after about 30 years of contact with sealers and whalers could be quite different from the pre-European pattern.

The nearest known moa-hunter site is north of the Taieri River mouth. Areas of charcoal and food refuse occur around the bridge and up the southern side of the river for about a kilometre. The gorge itself and the Taieri Plain have never been surveyed for archaeological sites. Occasional finds have been made, including moa- hunter adzes from Berwick and an unusual paddle from the bed of Lake Waihola. On the Forest Service land, a small argillite adze was found behind the Horne's old cottage (Fig.3) 200 m south east of the southern end of the Taieri Ferry Bridge but there was no trace of a site. The adze could have been thrown out by a European occupant of the house who had found it elsewhere.

The type of site likely to occur all along this river edge is a spread of charcoal and food refuse with bone and stone artefacts interspersed throughout. Such a site is commonly two to six metres across and shows as a lense of blackened soil 10-30 cm thick in eroding banks. A local informant, Max Popham, has been told that there were two Page 3

Maori sites on either side of the Forest Service boundary where it rises up the hill from the Titri Road (Fig.3). They lay on the south-west facing slopes of two shallow gullies about 10 m above the level of the lake (NZMS 280, H45, GR883643 and GR883642). No trace of the sites is visible on the surface but there could well be subsurface material protected by the turf and unbroken soil cover. Whole cockle shells were excavated by Max Popham about 10 years ago when he was digging a water hole in the next gully 300m to the south-west where the first Sinclair house was built (Fig.3). At this distance from the sea they were almost certainly part of a Maori refuse dump, and it is likely that the site on Forest Service land will also contain shells. Shell will be the most obvious indicators of the site.

It is very likely that the formation of the old highway and the Taieri Ferry Bridge destroyed several sites along the river edge. Slumping of the hillside behind may also have covered or broken up sites. A dense covering of grass, reeds, sedge and willows prevents any remaining sites from being observed.

The other likely site type on all three blocks is the large oven for cooking the stem and base of cabbage trees. The open spurs which had not been cultivated were searched for these, but none were found. Some may appear if vegetation is burnt off prior to planting.

There was no trace of Maori occupation on the Moneymore Block and the nearest known sites are shell middens at the mouth of the Tokomairiro.

Contact period. Shortland in December 1843 was the first European to describe the Taieri kaik, Mataipapa. He had walked down the coast to Taieri Mouth where he found some deserted huts on the north bank of the river. One of the Maoris with him had worked with the whalers on Taieri Island when the Wellers had operated a whaling station for a few years there from 1839. He knew that if the local people were not at the mouth of the river they would be at the kaik a few miles upstream and went off on a koradi raft to find them. He came back with two boats, manned by natives who were very pleased to see Shortland. They had seen no Europeans since the whaling station had closed and had nearly run out of tobacco!

Shortland describes the kaik as being a mile from the western entrance of the Taieri Gorge and consisting of a few huts by the waterside, placed there for the convenience of eel-fishing in the nearby lakes. In December the Maoris were living on eels, fern root and greens described by Shortland as “wild turnip tops”. Their old potatoes were finished and the new ones not yet ready. They were also very adept at taking birds. When Shortland was there, Te Raki, the local chief, was in residence with three other men, six women and nine children. Te Raki helped Shortland return to Otakou by taking him by canoe up the Taieri River and Owhiro Stream almost to the present township (Shortland 1844).

Tuckett in his diary and in letters to the Wakefields about the purchase of the Otago Block describes the Maori settlements south of Otakou as consisting of a few Maoris at and Te Raki and Kuri Page 4

at the “Taiari” (Davis 1973). On the 1st May in 1844 while he was walking south along the eastern edge of the Taieri Plain, he was forced by the river to walk out to the sea coast and in passing the Taieri kaik described it as a settlement of two or three decent huts made of totara bark and as many raised stages for potato stores. There were no inhabitants and no canoes (Tuckett 1844), since the people were probably away at Foveaux Strait taking muttonbirds. He describes Te Raki's clearing for growing potatoes as being nearer to Taieri Mouth.

Using the Contact period information, we can deduce that the growing of Irish potatoes on terraces and gentle slopes near the river would have replaced the gathering of cabbage tree and fern roots. The hill slopes of areas such as the Popham and Morrison blocks would, therefore, have lost importance as a food source. Totara bark for house building and pigeons from the forest patches in the gullies are the only resources which might still have been sought for on these hill slopes after about 1800.

By 1849 when the Reverend Thomas Burns made a formal visitation to Te Raki's village there was a great mixture of people living there - about 60 adults and children. Te Raki was still the chief and had his wife, three children and some relatives with him, but there were also the whalers from the abandoned whaling stations who had Maori wives and/or half caste children in their care (Burns 1849). The names of James Wybrow, William Russell and William and Edwin Palmer suggest that these were the pakehas who gave their names to several of the important Maori families of Otago and Southland. Presumably these men had a right to live in this village through their wives who were Ngaitahu and Ngatimamoe people.

As an indication of the diffuse territoriality of these people it is worth noting that Burns describes four of the Maori wives as: Titi of the Taieri, an unnamed Maori woman from Kaikoura, Pi from Waitaki and Pueru married to James McKenzie at Ruapuki. Other evidence (Andersen 1980) indicates that Maoris of the southern half of the did not live in small territorial units and that this was not an effect of contact with Europeans. Instead of a particular hapu (family group) living in a set of contiguous hamlets as they tended to in the North Island, each hapu sent members to harvest food and other resources throughout Canterbury, Otago and Southland at the appropriate times of the year. Thus a group of people living for a month or two each year on the hillslopes beside the Taieri River would include members of many hapu, each maintaining their rights to take the high-quality eels of the lake and river.

The Mataipapa Kaik across the river from the Popham's Block can be considered as not only the last Maori settlement on the Taieri Plain but also the first European settlement. Of the 60 people who Thomas Burns describes as being there in 1849, there were at least 18 non-Maori adults. They included some of the first settlers, such as Mr. Forbes who was still building his first house and ex-whalers, such as the Palmer brothers from Sydney, William Perkins and George Williams from New York and Halifax, William Low from Antigua and James McKenzie, a Negro from Jamaica. Most of the whalers had been in New Zealand for more than 10 years and most of them became part of the permanent Page 5

population. We find James McKenzie asking Messrs. Harrold and Craigie at the Taieri Ferry accommodation house to witness his third and then his fourth marriage (Shaw and Farrant 1949:79), and Edwin Palmer was involved in financing the sale of the Taieri Ferry store in 1871 (Dunedin Land Registry Office Deeds 55/100). Though culturally exotic among the Orkney and Scots farming community, the whalers do not seem to have influenced the historical landscape, presumably because they rarely held land. They and the Maoris provided a casual ferry service across the river and helped to build the first houses for the European settlers.

European occupation: Popham’s and Morrison’s Blocks

The history of European farming on these blocks began relatively early. Archibald Anderson was grazing sheep at Saddle Hill and further south by 1847. There was a period of slow growth during much of the 1850s, as farms were gradually taken up on the upper Taieri and south towards the lakes. Transport south from Dunedin was by the early formation of the Main South Road along the line of the original Maori track over the skirts of Saddle Hill and down to the Owhiro Stream. Most travellers then took a boat down to the Taieri and Lake Waihola. However even in 1844, Tuckett had recommended that a ferry be established "either at the head or elsewhere on the Tiarea River (and) a road from the head of Otago Harbour to the last mentioned Ferry station" (Davis 1973).

The Ferry and the Port of Taieri In 1848, as part of the Free Church of Scotland settlement, James Harrold and Richard Craigie, two half-brothers from the Orkneys, bought a section from Mr Commissioner Mantell on the south bank of the Taieri River Section 9 of the Township of Beauly, Fig.4). Harrold had served an apprenticeship as seaman and trader with the Hudson Bay Fur Trading Company (Shaw and Farrant 1949), and started the European ferry service (which must not have pleased the Maoris at Mataipapa kaik). Craigie, with the help of the ex-whaler William Palmer (who was living at the kaik with his four half-caste children by Titi) built a cargo boat of 16 tons called the Brothers. It carried cargoes of such things as wheat and potatoes to Dunedin and brought back goods for the settlers. It was wrecked in September 1855 while crossing the bar at the mouth of the Taieri (Ingram and Wheatley 1936).

Harrold and Craigie ran the ferry service until 1856, but the service was of such importance that the Provincial Government bought them out. They were refunded £30 for four hectares (10 acres) of Section 9 and £600 for the buildings and ferry. On the land where now only the schoolhouse is tucked into one corner, the deed cites a large dwelling house and storeroom, a smaller dwelling house, stable stockyards and other buildings. The ferry consisted of two boats, a punt and working gear, sails, oars, hawser and other appurtenances (Dunedin Land Registry Office, Deed Book 1). James Harrold tendered for and obtained the position of official ferryman and tavern-keeper, "with the stipulation that, though willing to keep spirits for respectable travellers, he was determined not to turn the ferry into a common resort for drinking” (Shaw and Farrant 1949). Richard Craigie bought Page 6

Craigielea, the property between the Morrison and Popham Blocks.

Until the main south road was gravelled and the Taieri Ferry Bridge constructed the easiest means of travel between the Lower Taieri Plain and Dunedin was by sea. The Port of Taieri was established by a Governer’s Order in July 1862, with legal landing places for the lading and unlading of goods at Waihola Township and the Taieri Ferry Reserve, Mr A W Logie to be Sub-collector of Customs. Between 1854 and 1863 18 small ships are recorded as trading between Dunedin and the Taieri, starting with the Brothers and including Agnes 1860-64 and the Spec 1856-62 (Davis 1973:213). There was a brisk traffic between Dunedin and the Taieri from 1861 as the gold rushes began and the roads suffered. George Marshall tendered to remove the snags from the river from Scroggs Creek to the ferry. The first Taieri Ferry Bridge was built in the mid- 1860s, the Dunedin/Balclutha Road greatly improved and by 1865 the Taieri Port was closed. The ferry boats remained in use until the Taieri section of the Main Trunk railway was completed in 1857, and were used to carry materials for it.

No trace of the port facilities are visible now, because the river has been building up the bank at this point in front of the old schoolhouse. From old photographs (Stuart 1981), it is evident that the road originally ran close against the hill on the line of the farm road which runs to the school house. In the 1860s it ran along the frontage of the ferryman's 10 acre block (Section 9) and the storeman's 7 acre block (Pt Section 16) which had been placed to include the only two dry terraces on the south side of the river (Fig.4). A photograph of 1870 indicates that there may have been two small jetties, one in front of each section. The Ferry Reserve may have been the whole township of Beauly, since it would have included Section 9 with the buildings and Section 11 is also marked as Ferry Reserve on an old title to Section 17. This river edge is now a low-lying piece of ground between the modern road and the old road line, administered by Silverpeak County (M.Popham: pers. comm.), but fenced in with the farmland behind. It is likely that there are remains of piles under the turf. There are still some piles on the north side of the river opposite to the old port and may be on the site of the other ferry terminal.

The Township of Beauly, the school and the store There were a surprising number of buildings along the southern edge of the river from the toll house at the end of the old bridge to the big store at the southern end of the last dry terrace. Searches of the titles and old photographs show that of the eight small sections (mostly quarter acres) along the road line, at least sections 1,2,6 and 7 had small houses on them during most of the 19th century. The three sections between, Sections 3,4,5, have only the Crown Grant holders on their titles - John McIndoe, Robert Paterson Sinclair and John Wallace. The latter was a tollkeeper at the bridge. The site of the toll house is now parking space at the end of the bridge, and the small houses have been replaced by two more modern holiday cribs. A wrought iron gate on the road edge of Section 2 is the only trace of the old houses on sections 1-7.

On Section 9, the ferryman's section, there is now only the old schoolhouse residence with a modern extension. Since the ferryman had Page 7

the accommodation house it was once on this section and was used as a schoolhouse in the early 1870s (Stuart 1981). In 1879 when the schoolhouse proper was built, the old accommodation house was split in two and transported south to become part of two farmhouses (see Sinclair homestead below). It was a two-storied structure in part and must have presented quite a problem to shift. (Somebody could usefully write a paper on the transportation of wooden buildings before the days of the big flat-bed truck, because it was a very common occurrence.) The Taieri Ferry School at one stage had 68 pupils, but its rolls declined in the 1900s and it was closed in 1924. The land then passed through the hands of various private owners. The schoolhouse, which seems to have stood forward of the residence and right on the edge of the road (Stuart 1981), was shifted elsewhere in 1924. There could be an interesting rubbish dump covered by slipped earth south of the residence.

Somebody with an eye for business set up a store at the Taieri Ferry at an early stage. It is obvious from the Crown Grant for Part Section 16, Block 1, Clarendon SD, i.e. the storekeeper's section, that the store was already there in 1872. On the road frontage in the position of the store (Fig.5) there is marked out a narrow rectangular section, 20 metres by 40 metres, designated at Section 10 of the Town of Beauly! The store is said to have been set up by the ferryman, James Harrold who was succeeded by W Dyer in the 1860s. When freeholds were being granted the neighbouring farmers, the Sinclairs, nipped in and bought the whole of section 19, split off the seven acre block with its tiny store section on the terrace and sold it to John McIndoe, storekeeper of Taieri Ferry. He seems to have been in some financial strife, since one deed notes James Hutton and James Hogg, merchants of Dunedin, as his partners, suggesting that he had had to give a share of the business to his creditors. After that the store seems to have settled down to steady trading, passing in the next 45 years through the hands of only Joseph Harrison and James Knarston. The store did not close until 1921 when the land was sold in quick succession to three different owners, finally joining the farmland next door. The site has been substantially damaged by bulldozing and tree removal but there are likely be interesting subsurface traces of the buildings and rubbish dumps.

The Sinclairs The farmland on Popham’s block has supported at least three families. The major farm was taken up by the Sinclairs. James and Anne Sinclair came with 10 of their 12 children from the Orkneys in 1857 where they had spent most of their farming life. James was 59 and Anne 49, old people in those days. They came from impoverished but well- connected families of Caithness as part of the Free Church settlement in Otago. The economic position of the family can be judged from the letter which James wrote to his brother-in-law in 1859 (Appendix 1) and from the fact that they brought with them table ware, silver, linen, a sea chest each of clothes and books, grains, seeds, food, a horse and two rose bushes from Castle Mey, Anne Sinclair's old home.

It is difficult to understand how James could have bought land by 1859 as he claims in his letter, considering that the crown grants for the Popham block were not registered until 1868, when most of the western part of the block was taken up in the names of William Tom and Page 8

Robert Paterson Sinclair’s two younger sons. Walter, the eldest living son, took up grants around the present homestead and towards the lake in his own name, and gradually acquired during the 1870s all the sections held by other members of family. He was the farmer of the family and would have been 23 when he arrived in Otago.

James built a two roomed house of pit-sawn timber in the gully north of the present Popham homestead, and later a larger standard cottage with more rooms at the old farmstead behind Pophams. In the usual thrifty fashion of the 19th century the original butt-and-ben was shifted to become the two front rooms of the larger cottage. The block owned by the Sinclairs was farmed from this homestead with its numerous farm buildings. The farmstead included both an oat house and a chaff house as well as separate stables. It is unlikely though that any of the Forest Service block was used for grain growing. Walter ran the farm until his death in 1904 and then presumably his sons under a life interest for their mother until she died in 1924. In 1924 it passed to the Popham family who have farmed it ever since. Walter Sinclair's farm was originally about 700 acres, which was increased to 1000 acres by the time the Pophams bought it.

The other farms on Popham's Block The other farms on Popham’s Block were very much smaller than the Sinclair's. Incredibly the McBeans lived in The Valley of Eschol (Stuart 1981) where Section 42 lies (Figs.3 and 4), with their homestead more than two kilometres by bridle track up from Taieri Ferry Road. This 60 hectares (150 acres) of rolling hills with manuka in the gullies was sufficient to support their family for 19 years but not surprisingly they retired to Henley in 1902 and sold out to the Sinclairs.

The homestead consisted of a house, stables, orchard and a row of pine trees. The house was shifted more than 60 years ago down valley to the next door farm of Craigielea by Walter Sinclair's son, Eric. The stable was probably burnt down and the only traces left of the homestead are the bricks of the house chimney. Max Popham remembers the stable as. a wooden structure about 25 x 10 feet (7.6 x 3.0 m) and the orchard as having greengage plums and apples. Only a few of the line of 15-20 old pines remain, but there are many self-seeded pines.

Down by the Taieri River William Harrold, a cousin of the ferryman, took up sections 1 of 18 to 1 of 20 in 1865. Sherds of crockery which appeared during cultivation under macrocarpas at the north-east corner of the property may indicate the site of an early homestead (M Popham: pers.comm). By 1893 William Harrold was leasing the land to neighbouring farmers, but when he died in 1915, his daughter Margaret split off a 21 acre block in the second gully down from the bridge. She built a house (M.Popham: pers. comm.) and lived there till she died in 1946. This block has since been held by Yorstons and then Hornes, presumably relatives of the local families. The only remains of Miss Harrold’s house is a shed under the macrocarpas close to the road. This small section has not been purchased by the Forest Service.

The smallest farm in the block was Horne's 65 Acres (26.3 ha) on Section 17 east of the town of Beauly (Fig.4). The crown grant was taken up in 1876 by Edward Bowes Cargill, the eighth child of William Page 9

Cargill and a Dunedin merchant and mayor. He bought the section when he was 53, possibly for a retirement place, but more probably as an investment. He sold in 1883 to William Horne of a local farming family. The farm was too small to make living from, and William Horne ran a carrying business, taking eggs and butter to Dunedin and bringing back goods for the local farmers. The Horne family retained the section until the 1950s when they finally sold out to the Pophams next door.

During their 70 year tenure, the Hornes built the small cottage and barn which are still on the property (Fig.3). The house was probably built by William Horne soon after or even before he bought the land, since Mr George Horne, a grandson of William, does not consider it was built during his father's lifetime (about 1885 to 1956). A six-pane double hung window in the side wall also suggests the house was built in the 1880s. The cottage is relatively unmodified and is a simple four- roomed cottage with an exterior bathroom and washhouse near the back door, an outside lavatory and two orchard areas of pears and apples. The trees have mostly been killed by gorse spraying. The cottage is nicely set on a sheltered, north-facing terrace with a view over the river. There are the usual big old macrocarpa set around the house with some household rubbish among which a small adze was found some years ago (A Popham: pers.comm.).

Surprisingly the Sinclairs do not seem to have been sod wall builders, though sod walls are common to the north and south of them. Only one section of sod wall is known to have run for 100 metres along the south-east boundary just south of McBean's section. It fell down and was flattened about 25 years ago (M Popham: pers.comm.).

Morrison’s Block Morrison’s Block of 311 acres (126 ha), which is no longer an economic farm was two separate farms of 142 and 169 acres during the 19th century (Fig.3). Sections 1 of 25 and 26 were farmed by Alexander Leonard from about 1870. He paid 25 shillings per acre for Section 26 when he bought it from John Reid in 1875 and sold both sections which are very similar for 16.5 shillings per acre in 1925! There is no local information about his homestead which is now marked by a scatter of bricks, schist slabs and sherds of crockery on a terrace above the swampy flats.

Leonard was probably also the builder of a neat stone wall running diagonally across the mouth of the most eastern gully where it rises from the flat (Fig.3). The stone wall is about 10 m long and 0.6-0.9 m high, made of well-placed and trimmed schist blocks. It has been broached at both ends if it ever ran right across the gully. It is not substantial enough or correctly placed for a dam, but it would have stopped the stones and gravel in the creek bed from spilling out on to the sheltered grassy flat below. There are also old elderberry trees in the mouth of this gully and the next one to the west, which may also have been for erosion control.

The other croft belonged originally to Wellman from 1862-1881. The western skyline ridge is known locally as Wel1man’s Ridge. It passed through the hands of Palmer, Marwick, and Craigie until the Horne family bought it in 1919. They farmed it until the Morrison's bought it in Page 10

1971. It was the Hornes who amalgamated the two farms, acquiring legal ownership of Leonard's sections in 1954. It may have been Wellman who built a house whose remains consist of a bulldozed mound of bricks, corrugated iron and burnt stumps or a knoll to the south-south-east of the new woolshed. There are no records of what either of the homesteads looked like. Both farms were small and mostly steep grassland. There probably never were substantial farm buildings, but there may be some sod walls in the gorse hedges along the southern boundary. These were reported to us by Ray Morrison but not visited.

The holiday house at the western end of the flats and the old boathouse and slipway have been built on four acres split off by Leonard in 1911 and sold to the Wardell’s family, merchants and owners of a major grocery shop in Dunedin in the 1930s-1960s. This section was not bought by Forest Service.

The Moneymore Block This has been a unified farm unit since Edward Martin took up the Crown Grant on it in 1872. It was a farm that nobody loved until the 1920s. Before 1928 it suffered 14 changes of ownership or lease, not counting executors of estates. Nobody held it for more than 10 years. The Stewart who bought it in 1928 and held it for 20 years may have been able to do so because the use of superphosphate came in about that time. This may have enabled them to graze enough stock to hold down the manuka on the drier faces.

There are no traces of farm buildings on this property and it was presumably farmed from the Mt Misery homestead at the end of School Road. The most important site is the Old Grain road (Fig.2) running along the southern boundary with a sod wall between it and the Forest Service Land. The ridge line of the southern boundary is the main watershed for the coastal hills. For the history of the grain road see report on Block (Hamel 1984). Paper access roads slant up off the plain from One Tree Road and the end of Allison Road. A search of the line of the latter (Fig.6) where it crosses the block did not show any trace of a formed roadway, though there may be a cutting in the bushed gully.

A sod wall (see Site Record Form S172/83) runs north-east along the boundary for about a kilometre from the Mt Misery corner of the property but as recently as 1952 it ran along the whole of the south east boundary (NZMS 2, Map 172/7, see Fig.2). The remaining wall is about 0.5-0.7 m high and 1.5m wide at the base. Flat iron standards have been placed in the wall about every 3.0 m, with five plain wires. Occasionally instead of a standard there is the stump of a wooden post. It seems likely that this wall has always been lower than the ones at Wangaloa and on the McCrostie Block, which have only three wires on top. The wall is markedly higher on the down-hill (western) side and a shallow drain (about 1.2 m wide) has been scooped out fairly recently along the western side, possibly to remove gorse. Along much of the boundary the sod wall has been replaced with a wire and iron standard fence inside a rough gorse hedge. The sod wall marks the legal boundary of the block.

Page 11

Conclusions No Maori sites were found on any of the blocks, though the major Contact Period village of the Taieri area was on the opposite river bank from Pophams. There is likely to be material from pre-European Maori occupation still under the turf near where the southern boundary of Pophams leaves the Titri Road.

The most important early European site is the Port of Taieri which was on and around the site now occupied by the schoolhouse residence. Any remains of jetties will be underneath the swampy ground between the present Titri Road and the old road running along the front of the school residence. This ground is not owned by Forest Service but is Crown Land controlled by Silverpeaks County. It will come under the management of Forest Service.

The best preserved early European buildings are Horne's cottage on Section 17, which has an almost wholly unmodified exterior, and the school residence which was probably built at the same time as the Taieri Ferry School in 1879. The latter has been modified by the addition of a front room. Horne's cottage has a cow byre close to it with a modern concrete base. Most other early European structures have been demolished, except for a short length of stone wall in the eastern gully of Morrison's and a kilometre of sod wall (8172/83) on the south east boundary of the Moneymore·Block.

There were five minor homesteads on the three blocks - the major homesteads of Moneymore and Popham’s are on land not purchased by Forest Service. Of the five minor homesteads, the two on Morrison's, Harrold’s house and McBean's on Popham's have been demolished. Only Horne's homestead remains.

Recommendations The corner of Popham's Block beside the Taieri Ferry Bridge is an important area in the history of the Taieri Plain, and the road edge is used quite intensively at present for picnicking and fishing. Though Forest Service does not own the major historic sites of the area, the Mataipapa kaik and the Taieri Ferry, it does own or is in a position to manage sufficiently interesting ground to capitalise on the historic associations of the area.

Recommendation 1. The area in front of the school residence should be developed into a picnic area with sufficient signs to inform the public of its historic nature. Since Silverpeaks County probably administer the ground, the development should be a joint effort.

Recommendation 2. The two old wooden buildings, the Taieri Ferry school residence and Horne's cottage, should be considered for restoration.

The school house is at present occupied by a tenant, which will help to preserve it and the tenancy should be continued indefinitely. Any change, such as removal of the modern part, should not be carried out at the expense of losing a tenant. Any signposting of the school residence during the development of the picnic ground should also be done in consultation with the tenant. Very few of the small rural schools Page 12

erected in Otago before 1880 now survive, and the Historic Places Trust is in the process of placing a C classification on a similar modest building at Gibbston.

Horne’s cottage is in moderately good condition by ordinary building standards, and is in much better condition than any of the old wooden buildings which Forest Service has acquired between Trotter’s Gorge and the Catlins. It should be given careful consideration for restoration in a form which can be visited by the public without encouraging vandalism. I would strongly recommend that Nelson Cross of Lands and Survey be asked to comment on the type of repairs required and the layout of the building and grounds that will provide an attractive historic experience. He may suggest that the cowbyre be removed as being too modern or reduced to a "ruin" labelled as site of original barn.

Recommendation 3. The sod wall at the back of Moneymore should be marked so that it is not destroyed during reading or logging operations, and trees should not be planted within 3-4 metres of it. It is not of such high priority that any active measures should be taken to preserve it. Forest Service does possess higher sod walls on the Wangaloa and McCrostie’s Blocks, but the Moneymore one should be allowed to survive as an example of a lower sod wall with more wires on top of it. It is an archaeological site since it was almost certainly erected before 1885, and so is protected under the Historic Places Trust legislation.

Acknowledgments I am most grateful to Mr and Mrs Max Popham and Alan Popham for their assistance during this survey. Mr George Horne, Mr R Morrison, Mr A Gordon and Mr J Coburn also provided useful information.

References

Anderson, A 1980. Towards an explanation of protohistoric social organisation and settlement patterns amongst the southern Ngai Tahu. NZ Journal of Archaeology 2:3-24.

Burns, T. Diary 21-23 Feb 1849. Hocken Library.

Davis, G F. 1973 Old identities and new iniquities: the Taieri Plain in Otago Province. Unpublished M A thesis, Otago University.

Hamel, G. 1984. The archaeology and European history of the Wangaloa Block. A report to N Z Forest Service, Invercargill.

Ingram, C W M and Wheatley, P O. 1936. Shipwrecks: New Zealand Disasters 1795-1936. Dunedin Book Publishing Assoc, Dunedin.

Shaw, M S and Farrant, E D. 1949. The Taieri Plain. Otago Centennial Publications Committee, Dunedin.

Shortland, E. 1844. The Southern Districts of New Zealand. Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, London.

Stuart, R J. 1981 Henley , Taieri Ferry and Otokia: a schools and district History. Published by the author, Outram, Otago.

Tuckett, 1844. Diary, 1844. Hocken Library. Page 13

Copied from a letter written in Sept 1859. Dictated by James Sinclair and written by A Mayhold.

My dear Brother James, (actually brother-in-law) You will be surprised that I never wrote you. I arrived at Dunedin the 20th day of April 1857. We had a fine passage of ninety one days. We had a fair wind all the way but we were hard put to in the English Channel. We beat for eight days and only gained thirty-four miles. There were ships driven in to Dover at the same time. We had the pilot with us all the time. My wife was very poorly in her health. When we crossed the line she got better in a few days.· All the rest of the family were well in their health except John (his oldest son) was not well in the later end of the passage but I have had more since I came to New Zealand than ever I had in my own country.

Margaret (his oldest daughter) died 19th August 1857 ... it took her life (evidently refers to the disease that caused the death of the second son, James, in Orkney). The Doctor could do nothing for her. I expected that John would die first ... He could do nothing for himself since we came here. He was complaining of shortness of breath and putting up blood, but was never confined to his bed except for a few days before his death. He died on 23rd November 1858. He died a good man, believing in the Son of God who died for sinners and rose again for justification. He holded his last drink to his beak with his own hand, and bade farewell to all present, and to this glorious world, to Sun and Moon and stars, then he departed. He had the most glorious death I ever saw and it gave his mother great consolation, but it also tried his mother very much, or else I would have wrote you long ago. I was very poorly with a bad cold I got when we wanted about three weeks to sail. I thought my body would be committed to the deep waters, but God was pleased to spare my life, as yet to see two of my family laid in cold graves. This is a world full of trouble, as the sparks fly upwards. I have bought 115 acres of land which cost £55.10.0. Walter and Eric bought 80 acres of land. Anne married the third day of August with a man called Robert Bell. He is an Englishman. He is a house carpenter. He has 10/- a day. He has 50 acres of land. He has just gone to put up a new house on his land. I have 18 head of cattle and two.working bullocks. I have three and a half acres in white wheat sown this year and two acres of oats and two acres of potatoes. This is the third year since I came to New Zealand and every year is costing more money. It cost £50 a year. The chest of tea £12, the sugar halfpenny per pound, the flour 3d per pound in 100 pound bag. The potatoes is £5 per ton. The last year I paid £8 for seed potatoes but this year I have my own. I have white to do me for seed and I have three sacks of flour, all the length I am in farming yet. It takes a good while to get started in this country for the ground is of a sour nature the first year. Give my best love to your mother. Tell her I think of her a great deal and also tell her I cannot send her anything yet this year, for I still have £20 to pay for Margaret and John's passage money. This is the year that is now almost up. We are all well at present, hoping this will find you and your family all well. We all join in sending our love to you all.

I remain your affectionate friend James Sinclair

A Mayhold. Page 14

A page from a later letter.

I bought 115 acres of land the first year I came here, which cost me £50. I also bought two bullocks and two cows which cost me £44. The number of cattle I have now both small and great, eighteen head. I lost a fine cow worth £16 last year. Walter has 80 acres which cost £40. Eric bought 40 acres of land side by side with Walter. I gave Sutherland 20 acres with me, but they have no house on their land yet. William is shepherd about 60 mile from us, and we have seen him once since we landed. His wage £55 a year. He has a cow that he got as a present from his master. Walter and Sutherland are sawing the timber to put up the house Robert Bell is about to build. They are hard wrought at the sawing now. This two years they sawed the timber for a Church three miles from my house.We have got a Minister placed in the district where we live. He is a man from the Highlands of Caithness, a John Macnichol. There is a great number of immigrants from home this year. The wages is seven shillings a day for a man and for a ploughman seventy to eighty pounds a year. There is a great number of gentlemen coming from Australia and taking up a great deal of land for sheep runs for this is a fine country for sheep and cattle.

Please write me when this comes to hand