4. Building Communities

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4.1 Religious institutions

Having been visited by Cook and subsequently frequented by British ships seeking timber for spars, the Thames-Coromandel area became an early focus for the efforts of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in . CMS missionaries, who were Anglican, and those from other Christian denominations travelled about the district ministering to Maori and European settlers from the early 19th century.

The Rev Samuel Marsden was aboard the HMS Coromandel when it sailed up the in 1820. Some years later a mission party from the Bay of Islands, led by the Rev Henry Williams and catechist William Fairburn, visited the area in October 1833. After briefly inspecting the small settlement of European traders established at Kopu, Williams proceeded south along the Waihou River. Religious services were conducted at the Ngāti Maru village at Puriri, before the party proceeded inland as far as Matamata. On his return journey north Williams held a second service at Puriri and decided that a mission station should be established there. Unfortunately the site of the Hauraki Mission Station subsequently proved swampy and mosquito ridden. This fact, combined with the threat posed by increasing inter-tribal tensions, led the CMS to move the station north to Parawai in 1837.

A mission chapel was constructed at Parawai in 1863 and later replaced by the Maori Church of the Holy Trinity, which was consecrated by Bishop Cowie in 1886. The former is no longer extant but the latter still stands on Parawai Road, clearly showing its Gothic Revival style in its pointed lancet windows and five-sided apse in which the altar is located.

1 Victoria Reserve, Thames c. 1910 Price Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library ½-001548-G

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Fig. 1: Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Parawai, built 1886. http://www.thetreasury.org.nz/HaurakiMission/HaurakiMission.htm

With the opening of the Thames goldfield there was a rapid growth in the district’s European population. Initially the religious needs of the newcomers were attended to on an ad hoc basis, when and wherever services could be arranged. But by early 1868 the Thames Anglican community had begun to work towards the building of a church, led in their efforts by the Venerable Archdeacon Lloyd. Land Commissioner James Mackay was involved from the first committee meeting (as Treasurer), as was the Rev Maunsell, Dr Hooper and other local worthies, including (most significantly for the subsequent success of the project), the prominent Ngāti Maru leader Wirope Taipari.2 Taipari’s gift of land for the construction of the church gave an immediate boost to the enterprise, as did other gifts of land for community purposes by both Taipari and Ngāti Hape rangitira Te Hoterini.3

Funds raised by subscription and donation began to grow and within a few months the committee felt sufficiently confident to call for tenders. That offered by a Mr Craig, valued at £165, was accepted and by May, a little over four months after the committee was first established, the first St George’s Anglican Church was opened in Rolleston Street.

2 ‘Taipari, Eruini Heina 1889/1890? – 1956’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, /www.dnzb.govt.nz/ accessed 16/6/09. 3 ‘History of Saint George's Church Thames Anglican Parish Tikanga Pakeha 1872 – 1997’, www.thamesanglicanchurch.co.nz accessed 16/6/09.

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Fig. 2: Portrait of Wirope Hotereni Taipari. Foy Brothers carte de visite Alexander Turnbull Library PA1-o-249-17-1.

Anglicanism in Thames gained a further boost in 1868 with the appointment of the Rev Vicesimus Lush as the resident minister. He held the post until 1882, right through the peak of the gold rush and the rapid growth in population that accompanied it. The Rolleston Street church was soon unable to cope with the large number of parishioners seeking to worship under its roof. Under the guidance of Rev Lush a new church was commissioned and in 1871 work began on a flat site in Mackay Street. After some unavoidable setbacks, the first service was held in the new St George’s Church in January 1872. The church has been in continuous use ever since, whilst the original church was moved on to the Mackay Street site in 1909 for use as the church hall.

Rev Lush was also instrumental in establishing a church at Tararu on the coast north of Thames. Working with lay reader Henry Lawlor, a former Resident Magistrate and Warden at Coromandel, Lush persuaded Robert Graham to donate a suitable block of land for the site of what became St John the Evangelist. Funded by private donation, the church was opened in December 1880. It was deconsecrated in 2006 and is now in private ownership.

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Fig. 3: Former St John the Evangelist Church, Tararu © Anne Challinor 2009

Further north on the peninsula Anglicanism was established in Coromandel through the ministrations of visiting clergy and CMS missionaries from Auckland. Lay missionary James Preece visited Coromandel in 1839 and bought a large block of land on which he was to retire in 1854. Here he continued to preach to Maori and act as a Justice of the Peace for the local community. During the 1870s services were conducted by Vicesimus Lush whenever he was able to visit from Thames, usually in the Upper Town schoolroom, and by 1883 CMS missionaries had settled at Manaia.4

The first resident minister for Coromandel was Thomas Scott, ordained in 1870 after being appointed to Coromandel in the late 1860s as the Receiver of Gold Revenue. Despite poor health, he also served congregations at Tokatea Hill, Cabbage Bay (Colville), Waikawau, Hastings (Tapu), Onehoe, Port Charles, , , and .5 He was minister during the construction of Christ Church in Coromandel, built with locally milled kauri on land donated by Wiremu Pita Taurua. The church was in use by March 1872, with the stone font consecrated by Bishop Cowie at a confirmation service in late 1873. A vestry was added in 1876, an organ purchased in 1908 and the roof re-shingled in 1919. The interior is decorated with works by contemporary artists including John Trimmer, Deirdre Airey, Anna Casselberg, Ian Drury and Barry Brickell.

4 R. B. Farquhar ‘Romance of Coromandel’ New Zealand Railways Magazine June 1940, p. 63, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 17/6/09. 5 Claire Stewart ‘Anglican Church’ In Search of the Rainbow: The Coromandel Story ([Auckland]: Wendy Pye [2002]) pp. 84-95.

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The Catholic Church had a presence in Coromandel as early as 1840, with the visit that year of Bishop Pompallier. Pompallier conducted services in the home of local Catholic William Webster. Local Europeans and Maori, who had been converted to Catholicism during earlier missionary visits, were subsequently promised that Marist priests would travel regularly across the from Auckland to serve their spiritual needs. The demand for such services increased with the arrival of miners in the area, a good number of whom were Irish Catholics. From around 1865 Manaia became a focus for Catholic services, with catechist William Mamange conducting services supported by visiting priests. From 1876 a priest was permanently stationed at the Upper Town (Driving Creek) and soon after the government made a grant of land that was used for the construction of a chapel and schoolhouse. St Colman’s Church was built on Kapanga Road in 1871 and later rebuilt in 1954. It remains the centre of Catholic worship in the district and was named for the Irish home parish of Auckland’s second Catholic Bishop, Thomas Croke. In 1880 a presbytery was built at 475 Kapanga Rd and moved to its present site in 1983.

Fig. 4: Catholic Presbytery, 465 Kapanga Road, Coromandel. Coromandel Heritage Study: Item no. 39 www.tcdc.govt.nz/

Thames’ first Catholic Church of St Francis of Assisi was established in 1868, in association with a convent school of the same name. Its first priest was Father Nivard Jourdan. The church was subsequently replaced in 1958. Bishop Croke dedicated the Church of St Bridget, Grahamstown in October 1871.6 Both St Francis’ and St Bridget’s had convents and convent schools associated with them, administered from 1874 by the Sisters of Mercy and from 1912 by the Sisters of St Joseph.7 St Thomas Aquinas’ School for Boys, known as the Beach School, was closed in 1913 and merged with St Brigid’s Girls’ School to form St Francis’ (co-educational) School, which was

6 Daily Southern Cross 17 October 1871, p. 2, http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ accessed 17/09/09. 7 L.P. O'Neill (ed.) Thames Borough Centenary Souvenir (Thames: Thames Star, 1973) pp. 112-114.

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rebuilt in 1923.8 The Catholic Convent in Willoughby Street, which dates from c.1937-8, replaced an earlier building that also dated from the township’s foundation period (c.1872).9

In the eastern sector of the district Catholics were served by the Church of St Columcille, which was named for an Irish saint and dedicated in 1893 at Kuaotunu. The church building was relocated to Tairua in 1954 and was itself replaced by a new church, St Mary’s in 1997. St Patrick’s Catholic Church was opened in by Bishop Lenihan in 1889. That building was replaced in 1979.

Primitive Methodist Minister the Rev G.S. Harper ‘preached his first sermon from a beer barrel at Shortland on Christmas Day,’ 1867.10 By November 1868 money was being raised to build a house for Rev Harper in Mackay Street, Grahamstown. A church followed, built across the road from the minister’s house. Three churches to serve the needs of the Wesleyans were also erected in Tararu, Grahamstown and Shortland. The two branches of the church, Primitive and Wesleyan, merged in Thames in 1913, with the eventual closure of three of the denomination’s local churches and the centralisation of services, first at Pollen Street and then later at Mackay Street.

As happened in many New Zealand towns, with the decline of church going in the later 20th century, the Thames Presbyterian and Methodist congregations combined to form the Thames Union Parish in 1972.11 The united congregation continues to meet in St James’ Presbyterian Church in Pollen Street, which dates from 1898 and had replaced an 1869 church that now serves as the church hall.

Empty blasting powder barrels provided seating for a Baptist congregation which began meeting in mid-1868 in the cottage of Henry and Sophia Driver on Hape Street, Thames. The congregation was led by William ‘Daddy’ Mason, known for his flowing white beard and his bag full of bibles and writing gear with which he’d traverse the mining claims among the hills to minister to the miners; writing letters home for many of those who were unable to write themselves, and distributing bibles to those who could read.12

8 ‘St Francis School, Thames: History’, www.stfrancis-thames.school.nz/ accessed 13/11/09. 9 ‘Thames Heritage Study: Registered Item no. 54’ www.tcdc.govt.nz accessed 27/8/09. 10 Zelma Williams and Johnny Williams Thames and the Coromandel Peninsula: 2000 years (Thames: Williams Publishers, 1994) p. 78. 11 Williams and Williams, p. 217. 12 ‘Thames Baptist: History’ www.thamesbaptist.org.nz/ accessed 11/9/09; see also Paul Tonson A Handful of Grain: The Centenary History of the Baptist Union of New Zealand, Vol.1: 1851 – 1882 (Auckland: N.Z. Baptist Historical Society for the Baptist Union of New Zealand, 1982).

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Fig. 5: William (Daddy) Mason, founder of the Thames Baptist community http://www.thamesbaptist.org.nz/5906.html

By May 1869 a Baptist Chapel had been opened on land, at the corner of Willoughby and Baillie Streets, donated to the church by Wirope Taipari and Rapana. From 1889 the Baptists joined with the Congregational Church for worship in their Mary Street church, and the original chapel was used as a Sunday School. The Congregational Church had begun holding services in Thames in October 1871. After a section in Mary Street was donated to the Church by brothers Richard and John Hudson, St Mary’s was built to accommodate a congregation of 300. Fire destroyed this building in 1876 but insurance money and donations allowed its replacement to be built. The church continues to be used by the combined congregations.

Fig. 6: Baptist and Congregational Church, Mary Street, Thames Cyclopedia of New Zealand (Auckland Provincial District, 1902, p. 873) available at www.nzetc.org

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The Presbyterian Church formed its first congregation in Coromandel in March 1872, under the chairmanship of Alex Aitken. At first services were held in hotels and other public buildings, including that at 545 Kapanga Road, which was subsequently used as an Oddfellows’ Hall (1880s-1990s) and is now the Coromandel Lodge of the Ancient Order of Buffaloes. A building committee was quickly established, however, and subscriptions solicited. The Rev AM Tait was appointed and a building contract signed before the end of 1872. St Andrew’s Church was opened, debt-free, on 18 May 1873 in Rings Road and a nearby existing building moved next to the church and converted for use as a manse. This was replaced by a new building in 1936.

Methodism had arrived in Coromandel by 1870, with ministers travelling by sea from Thames and Auckland to preside over services. A church able to accommodate 80 worshippers was opened in 1871 but this soon proved too small and in 1898 a new Methodist Church was opened in Rings Road, built on land donated by local businessman Samuel James.13 James had arrived in Coromandel in the late 1870s and after some success as a miner set up as an ironmonger in Kapanga Road.14 The second church was added to by its first minister, the Rev Frost, who also supervised the building of a parsonage in 1899. The church was rebuilt in 1948 after it became dangerously unstable.

Wesleyans in the northern sector of the peninsula were served by a Wesleyan Coromandel Circuit based at the Wesleyan Church in Coromandel. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (the Mormon Church) had been established in Coromandel by 1919, the year in which local church kaumatua Taoki Mikaere died. Church members met in their homes and on marae and no purpose built buildings are associated with the denomination in Coromandel.

The Thames Corp of the Salvation Army was founded in Thames in 1884 and occupied barracks in Pollen Street.15 A Brethren Church was founded at Colville in 1898. After World War One the local community acquired the Brethren Church (built 1898) for use as a community hall dedicated to the memory of the fallen soldiers of the region.16 The hall was opened on 18 June 1924.

In Whitianga an “Undenominational Church” was established in 1890 to serve the needs of the area’s Wesleyan, Anglican and Presbyterian congregations. Built by Arthur and Fred Meikle, it

13 The original church became the Buffalo Lodge. The new church may have been transported from Auckland. After the Star of Auckland Lodge purchased the site of the United Methodist Free Church on Pitt St, Auckland, the timber chapel constructed on the site in 1873 was ‘removed and re-erected in Coromandel’. See ‘Historic Places Trust Register, Wesleyan Chapel (Former) 8A Pitt Street, Auckland, Register No. 7752’ www.historic.org.nz/ accessed 14/09/09. 14 Julie Smith ‘Samuel James’ In Search of the Rainbow, p. 50. 15 ‘Thames’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District] (Christchurch, 1902) p. 874, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 10/09/09. 16 Wendy Simons (ed.), In the shadows of Moehau : a history of the Colville region (Otahuhu, N.Z, Wendy Pye, 1990) p. 93.

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was officially opened in 1898. Services were conducted by ministers, who travelled overland from Coromandel, and by Maori preachers based at the Maori church and mission near the upper mill.

Fig. 7: St Andrew’s by the Sea (Undenominational Church), Whitianga

Whitianga Anglicans constructed their own church, St Peter the Fisherman, in 1966 using a Lockwood design. A vicarage was added in 1973.17 The church features a stained glass window of St Peter with his net and Christ walking on the waters of Mercury Bay. Since 1990, the Anglicans of the beach community of have used the Hahei Community Centre for their place of worship, making use of a purpose built storage area which opens out to form a sanctuary, including an alter made from local swamp kauri by Trevor Nugent.18 The Mercury Bay Hall provides a place of worship for the local Assembly of God congregation.

4.2 Education and self-improvement

Until the introduction of free public education after 1877, the children of the peninsula, like their peers throughout the colony, were reliant on the ability of their parents to educate them at home or pay for private tuition.19 Children of all denominations attended Sunday Schools while their parents worshipped. By the turn of the century in Thames, [t]he Primitive Methodist Church, situated in Mackay Street, has seats for 280 people, and there is a Sunday school with accommodation for 250 children. There are 200 children on the roll, and the school is worked by sixteen teachers.20

17 Jenny Bithell Guide to the History of Whitianga (Whitianga: A.J. Bithell, 1980). 18 ‘The Church of St Peter the Fisherman’ www.auckanglican.org.nz/ accessed 7/7/09. 19 John Fletcher operated a private school in Thames between 1857 and 1868. Ian Cumming and Alan Cumming History of State Education in New Zealand 1840-1975 (Wellington: Pitman, 1978) p. 24. 20 ‘Thames’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand p. 872, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 10/09/09.

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A number of church run and private schools operated from the earliest days of the goldfields. They catered for children from new entrants to 15 or 16 years. A school operating at Karaka in the 1870s charged 1/- (one shilling) per day for infants and 1/6d (one shilling and sixpence) for standards. Although many of these schools closed with the introduction of state schooling, one that did not was Miss Hume’s Private School on Beach Road, Thames. In 1891 Miss Hume charged 1/6 per week for each of its 17 or so pupils.21

Fig. 8: Overlooking Thames Township (detail), showing Thames Central School in the foreground, also St George’s and St James’ in centre and centre left respectively. Price Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, ½-001541-G

By the mid-1870s privately funded primary schools had been established in settlements throughout the district. Waiotahi and Waiokaraka Schools were run by local committees. The Baillie Street School was set up privately in 1870 in the Thames Volunteer Hall. It became Kauaeranga Boys' School, the first publicly funded school in Thames, and boasted six classrooms for around 400 children, offices for the headmaster and as many as ten teachers, and outbuildings including toilets. The Kauaeranga Public School in Sandes Street taught between two and three hundred pupils in four classrooms run by four teachers and several (unqualified) ‘ex-pupil teachers’.22 Other public schools were run at Tararu, Waiokaraka and Parawai.23 The latter school was set up after a meeting in the Holy Trinity Maori Church at Parawai on 28

21 Williams, p. 142. 22 The training of teachers was still in its infancy in New Zealand. Efforts were made to set up Training Colleges through the country with the passing of the 1877 Act. Horatio Philips ran the Thames Training School for teachers between July 1880 and December 1887. Cumming and Cumming, p. 92 23 ‘Thames’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand p. 871, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 10/09/09.

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November 1872. A school building was built on the corner of Banks Street and Parawai Road, and operated until 1903 when the building was deemed unsafe. Parawai then merged with Kauaeranga Girls’ School (opened in the late 1860s in Sandes Street) on a new site in Rolleston Street. This school was renamed Thames South School from 1915.24

Thames High School opened on 12 April 1880, one of the first public secondary schools in the country.25 However, many children continued to leave school before the age of 12 to enter paid employment or to assist their parents around the home, on the farm or in the family business.26 Following the passing of the Industrial Schools Act of 1882 the Thames Orphanage in Grahamstown was set up for children deemed by the local magistrate to be neglected or at risk of harm. Under the legislation the orphanage was supported by the local body.27

Fig. 9: Council orphanage farm at , Thames 1880s Alexander Turnbull Library ½-116735-F

A primary school and district high school were established at Coromandel following the 1877 Act. The primary school in the lower town (Kapanga School) and the Driving Creek School in the upper town were established around 1872 after Coromandel was declared an Education District. Prior to new buildings being provided under the 1877 Act, classes were held in the Town Hall and the Masonic Hall. The Kapanga School building was strengthened in 1879 and extended several

24 O'Neill, p. 49. 25 The school describes itself as the second oldest in the Auckland Province. www.thames-high.school.nz/ accessed 17/09/09. 26 David Arbury Children on the Goldfield (Thames: Metallum Research, [1999]). 27 Cumming and Cumming, p. 142.

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times during the 1880s. Its use as a school ceased in 1977 when primary and secondary education were brought together at the Coromandel Area School. Now called Hauraki House, the former primary school has been used as a community house, coffee bar, art gallery and theatre.

Fig. 10: Coromandel Citizens’ Hall, 455 Kapanga Road, Coromandel.

Coromandel’s Catholic children went to St George’s Convent School, established by Father B. Fitzpatrick during his tenure as parish priest (1865-76). Run for much of its time by the Sisters of Mercy, the school closed in 1941. The building was acquired by the Returned Services Association in 1951 before being transferred to the County Council in 1965 and becoming the Coromandel Citizens’ Hall.28

The educational needs of many of the Peninsula’s Maori children were addressed in the later 19th and early 20th centuries with the provision of Native Schools. Established by Acts of Parliament in 1858 and 1867, native schools took over the provision of Maori primary education from the church mission schools. Native schools were erected at Manaia (c.1878?) and Wharekawa/ (1908), but despite its predominantly Maori (Ngāti Porou) population the school at Harataunga/Kennedy Bay was a ‘regular’ education board school rather than a ‘native’ one.

28 ‘Historic Buildings and Houses’ In Search of the Rainbow, pp. 66-68.

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Fig. 11: Interior, former Wharekawa/Opoutere Native School (1908), Opoutere

What today might be called adult education was already part of the cultural landscape of the Coromandel in the Victorian period. Talks by itinerant lecturers were a popular and widespread form of entertainment throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Authors, scientists, preachers, experts in a wide range of fields, and others with more questionable qualifications and subject matters, enlightened and entertained the public for a fee with illustrated talks. The general population enjoyed public lectures on a wide range of subjects held in halls and venues such as the Grahamstown Academy of Music Theatre, attached to the Pacific Hotel. A lecture on galvanism was given in December 1872, for example, with proceeds going towards a museum, which had been proposed for that bastion of working class education, the Mechanics’ Institute.29 The Institute had opened in Thames in 1870 and on 1 November 1871 played host to an evening of theatre and music in the Academy of Music, including a scene from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.30

29 Galvinism is electricity produced by chemical reaction. ‘Mr. Severn gave a very interesting lecture on “Galvanism” at the Thames Academy of Music on Monday night. Our Thames contemporary states that : — “At the conclusion of the experiments on the subjects abovementioned, Mr. Severn, with the aid of Mr. Gillies Morton, performed a feat with which Mr. Heller created agood deal of astonishment namely, getting his confederate to tell the name of anything handed by the audience. Mr. Severn was very successful, and was frequently applauded. Mr. Severn has, by the proceeds of these lectures, fitted up the hall of the Mechanics’ Institute for a museum, and is now engaged in the collection of articles for exhibition.”’ Daily Southern Cross 18 December 1872, p. 2. 30 David Verran ‘Mechanics’ Institutes in New Zealand, and Their Effect on the Development of

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Fig. 12: Thames Public Library, Queen Street, Thames, c. 1905. Price Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library ½-001547-G

The Thames Public Library originated in the Mechanics' Institute’s public reading room and small lending library. In 1880 the Institute was renamed the Thames Free Public Library and came under the jurisdiction of the Borough Council. A new Carnegie Library building was opened in 1905, which served the community with increasing difficulty until the opening of a new library building in 1990. The Carnegie building, a sign of Pittsburgh steel magnate Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy, was refurbished in 2009 and reopened as the Treasury, a heritage resource centre.

Two private lending libraries were active in Coromandel in the 1870s, and a third operated out of Samuel James’s hardware shop from 1898 until the late 1950s. With the setting up of the Country Library Service (CLS) in 1938, the Coromandel County Council was persuaded to ‘provide premises’ which were stocked with CLS books and the donated collection of a private lending library owned by Elsie Thomas. After a move to the former Drill Hall in 1970, efforts to raise funds for a new library building led to the opening of the present Kapanga Road library in 1981.31

Library Services’, A Paper Delivered to the 2004 LIANZA Conference’ http://www.lianza.org.nz/ accessed 5/10/09. Verram cites the Thames Guardian & Mining Record, 31 October 1872. 31 Julie Smith et al, ‘Library’ In Search of the Rainbow, pp.159-161.

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Fig. 13: Coromandel Community Library dedication plaque (1981)

The need to educate miners in the science and technology of mining and gold extraction led to the establishment of the in 1885. From 25 January of that year lectures were held in the Gresham Hall but by August enough funds had been donated for the School to complete construction of its own building in Cochrane St. This would prove to be the largest of some 30 schools established at the time in mining areas throughout the country, including Coromandel in 1887. With the collapse of the Thames field, the school began to offer classes in other disciplines, including engineering, agriculture and pharmacy. A mineralogical museum was opened in the school in 1901 and while the school eventually closed in 1954, its mineralogical museum remained open, an acknowledgement of the significance of its collection.32 Both the Thames and Coromandel Schools (erected 1896) now house museum collections.

Fig. 14: Thames School of Mines, Cochrane St, Thames © Anne Challinor, 2009

32 ‘Coromandel Heritage Sites: Thames School of Mines’, http://www.historic.org.nz/, accessed 7/6/09.

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Fig. 15: School of Mines Council, Coromandel 1915-16 Alexander Turnbull Library ½-023131-F

4.3 Social groups and classes

As tangata whenua, Maori formed and continue to form a distinct social group within the district. In the early days of the colony Europeans settlers relied heavily on Maori for supplies of food, including fresh vegetables, fruit and meat. As the European population grew, however, the dynamics of the relationship between Maori and pakeha changed. Maori were increasingly affected by European disease and other negative impacts associated with colonisation. This reached crisis point in Thames and Coromandel with the discovery of gold, which brought growing pressure from the settlers to have Maori land made available for prospecting. Despite initial resistance by some Maori leaders, the gold fields were soon opened up. The Thames district was officially declared a goldfield on 30 July 1867. The long-term effect of the gold rush and the wider colonisation project on Maori iwi and hapu are too complex to address here.33

For their part, European miners on the peninsula were a very cosmopolitan group, as they were on gold fields throughout the world. Many arrived directly from the Otago goldfields or from the Californian and Australian fields, and their numbers were made up of British, European, Russian and other ethnic groups.

33 The relevant reports of the Waitangi Tribunal provide a coherent account of the effects of colonisation on the iwi of the Thames-Coromandel District.

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For the European workingman employed in the mines life was hard and the pay poor, as described in ‘The Man Behind the Pick’, written in Thames.

He is shut out from the sunlight in the glimmer of the lamps; He is cut off from the sweet air, in the sickly fumes and damps.34

As a hard rock rather than an alluvial field, mining on the Peninsula required a financial investment in equipment beyond the capacity of individual miners. New Zealand and international, especially London-based, companies owned the mines and employed miners to work them and to operate the stamper batteries and other above ground equipment. Until the late 19th century, miners were not unionised (see Chapter 2 ‘Labour’).

While Chinese were to be found at Thames and elsewhere on the Coromandel, they do not appear to have engaged directly in mining, unlike on the Otago fields. Instead they worked as market gardeners around Thames, at Mt Pleasant, Parawai and Totara, or opened shops including laundries. ‘Mrs Ah Kow had the “New Chinese Fancy Shop” (opened September 1884) while Ah Ken operated a laundry – both in Pollen Street.’ Elsewhere on the Peninsula Lee Kow had a market garden in Kuaotunu in the early 1890s.35 Thames was not immune from the racial discrimination directed towards the Chinese during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with local citizens contributing to a petition to Parliament to legislate against the entry of Chinese into the colony.36

Numerous friendly societies were formed in Thames and elsewhere in the district during the gold rush era as Freemasons and others arrived with the first waves of miners. Often organised along ethnic and class lines, these societies were intended to provide support to their male associates and their families in the event of unemployment, injury and death, providing insurance, medical and social care. Accordingly, they formed an important aspect of New Zealand’s social infrastructure in the period before the introduction of government funded social welfare. Different societies catered for different sectors of the community. Freemasons tended to be businessmen, professionals and senior civil servants, while Foresters, Oddfellows, and other mutual benefit societies catered for blue collar and working class men.

The Freemason’s first lodge, the Lodge Of Light, No. 454, Irish Constitution (I.C.), was established in Thames in 1870 and soon had its own hall in Queen Street. A Corinthian Lodge,

34 David Arbury Poems and Ballads of Old Thames and its Goldfield (Thames: Metallum Research, 2002), quoted in Stevan Eldred-Grigg Diggers, Hatters & Whores: The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes (Auckland: Random House, 2008) p. 180. 35 Ian D Robinson Coromandel (Auckland: David Bateman, 2007) p. 74. 36 David Arbury Chinese at Thames (Thames: Metallum Research, [2001]).

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No. 1655, was formed in the Irish Constitution Hall in 1876, after which the hall was duly renamed the Masonic Hall. Several other lodges soon followed. The Hauraki Royal Arch Chapter; the Lodge Sir Walter Scott, No. 15, N.Z.C.; and the Loyal Charles Bruce Lodge, were all active in Thames by the 1880s.37 The Corinthians opened their own hall in Martha Street in 1928. This building became the Lodge of Light (I.C.) in the 1970s and passed into private hands after a new Masonic Centre was built behind it in 1998.

Fig. 16: Foundation stone, former Corinthian Lodge, Martha Street, Thames

Coromandel Masons first met at the Royal Hotel in 1872 and were soon constituted as Irish Constitution Lodge No. 456. With the adoption of a New Zealand Freemasons’ Constitution in 1890 the Lodge was reconstituted as Lodge Coromandel No. 17 NZC.38 Members continued to meet at hotels in Coromandel until 1899 when they opened their own hall in Rings Road.

The Ancient Order of Foresters (Court Pride of the North, No. 5575, and Court Pride of Parnell, No. 4409), the Coromandel Mutual Improvement Society, and the Loyal Lodge of Oddfellows were all active on the Peninsula from at least the early 1870s. The Grahamstown branch of the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society was established in 1870 and by 1900 owned a hall in Pollen Street. The Excelsior Lodge, No. 6, of the Loyal Orange Lodge was

37 ‘Thames’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand p. 869, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 9/09/09; ‘Corinthian Lodge - 1655: Lodge History’, www.freemasons.org.nz/ accessed 11/9/09. 38 Julie Smith ‘Freemasons’ In Search of the Rainbow, p. 127.

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established in 1868. The Prince Of Wales Lodge of the Protestant Alliance Friendly Society of Australasia was set up in Thames in 1873.39

Fig. 17: Masonic Lodge, 776 Rings Road, Coromandel.

From the late 1860s the formation of local naval, infantry, cavalry and artillery volunteer corps had been encouraged by the government. The Thames Rifle Rangers and the Thames Naval Volunteer Corps were formed in 1868. The Thames Engineer Volunteer Cadet Corps and the Thames Scottish Rifle Volunteer Cadet Corps were established three years later.40 Thames Volunteers took part in the expedition to Parihaka in 1881.41 The Hauraki Rifle Volunteer Corps were established in 1897, probably in response to the belief that a Russian invasion was imminent, the third such scare since the mid-1880s. Its 25-member brass band was its most active unit.42 The Coromandel Rifle Volunteers were active by at least the late 1870s,43 becoming part of the Hauraki Regiment in 1898. Its brass band performed locally from 1876 and as the Coromandel Silver Band was active through to 1995.44

39 ‘Thames’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand p. 874, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 9/09/09 40 ‘Volunteer Intelligence’ Daily Southern Cross 13 July 1871, p. 3. 41 ‘The Pioneer Land Surveyors Of New Zealand: Part 4’, p. 297, http://www.surveyors.org.nz/ accessed 15/09/09. 42 ‘Thames’ The Cyclopedia of New Zealand p. 868, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 9/09/09. 43 See Archives New Zealand, Auckland Office file ZAAP 15154/1a ‘Coromandel Rifle Brigade 1879-1889’. 44 See Chapter 5, section 1, below.

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4.4 Serving the Community

Thames County Council (TCC) was constituted in February 1877. One of its first tasks was the improvement of roading in the district. The Thames- road had been held up since the early 1870s due to objections by the Maori landowners over whose land it was proposed to run. With the formation of the TCC an agreement was reached in May 1877 between the council and Maori represented by Hotereni Taipari, W H Taipari, Hoani Nahe, and Hone Ropiha, that Maori would be exempt from paying rates in return for allowing construction of the road, an agreement which was ultimately dishonoured by the Crown.45

The Coromandel County Council (CCC) first met on 9 January 1877, formed following the abolition of the provinces the previous year. It governed the area between and Waikawau. Its first concern was with the formation of a road to Thames, beginning with a bridge over the Waiau River. In 1884 the CCC took over ownership of the Exchange Building for use as county offices, library and hall. The construction of a water supply was begun around the turn of the century, leading to the formation of a Water Board in 1910. Household rubbish collection, maintenance of the wharf, roads, bridges, and other community facilities with little in the way of rates income or central government support preoccupied the Council for much of the early 20th century. The supply of electric power to homes was achieved in 1951, with power generated by a private diesel plant. The County Council last met on 30 September 1975, after which it was amalgamated with Thames County Council to form the Thames Coromandel District Council.

Many civic activities carried out by central or local government today were once the responsibility of local community groups. A hospital initially known as the Diggers’ or Goldfields’ Hospital was opened in Thames in November 1869 to treat the victims of mining injuries, drowning, and other accidents common on the gold fields.46 Established by local community leaders and clergy, including Commissioner James Mackay and Father Nivard, the hospital was supported by a much needed relief fund, overseen by a Charitable Aid Board. This Board worked to relieve suffering among destitute miners, miners’ widows and orphaned children. Money was raised by subscriptions, with miners agreeing to pay 2/- per week from their wages,47 donations, bazaars and dances. An acre of land on Mary Street donated by Ngāti Maru leaders Te Hoterini and Wirope Taipari became the site of not just the Thames Hospital but also a high school and the Anglican church. The original hospital was described as a ‘single storey wooden structure, and had three wards, including a fever ward . . . [with] accommodation for about thirty males and

45 Waitangi Tribunal The Hauraki Report Vol. 3, pp. 976-977. 46 ‘Opening Of The Thames Hospital’ Daily Southern Cross 4 November 1868 p. 4. 47 O'Neill, p. 97.

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thirteen females.’48 A Thames District Hospital Board was formed in 1886 and, after further fundraising a new hospital, was opened in 1900.

Fig. 18: Thames Hospital, between 1910 and 1930 Price Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library ½-001544-G

The Thames-Coromandel Charitable Aid Board was also responsible for the Old Men's and Old Women's Home at Tararu. Situated on 13 acres, it comprised a hospital building with three wards, a 14-room boarding house, used by the master, matron and woman inmates, and several smaller buildings including a fever ward.49 At the turn of the 20th century Mr and Mrs William Spong were the master and matron of the Home.

Fig. 19: The Men’s (foreground) and Women’s (rear) Homes, Tararu, Thames c. 1900. Price Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library ½-001546-G

48 ‘Thames’, p. 869, www.nzetc.org/ accessed 9/09/09. 49 Ibid.

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The Coromandel Hospital started life in a tin shed at Driving Creek, and was established at the time of the gold rush of 1869. Increasing demand led to the hospital taking over the former government offices on Rings Road in 1873 where it remained for the next quarter century, governed by its own hospital board. After a typhoid epidemic in 1896 money was raised and a purpose built hospital finally opened in 1899 on land provided by Wiremu Taurua. Staffed in its early years mainly by Catholic Sisters of Mercy, the hospital was taken over by the Thames Hospital Board in 1937 and was eventually closed amid great controversy by the Waikato Area Health Board in 1994.

Fig. 20: Matthew Cummings in the uniform of the Thames Volunteer Fire Brigade, c. 1870. Alexander Turnbull Library ½-091945-F

A Volunteer Fire Brigade was set up in Coromandel in 1896 after a fire the previous year destroyed as many as 13 buildings in the centre of town. A station was opened on 17 January 1897, rebuilt on the same site in 1949 and eventually replaced by a new station built on the corner of Tiki and Whangapoua Roads with Fire Service Commission funding.50 Thames Fire Brigade has its origins in volunteer brigades set up at Shortland and Grahamstown. The latter was formed around 1870, and the former two years later. Church bells were used to summon the volunteers. The brigades were merged with the building of a station in Pahau Street in 1912, rebuilt in 1968.

50 Julie Smith ‘Volunteer Fire Brigade’ In Search of the Rainbow pp. 153-155.

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An ambulance service was set up in Coromandel in 1958, funded by private donation and a County Council grant and housed in the Fire Station. Staffed by local volunteers, it was placed on a more secure footing in 1967 when the CCC was enabled under the Rating Act to levy for the running of an ambulance service in both Coromandel and Whitianga. In 1978 the service was merged with the Thames Hospital Ambulance Operations Board and in 1993 came under the control of the Order of St John.51 In 2001 a new ambulance station was opened next to the Fire Station.

Fig. 21: Women’s Rest Rooms/Plunket Building with Memorial Arch, Kapanga Road, Coromandel The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Vol. 15, Issue 3 (June 1, 1940), available at www.nzetc.org

Health and welfare services for the Peninsula’s mothers and babies were introduced to Thames in 1914 by visiting nurses from the Plunket Society’s Auckland division. The first meeting to convene a Thames branch was held in December 1922 but it was not until December 1933 that the Society welcomed the completion of a purpose-built facility on the council reserve in Queen Street. Approval was given to relocate this building to Pipiroa in 2000, after it was vacated by the Plunket Society, which now has its rooms in Cochrane Street.

Plunket services commenced in Coromandel in 1931, provided by a visiting Thames nurse who met her charges once a month in the ladies’ restroom donated to the town in 1929 by Coromandel businessman Samuel James.52 This building is currently being refurbished.

51 Irene Hansen and Tom Whittle ‘Ambulance’ In Search of the Rainbow pp. 150-151. 52 Julie Smith ‘Hospital’ and ‘Plunket’ In Search of the Rainbow p. 145-150.

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The Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union, later Federated Farmers (WDFF), was active in the Thames-Coromandel area from soon after its national founding in 1925. A Colville branch was set up in 1930, working to improve the lives of local families and raising money towards causes such as the construction of the Colville Hall and the work of the Coromandel Hospital.53 At one time the Thames District Federation of the Country Women’s Institute had as many as nine branches active through the Thames Coromandel District. One of the first to be established was the Mercury Bay branch (January 1931); Coromandel followed in October 1931, and Tairua in August 1935.54 Meeting in community and church halls and in private homes, both women’s organisations were significant for their support of women in the smaller urban and rural communities of the district. Women were encouraged to enter competitions to demonstrate their household skills and art and craft talents, and found valuable support through membership of these and other community organisations, including Plunket, school and church committees.

Returned servicemen found support and comradeship in the Returned Services Association, founded in Coromandel in 1932 and based at the former Catholic convent school, St George’s Hall. A woman’s section was formed in 1944. The Thames RSA was formed around the same time but ceased to exist after it got into financial difficulties in 2002 and its building was bought by the TCDC on behalf of the Thames Community Board.55 In Whangamata the RSA is prominently located on Port Road, having been incorporated in 1954. The gun mounted outside its meeting rooms is a Bofors anti-aircraft gun, which enjoyed considerable popularity amongst the Western allies during World War Two.

Fig. 22: RSA, Whangamata © Anne Challinor, 2009

53 Simons, p. 74. 54 New Zealand Country Women’s Institutes: 60th Anniversary Booklet (1921-1981) (NZCWI, 1981), pp. 32-35. 55 ‘Thames Council bails out RSA’, New Zealand Herald, 7 June 2002.

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