Township 7 km east of New Plymouth. In 1860 a stockade was built by European settlers on the hill overlooking the town – but many houses were still destroyed by Māori forces. A series of extensive subdivisions in the 1960s and 1970s expanded the town so it effectively became part of New Plymouth. The city’s airport is in Bell Block. Queen Elizabeth visited the Bell Block Dairy Factory on 9 January 1954.
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Meaning of place name
Bell Block was named after Francis Dillon Bell, the New Zealand Company’s resident agent in Taranaki in 1847–48.
