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Petone war memorial

Petone war memorial.

Jock Phillips and Chris Maclean, c1986

Glennis Austin, 2005

Site	Style	Ornamentation	Unveiling Date	No of Dead
Sports ground	Soldier at ease		25-Apr-1922

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Early Workers' Dwelling - State Housing in New Zealand

Children at the gate of one of the first workers' dwellings, 13 Patrick Street, Petone. This state house is indistinguishable from private houses constructed at the same time.

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PA1-q-103-051-1
Photographer: Albert Percy Godber
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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Petone state house

Workers' dwellings were built specifically for married workers with children. This shows a young family (plus 'Rover') in front of one of the first workers' dwellings in Petone c.1910.

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: APG-0448-1/2
Photographer: Albert Percy Godber
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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petone

Honiana Te Puni NZ Wars memorial

This memorial stands in the Te Puni Street urupā – burial ground – in Petone, a seaside suburb of Lower Hutt City whose correct Māori name (Pito-one) means ‘end of the sand beach’. It commemorates the prominent Te Ātiawa leader Honiana Te Puni’s ‘unbroken friendship’ with Pākehā.

Te Puni belonged to the Ngāti Te Whiti and Ngāti Tawhirikura hapū of Te Ātiawa. He and his younger cousin Te Wharepōuri were among the first to welcome the New Zealand Company ship Tory when it arrived in what would become Port Nicholson (Wellington Harbour) on 20 September 1839.

The first New Zealand Company settler ship, Aurora, arrived at Petone on 22 January 1840. This marked the founding of the settlement that would become Wellington.

Te Puni became a firm friend of the new arrivals. His people built houses for the settlers and supplied food in exchange for European clothing and other goods. Later, he provided military advice and assistance.

Not all Māori were happy with the influx of Europeans to the Wellington region. By 1845 tensions were mounting as Ngāti Toa chief Te Rangihaeata supported local hapu such as Ngāti Rangatahi which opposed European settlement in the Hutt Valley.

On 16 May 1846, Tōpine Te Mamaku of Ngāti Hāua-te-rangi – Ngāti Rangatahi’s Whanganui allies – led a raid on the British military stockade at Boulcott’s Farm, 5 km up the Hutt River from Petone. Six British soldiers were killed and another soldier and a farm worker were mortally wounded.

Two weeks earlier, Te Puni had warned of an impending attack. His offer to assist Major Mathew Richmond if he was supplied with arms and ammunition had been rejected.

After Boulcott’s Farm, however, Te Puni was issued with 100 muskets. He built a stockade between Fort Richmond (Lower Hutt) and Boulcott’s Farm, and strengthened his own pā at Petone.

Skirmishes took place between Te Puni’s men and Ngāti Hāua-te-rangi on 2 June. Although Te Puni did not wish to initiate an attack, he was prepared to assist the Europeans. Te Puni’s son later crossed the Hutt River, occupied a position that had been held by Ngāti Rangatahi, and forced them to retreat without battle.

In July Te Puni’s forces escorted militia and armed police across the western Hutt hills to Pāuatahanui. This action helped to prevent further occupation of the Hutt by Te Rangihaeata and his allies.

Te Puni died on 5 December 1870 and was buried in the family cemetery, the urupā at Petone, on the 9th. The funeral was ‘as great a one as the city [Wellington] could give’. Government offices, banks and commercial houses were closed for the day, and ‘everybody of any consequence, who could possibly make the trip, went out to Petone by sea or road’.

Pallbearers included Native Minister Donald McLean and William Fitzherbert, the local Member of the House of Representatives. The Bishop of Wellington, Octavius Hadfield, read the funeral service and three volleys were fired over Te Puni’s grave by members of the Hutt Volunteers.

This memorial was erected in 1872. The Ōamaru stone was carved by a Mr Membray from a design by Colonial Architect William Clayton.

In December 1907, Te Puni’s monument was described as the ‘saddest feature’ of the ‘forlorn’ urupā at Petone. Within the burial ground, many graves had no markers and long grass covered the area. The memorial itself leant sadly awry, its base tilted. Some rings had been broken from the stone at the top, the entire structure was covered in moss, and the fence railings were rusted.

It is unclear what action was taken, when, and by whom. However, a photograph taken by an Evening Post staffer on 23 January 1940 shows Te Puni’s memorial in better times. A large group surrounds the gravesite shortly after Deputy Prime Minister Walter Nash laid a wreath in memory of the chief to mark Wellington’s centennial.

The urupā in which Te Puni’s memorial stands remains in use, although it is now within an industrial area.

Additional images

See also these 1940 and undated images of the memorial from the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Inscription

Front face
To the memory of / Honiana Te Puni / A Chief of Ngatiawa / who died on the / 5th of December 1870

Side face
This / monument is erected by the / New Zealand government / in consideration of the / unbroken friendship / between him and the Pakeha

Rear face
Ko te Tohu Tenei o / Honiana Te Puni / Rangatira o Ngatiawa / I Mate I Te / 5th Tihema 1870

Side face
Na Te Kawanatanga Oniu / Tireni Tenei Kowhatu I / Whakatu Hei Tohu Mo Te / Piri Pono O Taua Kaumatua / Ki Te Pakeha

Further information

‘Local and General News’, Wellington Independent, 2 February 1872
‘Te Puni. A Petone Chief’, Evening Post, 5 December 1907
Angela Ballara, ‘Te Puni-kokopu, Honiana’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1 September 2010
James Cowan, ‘Wellington Settlement and Hutt War’ and ‘The Fight at Boulcott’s Farm’, in The New Zealand Wars: a history of the Maori campaigns and the pioneering period: volume I: 1845–1864, R.E. Owen, Wellington, 1955, pp. 88–111
Chris Pugsley, ‘Walking the Wellington Wars: The Hutt War of 1846 and the Fight at Boulcott’s Farm’, New Zealand Defence Quarterly, no. 6 (Spring 1994), pp. 36–41
Louis E. Ward, ‘Death and Burial of Te Puni, 1870’, in Early Wellington, Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland, 1928, pp. 172–6

Credit:

Images: Margaret Marks, 2009

Text: Karen Cameron

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New Zealand Company surveyors arrive in Port Nicholson

Surveyors arrived in Port Nicholson to lay out plans for the proposed New Zealand Company settlement of Britannia at Pito-one (Petone). When this site proved unsuitable, the town was relocated across the harbour. It would be called Wellington in honour of the victor in the Battle of Waterloo.

The survey party, led by Captain William Mein Smith, arrived on the Cuba, a name that would become a familiar part of the region’s landscape, with Cuba Streets in both Petone and central Wellington. A map for the new settlement had been prepared in England by Samuel Cobham. It was designed primarily to convince investors to support the venture. This incredibly orderly design with its grid pattern contained familiar names to remind settlers of England – though Covent Garden, Soames Square and Billingsgate Fish Market did not make it to the final settlement.

The New Zealand Company and its model of systematic colonisation was the brainchild of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Central to his plans for was a package of land consisting of a town acre (0.4 ha) and an accompanying 100 country acres (40 ha). There were 1100 one-acre town sections in the plan for Port Nicholson, but Mein Smith struggled to reproduce this on the ground because of the geography of the area.

Time was also against Mein Smith. The Company was desperate to move before the British government intervened in New Zealand. As a result an impossible timeframe was set for the Company surveyors. When the first settler ship arrived on 22 January, there was no sign on the ground of the carefully laid out plan.

Image: The Cuba at anchor in Port Nicholson

Petone railway station war memorial

A large crowd gathers by the flagpole alongside Petone railway station during Anzac Day commemorations in 1916.

On the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, 25 April 1916, a commemorative flagpole made from kauri and Australian hardwood – symbolising ‘the unity of Australian and New Zealand railwaymen in peace and war’ – was unveiled at Petone railway station. The old station has since been demolished, but the flagpole was partially restored in 1985 and completely refurbished in 2005.

Petone Railway Station Memorial today

Credit:

Main image:

Alexander Turnbull Library,
Reference: APG-0589-1/2;G
Photographer: by Albert Percy Godber

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

Other images:

Images courtesy of Mike Mellor, executive officer, Rail Heritage Trust of New Zealand, 2005

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