FSO Oldest Building

I spent most of Friday and Friday night in Kerikeri so will post about that area's oldest buildings, which also happen to be amongst New Zealand's oldest buildings.

Kemp House, sitting beside the pretty Kerikeri Inlet, is New Zealand's oldest building.  It was built by Maori sawyers and missionary carpenters from the London-based Church Missionary Society in 1820-21 and predates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi by almost 20 years.

 

The house is the sole survivor of the Musket Wars of the 1820s.  It was built for the missionary, the Reverend John Butler, and used by other missionaries after Butler left in 1823 and was occupied by storekeeper and blacksmith James Kemp and his wife Charlotte when the adjacent Stone Store - now the oldest stone building in New Zealand - was built from 1832.

The Kemps continued to live in the house after the mission station folded in 1848, operating a kauri gum business from the Stone Store. The dwelling and gardens passed down through the family until it was gifted to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust in 1974.

The building is significant for its association with buried archaeological deposits and a broader historic landscape that includes nearby buildings, Kororipo pa and natural features. It enjoys high public esteem as a cradle of nationhood, due to its association with early contact between Maori and missionaries.

Sign outside Kemp House front door

The Stone Store was constructed to hold mission supplies and wheat from the mission farm but the building was mainly leased as a kauri gum trading store.   Is it NZ's oldest stone building. It was designed by Wesleyan missionary John Hobbs, and built by Australian convict William Parrott.

 

But before the English got busy building houses and stone stores they were very active missionaries.  The first sermon was preached on Christmas Day 1814 by the  Reverend Samuel Marsden.

This monument stands at Marsden Cross where that sermon was preached,  New Zealand’s first missionary settlement (after the chief of Rangihoua pa, Ruatara gifted Marsden the land for the settlement).  The photo is taken from a pitching boat on the sea so is not all that clear.  From a little further out to sea you can see the terraces on this slope today, where the missionaries’ homes were and also the country’s first school house.

The 1830s saw a great increase in shipping in the Bay of Islands, and a corresponding increase in the number of undesirable characters who chose to make their homes here.  There was no law enforcement and Kororareka, where Russell stands today, became the wildest, most wicked and disorderly community in the entire Pacific and was known as The Hell hole of the Pacific.

Naturally, this was a bit of a thorn in the flesh of the conscientious missionaries and they decided to build a church in Russell.  The little building bore little resemblance to the church as it is today but still it retains the title of New Zealand's oldest church.  Not its first church, not its first place of worship, but its oldest surviving church.

Look carefully and you will see musket holes still visible in the side of the church, a reminder of the lawlessness of the times.

The missionaries were busy saving souls but eventually there was law and order to punish the worst of the sinners.  The police station was completed in the late 1860s and first occupied in 1870, New Zealand's first police station.  For a time it served as a custom house but is still in use today as the local policeman's residence.

I'm a bit late getting this posted, have just enjoyed a great week in the north.  To see other Oldest Buildings in the towns of the Friday My Town Shoot out crowd, pop over here.

FSO - Oldest building

I knew where to find it, just followed the path to Reyburn House.

Whangarei's oldest house started life as a small cottage, the home of Robert Reyburn Junior, son of one of the first settlers in the area.  Robert and his brothers James and John are commenorated in the central city street names.  It expanded, presumably as Robert's family grew or perhaps as he prospered; the family were involved in the wool and shipping industries.  It is the only surviving house of the original pioneer settlement.  It fell into ruin as the area around it became industrial.  

I remember its move to its current location in 1984, and learned yesterday that there had been an earlier move in 1972.  It has been the home of the Northland Society of Arts since 1966 and thanks to their efforts now  this gracious, lovingly restored and preserved colonial building is an art gallery.

 

One of the ladies working in the gallery told me that when it came time to redecorate the inside of the house the Historic Places Trust had insisted that they apply wallpaper reminiscent of the era of the house.  But the Arts Society had won that argument and made sure the inside is vibrant and alive.   It sure is!

 

I'm glad this topic gave me the incentive to find out a bit more about the history of Reyburn House.  It's a lovely building, a place I like to visit occasionally and I will appreciate it a bit more now I think.  I know I'm going to enjoy looking at the oldest buildings in the rest of the FSO team's towns.