 | The Streets of my city, Wellington New Zealand, by F. L. Irvine-Smith. (1948).
Part Three Chapter One |
| Contents: a letter | Part One chapters: 1 | 2 | Part Two chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 Part Three chapters: Intro | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Appendix | |
L'Allegro.
THORNDON, N.1, the only one of the northern suburbs not perching more or less precariously upon the hill-tops, occupies much of the original Thorndon Flat of 1840. The name is a reminder of Thorndon Hall, the Essex home of Lord Petre, a prominent director of the Company. This part of the city was Colonel Wakefield's first choice of a site for the settlement, but as we have seen, owing to his absence at the arrival of the Company's surveyors, the latter diverted survey arrangements to the Hutt Valley, where a larger area of level land promised a more satisfactory result.
Thorndon is still the official end of the city. Here are to be found the Dominion Houses of Parliament, the Ministerial residences, the leading churches, Anglican and Roman Catholic, the Law Courts and the Government Buildings. Here in the early decades lived mostly everybody who was somebody. Here stood the vice-regal residence until removed in 1910 to the opposite end of the city where the local Mental Hospital, Mt. View Asylum, established in 1875, was demolished and its extensive grounds used for the new Government House, two to three acres of the College Reserve also being added to provide a suitable entrance from Dufferin Street.
Thorndon is undoubtedly the most historic part of the city. Within its limits was played out the greater part of the city's shining story of the past; within its old hill cemetery rest most of those who wrote the story page by page. But residentially speaking, its greatest days are over, and this is subtly apparent in an air of faded gentility which pervades many, though by no means all, of its erstwhile selectest residential retreats.
If you wish to see one of the oldest wooden residences in New Zealand (the very oldest is the wooden two-storey house erected in 1819 at the Bay of Islands by Mr. Jas. Kemp) go to Thorndon. There it stands, a quaint little structure with its attic rooms half hidden by karakas and lofty camellia bushes, slumbering away its last remaining days in the little overgrown garden at the southern corner of Park Street and Grant Road. When built in 1847 by Mr. William Dorset, brother of Dr. John Dorset of the "Tory" (q.v.), it stood in an acre of ground that fronted on to Tinakori Road, but most of the land has long since been built over by a line of houses facing Park Street. Here too, lived Dr. Dorset and here at present lives Miss Dorset, the last surviving child of his brother, Mr. William Dorset. The latter, accompanied by his wife and three children, reached Wellington in 1846 in the ship "Hope." In addition to his town acre, he later acquired a block of rural land to which he gave, in memory of the vessel, the name of "Hope Farm."
Across the road, at the corner of Park Street and Grant Road, stands a well-preserved cottage, the remaining one of four built about 1855 by Mr. T. H. Clapham, a well-known Thorndon resident of early days. The materials used were from the dismantled soldiers' barracks in Fitzherbert Terrace. One of Thorndon's most attractive modern buildings is the new Wellington Railway Station, completed in 1937 at a cost of £330,000.
Thorndon has been mainly considered in other parts of the book.
Proceeding northewest from Thorndon up the Tinakori Hills, we reach the truly hill suburb of Wadestown, formerly known as "Wade's Town." This too is one of the city's oldest suburbs and takes its name from John Wade, an arrival in 1840 by the "Integrity," who with James Watt, another pioneer, in 1841 acquired land in this locality and divided it into one. and two-acre lots which were quickly taken up. Hence Wade Street (N.2) and Watt Street (N.2). One of these early Wade and Watt streets whose name still remains unchanged (See Park's Map, 1841) is Pitt Street, presumably named by the partners after the British statesman. Another is Baker Street, which commemorates Major Richard Baker, magistrate, an arrival in 1840 by the "Aurora," who played a prominent part in early affairs. Mr. Wade was a pioneer of many activities. He was the first to build a sailing-craft in Wellington, the schooner "Mary Ann Wade," 43 tons, built at Kaiwarra in 1842, but alas, on its trial trip around Wellington Harbour, it had the misfortune to go to the bottom. Its owner then confined his attentions to auctioneering and dealing, his place of business being situated on town acre 208, near the present Duke of Edinburgh Hotel, a spot known to early pioneers as "Johnny Wade's Corner." Assuredly John Wade had an itching foot, for in 1849 he departed for the Californian goldfields, and New Zealand saw him no more. History does not record his success in that field, but we learn that after subsequently turning his attention to law, he established a lucrative practice in San Francisco.
Roscoe Terrace keeps alive the memory of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Roscoe, who made their home at Wadestown for many years, returning to England early in the century for the closing years of their lives. Both were ardent church workers, Mr. Roscoe from 1881 to 1903 a lay reader of the Anglican Church and Mrs. Roscoe organist at St. Luke's, Wadestown, where a tablet affixed to the pulpit informs :
In the sixties Wadestown was enhanced by what was then a very fine mansion, "The Grange," which did much to raise the social status of the suburb. Today, with a more easily graded approach and a rapid bus service, Wadestown possesses some of the finest homes in the city.
Lying in the valley at the back of this suburb is the Otari Plant Reserve, consisting of about one hundred and forty acres of dense forest, one of the Dominion's most valuable collections of native flora. This was formerly known, and still is to many, as "Wilton's Bush," and was owned in later years by Messrs. Wilton and the late Mr. Martin Chapman. As a Public Reserve it was officially opened by the Mayor of the City, Sir Charles Norwood, in 1926. Its preservation is mainly due to the knowledge and enthusiasm of Leonard Cockayne (1855 - 1934), C.M.G., F.R.S., PH.D., DSC., an ecological botanist of worldwide reputation, who resided for some years in the neighbouring suburb of Ngaio. In a notable address, published in his "Ideals of Nationhood," Lord Bledisloe describes Dr. Cockayne as the greatest of the Empire's botanists, a generous tribute from one plant expert to another. Sir Arthur Hill, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, gives equal praise. "Unrecognised and unlabelled at first, Cockayne in New Zealand was already an ecologist waiting for the term to be adopted by botanists, and fully trained to lead the way, not in New Zealand only, but in the world." Not the least of his work consisted in valuable investigations concerning the relative palatability of various pasture plants, research that was of benefit to the entire world. He is fittingly interred within the Reserve, among the plants he knew and understood so well.
Blackbridge Road on the way to Wilton's Bush, takes its name from a bridge over the Kaiwarra Stream, a structure which began life with a coat of black paint. Close at hand, leading into the Wilton property, was the "Ha'penny Gate," whose name was due to the visible use of such a coin as an improvised nut to hold a bolt. Ingenious days! They had to be so.
Kaiwarra (N.3), the third northern suburb, lies at the harbour entrance of the gorge forming the northern face of Wadestown. The name, derived from the wharawhara or kupe, a native lily, is a corruption of Kai-wharawhara and should be restored to its correct form, since there can be no double consonants in Maori, nor for that matter, can two consonants come together, except the diphthongal ng and wh.
It was from Kaiwarra that the old Porirua Road, once the main highway of the Wellington settlement to the west coast and onward, made its way, though the first and steepest part was soon avoided by the use of a Gorge Road constructed by Captain Daniell in 1845, in order to reach his farm at the head of the Ngaio Gorge. But in 1846 Te Rauparaha had to be reached by armed forces, and Sir George Grey, with a Roman appreciation of road tactics, employed the military to widen and improve the Porirua Road as far as Paramata, in order that troops could move quickly on the tracks of the wily Rau, On the way, several stockades were built. The first was at Khandallah, on what was known as Sentry Box Hill, which gives its name to the present thoroughfare of Box Hill (N.5), The next was at Johnson's Cleating - now Johnsonville. Further north, near the present Glenside, was "Middleton's Stockade," and finally, there was built the solid two-storey "Port Paremata," whose picturesque ruins are now almost a thing of the past. By 1860 Cobb and Co's coaches were bowling along the renewed Old Porirua Road to Wanganui. (For Kaiwarra see also "Maori Streets".)
Kaiwarra streets make a small parcel. Pickering Street, Pickering Terrace and Pickering Lane keep in threefold memory one of the early Kaiwarra families of whom no local member now remains; Winchester Street and Westminster Street are reminders of the Homeland, and Fore Street with its upward climb repeats the configuration of the little Fore Street to be found in far away Totnes on the Dart.
Strange! Where one might expect to find none but Scotch street names, not one appears.
Proceeding up the gorge from Kaiwarra along a later route constructed by the Onslow Borough, the road at the summit turns sharply to the north and enters an upland valley containing the suburb of Ngaio, named after one of the trees of the New Zealand Flora (Myoporum laetum), the ngaio tree. This valley, over 300 feet above sea-level, and out of sight of the city proper, can also, since 1885, be reached from Wellington by train, making its way through the intervening hills by no fewer than five tunnels. Along the eastern upper face of the valley runs the Old Porirua Road (at this part now changed to Cockayne Road) into which the lower valley road, a continuation of Captain Daniell's gorge route, merges upon reaching Khandallah.
The earlier name for Ngaio was "Crofton," called after the house built here in the sixties by Sir William Fox, Ngaio's most notable pioneer. It is still in occupation, indeed has but recently been divided into modern flats. The site of this house, then fourteen acres, was acquired in 1858 from the Crown by Sir William Fox. Later he bought a property at Marton and built a house which he also called Crofton. Wherefore, on August 12th, 1908, in order to avoid confusion, the authorities changed the name of the Wellington suburb to Ngaio.
This suburb has the distinction of being one of the earliest centres of learning in the province. In January, 1863, under the auspices of the Anglican Church, a Collegiate School for boys was opened in the late residence of Sir William Fox (q.v.), at "Upper Kaiwarra," as the suburb was then called. The first headmaster was Mr. W. L. Martin, late of H.M. 15th Regiment, and an Etonian. He remained for two years and in 1865 was succeeded by the Rev. H. Woodford St. Hill of St. Paul's Pro-Cathedral, a younger brother of Mr. Henry St. Hill, the Wellington magistrate, who died in London in 1866. The school, well patronised by young Wellingtonians, continued to flourish for ten years and was generally known as "Crofton College, Kaiwarra." Mr. Woodford St. Hill later became Vicar of Havelock N. and after that, Canon of Napier Cathedral.
As with other suburbs of the city, many early Ngaio street names, after the amalgamation of the outlying boroughs with the city, found themselves duplicated, and preference being given to city names, those of the suburbs had of necessity to take on newer names, frequently selected at random by the Council. Thus old names recalling the forties - Halswell Street, Daniell Street, Lawrence Street - became, by a stroke of the pen, transmogrified into Chelmsford Street, Kenya Street, Perth Street.
Such Ngaio street names as Imlay Crescent, Abbott Street and Trelissick Crescent carry us back to Ngaio's earliest memories, for one of the very first settlers of the district was Captain Edward Daniell, a Cornishman of distinction, who had arrived in 1840. In 1845 he settled at Upper Kaiwarra, naming his holding "Trelissick Farm," but later took up a block in the Rangitikei district, part of which he cut up in 1866 as the township of Bulls. Captain Daniell's son, Captain Ralph Allen Daniell, married Mary, daughter of Peter Imlay, a wellknown pioneer of Wanganui, but her husband dying at the early age of twenty-seven. she subsequently became Mrs. Joseph Abbott.
Readers familiar with Cambridge (Eng.) may be interested to note in passing that Peter Imlay's second daughter, Jessie, married Dr. Saunders, a medical graduate of Caius College,(1) Cambridge, and to the property acquired by the Doctor upon settling in New 'Zealand, he gave the name of Gonville, after his son, Gonville Saunders, while to the streets thereupon constructed were given the names of Cambridge Street, Caius Avenue, Gonville Avenue, and Kings Avenue (2) as visible reminders of his unforgotten almamater.
Other early Ngaio residents were the Chews, Aplins, Careys, Bidmeads, Camerons and Radcliffes, of whom the Aplins, the Radcliffes and the Chews (in the person of Mrs. Gibson, nee Chew) are still, in 1948, esteemed residents, to say nothing of the three pioneer homes erected by Sir William Fox (1860), Mr. Chew (1869) and Mr. Radcliffe (1879) which, picturesque and gabled, smiling and well cared for, seem to defy time.
John Chew, engineer, for some years in the Wellington Harbour Board, was born in Lancashire in 1825 and came to Wellington in 1858 by the "Oliver Laing." He bought 212 acres of land at Crofton, as Ngaio was then called, added to this 200 acres of lease-hold, and was engaged in timbermilling, his city timber yards being situated on the north side of what is now Chews Lane (C.1). Christopher Aplin settled in Ngaio in 1865 and began farming by the purchase of 75 acres of bush-clearing and the lease of a further 100 acres. He had reached New Zealand two years previously in the "Asterope," and hailed from Dorsetshire, where he first saw the light at Lyme Regis in 1844. His early years had been passed on his father's farm, "Colway Farm" in Dorsetshire, and to streets in time constructed over his Ngaio block were given the names of Colway Street, Aplin Terrace and Albert Street (after his eldest son), since changed to Bombay Street. Miss Bidmead in 1860 married C. E. W. Willeston, J.P., so long a member of the Wellington City Council, after whom Willeston Street (C.1) is named.
Armitage Street, constructed by the late John Holmes of Ngaio, a two-year-old arrival with his parents in the "Oriental" in 1840, was named after his son, John Armitage Holmes, a former farmer in Hawke's Bay, who, like so many more, has retired for the evening of his days to the warmer latitudes of Auckland. John Holmes (Senr.) also constructed Holmes Street, a name now changed to Orari Street, to avoid confusion with Home Street (C.3).
With rapid electric trains (installed in 1938) (3) reaching the suburb every half hour, or less, Ngaio houses are fast climbing the terraces of the surrounding hill-sides. There is today no trace upon the hills of the former covering of dense forest that met the eyes of the first pioneers but "their strength remains," their encircling shelter and beauty, which makes a sudden transition to a flat terrain for a Ngaio hill-dweller, nay, for any Wellington suburbanite, almost insupportable.
Following the Ngaio Valley north and ascending on the way to a height of almost five hundred feet, the suburb of Khandallah is reached, the most northerly of the city suburbs. The name is due to an early resident, Captain Andrews, late of the Indian Army, the father, by the way, of Mrs. Kenneth Wilson, whose husband was the first Principal of Wellington College. On the completion of the Manawatu Railway, Captain Andrews gave the land for the Khandallah Station on condition that all trains stopped at this suburb. To conform with the name of Khandallah, the streets of this suburb in recent years have likewise received Indian names. (4)
Not only do new streets as they are formed, now receive Indian place names, but older Khandallah thoroughfares bearing names of historic interest have been rechristened in similar fashion. The result is that the street names of this suburb, with a few exceptions as noted, give no indication of the settlement or development of the district, and are possibly no more meaningful to the Khandallah residents than a collection of Maori street names would be to residents in India.
The name of Simla Crescent however, is due to S. C. G. Vickers, one of the early settlers of the district, who first resided in "Woodmancote," but later built in Crescent Road a house (5) (still standing, but not the one now called "Simla") which, in view of the hilly situation and to keep the Indian atmosphere set by the name Khandallah, he called "Simla," the original ground of which extended from Clark Street right down the eastern side of Simla Crescent to the Railway line. In later years (July, 1925) when it was found necessary to change the name of Crescent Road, that of Mr. Vickers' house was adopted, making Simla Crescent the first Indian street name in the locality.
Mr. Vickers was one of the earliest churchwardens of St. Barnabas Anglican Church, Khandallah. Likewise his son-in-law C. T. H. Brown of the Lands and Survey Department, later a Commissioner of the Native Land Court, who had come to New Zealand in 1875 with his father, Captain Carey Brown of the Royal Engineers.
Khandallah is blessed with a double share of beauty-the beauty of the forest and the beauty of the sea. Early settlement, true to type, kept mainly to the valley floor, whose western barrier of hills, no longer bare as in other parts, is densely clothed with a second growth of native forest wisely set aside as a Reserve, of which the forest-clad slopes are fortunately immune, for all time, from the inroads of the land speculator.(6)
Later settlement, after climbing the eastern side of the valley, has spilled over the crest and down the harbour face, where houses, rating and shelving in the footholds of the hills, look out upon a scene of ineffable beauty - the gleaming waters of the bay, sparkling and scintillating in the morning air, the soaring peaks beyond, catching the sunset in a ring of endless light, the thousand myriad city lights when day is done. Along the crest of the harbour face abreast Khandallah runs Jubilee Road, the pride of every city councillor's macadamising heart, whose houses, like opera boxes set in garlands of encircling gardens, confront the incomparable and everechanging drop scene that lies before.
More alluring still to some is the older valley road on the western side, the aforesaid Simla Crescent (once just "The Crescent") skirting the foot of the slopes of the western hills, fringed with old houses and gardens whcre forest and lawn and flower-bed blend into one harmonious whole - a road where rata and rangiora still brush against the passer-by, and the air, redolent in flowering-time with the perfume of the bush, is at times vocal as well with the songs of fast-disappearing native birds. They sang too, those first Khandallah pioneers, as well as the birds. One thinks of many an early Simla name - Chamberlain, Neale and Nicholls, Hogben, Hanna and Steele, Patterson, Aitken and James (7) - alike inspired by some revealing muse to voice their thoughts, and of that great tree-student and exponent, Sir David Hutchins, who passed the closing years of his long and useful life near by, and daily patrolled these sylvan ways, consorting with the native trees.
Sir David Hutchins, (8) the charm of whose personality still lingers in some of the quiet corners of Khandallah, was possibly the greatest forestry expert that ever set foot upon our shores. Having graduated in forestry in France, he entered the Indian Forest Service, passing after ten years to South Africa, where he held the position of Conservator of Forests in Cape Colony, as well as Director of Forests for various other parts of Africa. After reporting upon the forests of Cyprus he came to Australia, at the invitation of the Australian Government, in order to report upon the forests of the Commonwealth. In 1916 he performed a similar service for New Zealand, where he deeply deplored, with good reason, the forest ravages made by commetcial exploitation, by fire and by sheer waste. He lectured and wrote freely, and it was largely owing to his urgent representations, that the New Zealand Department of Foresty was established. His intimate knowledge of the forests of Europe enabled him to demonstrate clearly how, in the advanced countries of Europe, the poor lands under productive forests could pour their millions into the national coffers. "Plant trees, plant more trees, and keep on planting trees," was his insistent advice. As a people we may, and we do, beyond the ordinary, love the flowers that line our herbaceous borders (especially if we have paid well for our plants) but there is no denying that, as regards the trusteeship of our magnificent native forests, we have been sad sinners. It may be that the no-state-forestry policy of the Motherland is still in our blood, and not having any nobility and gentry to preserve them for game cover, away go the trees - and away goes the soil.
At No. 34, Simla Crescent, there lived for a time in the early years of the century a small boy, "Robin," otherwise, Robert Stevenson Aitken, destined to become a bright and particular star in the realms of higher learning in both the New World and the Old. It is pleasant to reflect that at the time of writing (1948) Professor Aitken, M.D. (N.Z.), D.PHIL. (Oxon), F.R.C.P. (London), F.R.C.P. (Edinburgh), is returning to his native land as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Otago. The world is in debt to many a Son of the Manse.
The northern end of Simla Crescent runs into Clarke Street (misspelt for Clark), ending in a veritable avenue of over-arching native forest trees which leads straight into the green coolth of the Reserve. Here, among more modern dwellings, are a few of the old homes, tucked away in truly sylvan settings - that of the picturesquely placed home of the Clarks, after whom this bosky way is named, of the late Major Davy, of M. Crompton-Smith, son of the author of "Hawaiki," the classic publication on the migrations of the Maori, of the Seeds, earliest of Wellington pioneers. Peep in their hall door. It may be that hanging there is a velvet coat that once adorned no less a person than the illustrious Robert Louis Stevenson himself, for the late L. H. B. Wilson (9) of Wellington married a Miss Seed of days past, and R.L.S. and L.H.B. had come into the world the sons respectively of the two daughters of the Scotch divine, Dr. Balfour of Colinton Manse, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It was to these New Zealand cousins that R.L.S. sent from Vailima his stepson, Austin Strong, to further his education at Wellington College. He himself paid several flying visits to New Zealand. In 1890, he came in the trading steamer "Janet Nicoll," to whose part owner, Ben Hird, as one of his three sea friends, he dedicated the "Island Nights Entertainments." The last time he came was in 1893 when the "Mariposa" called at Auckland, on which occasion Sir George Grey called for him and took him off for a literary clack. Mrs. Stevenson accompanied her husband and much annoyed the "Mariposa" passengers by taking her deck constitutional in bare feet. So did her husband, but there it was excused as the eccentricity of genius. Those strait-laced days of the "naughty" nineties! Robert Louis' tartan plaidie also reposes in the old Khandallah home, so fraught with memories of the old world and the new.
R.L.S. is not the only literary star that has moved, for a longer or shorter time, across the firmament of these distant isles. Charles Darwin, as naturalist, during "The Voyage of the Beagle," visited the Bay of Islands in 1834, but was not favourably impressed. A rough passage across the Pacific from Tahiti had given him more than a passing touch of mal de mer; Maori etiquette was not to his liking, and he describes the missionary station as "the one bright spot in an ill-ordered land." He never came back, but Captain Chaffers, R.N., in charge of the "Beagle," was to see New Zealand again in 1839 as Captain of the "Tory."
Froude, the historian, came in 1885, and was the guest of Sir George Grey in his island home of Kawau. He was collecting material for "Oceana," and in it describes the island and his host in hyperbolically glowing terms.
Before this time "Erewhon" Butler had tried sheep-farming in the colony, and had purchased, near the headwaters of the Rangitata River, a run which he called "Mesopotamia." Here he remained from 1860 to 1864, when he sold out and returned to England with his bank balance considerably increased, Anthony Trollope, (10) too, was an early visitor, and had torn himself away from cathedral precincts in 1872 to take a flying visit to the Antipodes. He gives us a moving description of our coaching transport in its pristine days, when he travelled in the depth of winter to Dunedin by coach from Queenstown, where he had been the brief guest of Mr. John Scott, (11) the pioneer settler of the Routeburn Valley.
Kipling arrived in 1890, since when at least one line from the pen of the immortal bard has fixed itself in the minds of every Wellingtonian, whether poetically inclined or not: -
pollen on the pine.
He was another of those tip-and-run travellers, who make a rapid passage and register equally rapid impressions. It seems odd to think he set off from Wellington for Auckland in a buggy, with a small grey mare that carried him through. Odder still, that on the way he records that he noticed, "herds of wild horses that tangle their feet in their long-blown manes." But that's a trifle. Remember he also records that Wellingtonians are, "so large, so long-eyelashed and so extraordinarily good looking."
In 1900 the inimitable Mark Twain descended upon our shores in the course of a lecturing tour, but failed to impress the New Zealand Innocents to any anticipated extent. They preferred his books.
Hendrik van Loon came sailing by in 1933 in the guise of cicerone to an American luxury ship, with its first port of call at Auckland. Auckland rose at him and secured, to crowded audiences, during his one day's stay, a good lecture in the morning, a better in the afternoon, and a better still in the evening. In Wellington one private school seized its unrivalled opportunity.
And then came Shaw! In 1934! We hung upon his very commas. Rocked with joy at his Shavian impudence. So did he. But he was generous to the young. On the night of his departure he consented to be extricated from a comfortable cabin at 7.30 p.m. (the boat was to sail at midnight) by a band of Shavinistic students, who escorted him to a local clubroom and made an unforgettable evening of it. With pardonable pride did they present to the Great Man their star dramatic member, Mary Cooley (Mrs. Craig Mackenzie) destined to become the city's finest female exponent of dramatic art. Fortunate city!
And later in the thirties (1936) Zane Grey came a-fishing for to catch a marlin. He too had a glimpse of the capital city, for one fine morning, a portly professor of literature, walking into the leading Wellington book store, deeply deplored, viva voce, the generous display of Zane Grey literature in view, only to find that the author thereof was busily engaged in autographing specimens within earshot. Awkward!
A saddening thought! Where are they now, that vigorous band of, roaming scribes who in their heyday kept the world on tip-toe, waiting for more and more? Alas! they write no more. One by one they have closed their books, lain down their pens and taken passage for those Elysian fields,
And the Haggards ride no more.
Stay! One yet defies old Father Time. Pshaw! you cannot.
Parallel to Clark Street is another beautiful way ending at the Reserve - Woodmancote Road, where stood the wellknown early residence of "Woodmancote" (now demolished) built by Mr. Izard, Senr., of the legal firm of Bell, Gully & Izard. It stood back from the main road (Box Hill) on the site where the bowling green is now situated, and was approached by a long drive which followed the route of the present Woodmancote Road. In the eighties and early nineties the house was occupied by S. C. G. Vickers, who was followed by the Ansons, the Richardsons, the Lowes, the Laurensons and by M. P. Cameron who, being of the clan he was, renamed the homestead "Lochiel." What else could a Cameron choose but Lochiel? When the property was cut up the drive was converted into a road, to which was given the original name (12) of the house. Mr. Cameron possessed property on the other side of the railway line, through which he constructed Lochiel Road and Mona Crescent (after his only daughter), a name later changed to Agra Crescent. It was Mr. Cameron who presented to the Khandallah Town Hall the Roll of Honour (1914,1918) of the Great War.
Scotch memories likewise cluster around the name of Torwood Road, constructed and named in 1910 by Mr. Aubrey Gaulter of Wellington who thus commemorated "Torwood," the Perthshire home of his grandfather in Burnham village, opposite Dunkeld, on the River Tay. Yet another echo of Scotland is found nearby in the name of Ardross Avenue, a thoroughfare cut through the Clark Estate when subdivided in 1939, and named after Ardross Street in Inverness, where the family forebears resided before coming to New Zealand.
Does another Ardross come into the thought of any reader the Ross-shire village where Sir John MacKenzie (1838 - 1901), (13) destined to be the Colony's most fearless and progressive Minister for Lands and Agriculture, first saw the light? A great lover of his adopted country!
Maiden forest and fallow plains;
He left her a land of many homes,
The pearl of the world, where the seawind roams. (14)
A still newer road is Glentui Grove, constructed through his property and named by R. G. C. Ffitch in 1946. Mr. and Mrs. Ffitch were ardent collectors of rhododendrons, and in the flowering season frequently placed their grounds at the disposal of various charitable societies.
Regarding the name of Nicholson Road, there is a sharp difference of opinion. As the road in its upper reaches overlooks the harbour (Port Nicholson) and commands one of the finest views of the city, it is said by some to be called for this reason, "Nicholson Road." Others hold that the name commemorates General Sir John Nicholson (1822 - 1857), prominent at the time of the Indian Mutiny, and the subject of Newbolt's ballad, "John Nicholson." He was killed at the Siege of Delhi. Prior to 1925 Nicholson Road was named Victoria Road.
Onslow Road (q.v.) twining around the Khandallah hill face from summit to sea, is one of the loveliest scenic roads overlooking the harbour - a favourite city drive of Lord Bledisloe who, when possible at the close of the day, delighted to snatch a run up the Ngaio Gorge Road and down the Onslow Road with its recurring vistas of the blue waters of the harbour and the fringing city below, vistas, he said, when revisiting the Dominion in 1947, he would never forget.
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to one.
A fine weather drive, it must be admitted. Otherwise, like Ben Battle, one might well have met before with many a breeze, but never such a blow. "Wind!" mutters a disconsolate Onslow Road gardener, "If I sow seeds in my own garden, they come up in my neighbour's."
Keep ascending when you get into the "Khandallah Reserve" and you will find yourself in time on the summit of Mt. Kaukau (1465 ft.) whence a most extensive view is obtained. On clear days even Mt. Egmont and Mt. Ruapehu are visible. Super-agile denizens of Khandallah have been known to stroll to the summit for lunch or tea.
Like other Wellington suburbs, Khandallah began its existence by furnishing forth farms for the supply of city milk and produce. Two of the earliest farmers were Messrs. John Casey and James Nairn, of whom Mr. Nairn, born in Scotland in 1846, had reached the Colony in the "John Duncan" in 1863. Two years later he acquired a sixty-acre farm at Khandallah in the district now known as Nairnville, where are still to be found some of his descendants.
Another of Khandallah's earliest settlers was Charles Hobbs who, after an adventurous career in the Old World, ended his days in the Colony in 1849. In 1835, in company with Major Baker, he had sailed from London with the British Legion, ten thousand strong, under General Evans to assist Christina, Queen of Spain, agaihst Don Carlos. In 1838 Mr. Hobbs and Major Baker returned to England, and becoming interested in the emigration schemes of the New Zealand Company, then afoot, sailed in 1841 for New Zealand and landed the following year at Wellington. Here he remained for three years and then took up a hundred-acre block at Khandallah. Mr. Hobbs was a builder and was engaged in erecting soldiers' barracks at Wanganui when he died in 1849. His grandson, Mr. Ernest Hobbs, is still a resident of Khandallah.
It was not until 1893 that Khandallah acquired a Primary School in its midst. Long before this, Mr. Nairn's small Jessie, still hale and hearty, who afterwards became the wife of D. G. Clark, D.S.O., Commissioner of Taxes from 1914 to 1925, journeyed on foot each day over the hills and far away to the Wellington Girls' College, to end up as Dux of the College in 1889. Where is the girl - or boy - who could make such a sustained effort today? Where?
Foot-notes
1. More properly Gonville and Caius College, as it was founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, and refounded by Dr. Caius in 1557.
2. After King's College, Cambridge.
3. July 2nd, 1938.
4. See Appendix.
5. The original "Simla" is No. 16 Simla Crescent.
6. See Appendix.
7. Writings by all of the above have been published.
8. He died at No. 74 Clarke Street, Khandallah. 1920.
9. Lewis Henry Balfour Wilson arrived in 1867 per S.S. "Rakaia" via Panama from London.
10. See "Australia and New Zealand." by Anthony Trollope 1873.
11. His son is the very Rev. D. D. Scott (1875 - 1948). a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand
12. The name Woodmancote, however, is said to be derived from Mr. Richard Woodman, an early resident in the employ of Mr. Izard.
13. Sir John MacKenzie was half-brother to Professor Mackenzie, V.U.C. Note the different spellings of the name. So, also, Crawford and Crauford (Kilbirnie).
14. "Burial of Sir John MacKenzie," by Jessie Mackay.
Part Three : Chapter Two : Western Suburbs