Placement and Replacement - The Te Puna Memorial Hall

Until the deadline for this blog, the end of the week in which the new Te Puna Memorial Hall was opened, it had never occurred to me that I would follow in the footsteps of Mrs N. Heard (née Lochhead). At a 1948 meeting of the Te Puna branch of the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers (now known as Rural Women) she “spoke of ... the planning, building and final opening and dedicating of the district’s Hall as a memorial to those who fell in the first world war.” [1]  At the time of her address, the Hall had been in place for 26 years. And a poignant set of new memorials was required.  The granite tablet listing the names of those who fell in WWII was put alongside the WWI memorial in 1947. As she spoke, money was being collected for another, to commemorate those who served [2].

 

The original Hall was a prodigious undertaking for a district that had been in existence for just over four decades [3]. Planning for it began in 1920, and many a fundraising idea was entertained after the Armstrongs donated a corner of their land [4], the site of the Hall for the next 94 years. “Entertained” was the operative word. People were asked to dance and to sing [5] at many socials, held in the Te Puna Schoolroom; to subscribe [6]; and to purchase posts made from gum trees felled on the site [7]. By July 1922 the floor space of the Hall – 48 feet by 28 feet – had been decided and the timber had started to arrive.

Timber stacked in the course of dismantling the original Hall, September 2016

The cost of the original Hall was estimated to be about £250, most of which was materials: the labour was provided by volunteers [8]. Much reliance was placed on the expertise of master builder David Borell, but he found he had to divide his attention between overseeing the Hall building and his rugby-playing commitments [9]. It is no wonder that a number of locals feel that an ancestor of theirs can claim to be “builder” of the Hall [10].

Memorial halls are part of a beloved tradition in New Zealand, most aptly illustrated in Fiona Jack’s beautiful website that shows 65 variations on the theme [11]. The original Te Puna Memorial Hall was one of our earliest examples. Its vernacular design and the level of community contribution involved in its creation were very different from the effort required for the replacement Hall. 

Both the original Hall and the new one, however, were created from one compelling need: the “close settlement” of Te Puna as a part of “Tauranga County” (in the words of the BP Times editor on 31 July 1922 [12]). By 2016 the pressures on State Highway 2 had made the intersection, close to the old Hall, so dangerous as to require the construction of a large roundabout to manage the traffic volumes from Minden and Te Puna Roads on to the main highway.

None of what followed that decision was easy for the twenty-first century Hall Committee. And the history of the past four years is a subject for a later historian. Nevertheless, the ultimate strength of the creation of an important, and continuing, community amenity is to some extent told by the images of the original being dismantled, and the new one created. Taking the Hall down proved the quality of its workmanship and its materials. It could have stood for another century.

The last gable standing

Care was taken to preserve the clean lines and angles of the original building ...

The new Hall takes shape

... and the community base that it sprang from.

Inscription in the Hall floor, October 2019

There are some satisfactions that the first Hall users might like. Some of the timber used in the construction of the old Hall has been used to create a lectern for the stage and two finely-made tables for the meeting rooms. The old Hall had a stage, but no lectern; and it had no meeting rooms at all. The new Hall occupies a site that could not be closer to that of the original, and it has been built on what was formerly Armstrong land [13].

The new Hall, August 2020

 References

[1] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19480914.2.60.5 . Unfortunately Mrs Heard’s actual address was not reported. 
[2] This went up in 1950. Several names were added subsequently, as can be seen by the different colour of the gilded lettering.
[3] I am counting from the first meeting of the Te Puna Highway District, 18 Dec 1875, held at W G Armstrong’s house: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18751218.2.3.3
[4] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19200601.2.17
[5] ibid
[6] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19200610.2.4
[7] Anecdote from Fred Milligan, Chairman of the Tauranga RSA, who spoke at the opening of the new Hall, 16 August 2020.
[8] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19221127.2.10
[9] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19220629.2.3
[10] Comments passed to the writer at the time of the Hall’s demolition, September/October 2016
[11] https://fionajack.net/living-halls-photos-fiona-jack/
[12] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19220731.2.5?
[13] This appellation of course ignores the fact that the whenua was, until raupatu, part of the Pirirakau rohe. We are indebted to the hapū for its generosity in supporting the creation and maintenance of this local memorial to the all the whānau of the district.