The Bickers Family (Fencible) Cottage — Third Avenue Tauranga

Front of the Bickers cottage with some younger family members, c. 1890s

Henry Bickers and Maria (née Proud) came to New Zealand from the goldfields of Victoria, Australia in response to a call for more troops in the 1860s. He was a corporal at the Battle of Pukehinahina and was afterwards allotted 60 acres of land and a town section of one acre. However, it took about seven years for that to come into their possession and they had Henry John (always known as “Our Henry”) in 1866 whilst still housed in the Panmure Barracks, Auckland. By 1869 they had moved to a whare on the corner of Elizabeth and Grey streets in Tauranga, and their first daughter (also Maria) was born there in 1869. One evening Maria (senior) was told to go to the blockhouse at the Monmouth Redoubt for their safety but she refused. Hearing movements outside, after dark, she spent an uncomfortable night in the ditch with little ones. In the light of morning, it was discovered they had been hiding from the family goat.

In 1871 their long-awaited cottage arrived by boat from Onehunga in four parts and was assembled in Third Avenue, close to where the Inland Revenue building is now. The kitchen was a rectangular room at the back and a bedroom led off this. The two front rooms, a sitting room and a bedroom for the parents, were separated by an entrance hallway. A verandah across the front completed their new home, but as the family grew extra accommodation was built at the back. In 1872 Elizabeth (Lizzie) arrived, Emma in 1874, then William in 1877, and lastly Alice on a cool winter’s day in 1879.

Henry had been a plumber but by now had taken up painting and paperhanging. He was ill for three years before his death in 1885, when their youngest child was only six years of age. Maria continued living in the cottage and managing to make ends meet, providing for her family of six, by using her many domestic skills to earn an income.

Rear view of the home, probably in the mid-20th century

“Our Henry” married an Auckland girl and they settled on part of the land. Maria junior became an apprentice dressmaker and later stitched garments for my great-great-grandmother Euphemia Maxwell and her daughters Alice and Edith at The Elms. Elizabeth and Emma became governesses and William a journalist with the Bay of Plenty Times. Eventually granddaughter Una Pennell (Emma’s girl) inherited the cottage and it was occupied by their family until 1960 after which it was sold to the Intellectually Handicapped Children Society as a ‘sheltered workshop’.

Finally in 1970 the site was to be redeveloped as a medical centre and arrangements were made by Les Dickson with my grandfather Duff Maxwell for it to be relocated to The Elms. As a 12-year-old I remember it arriving there on a large transporter. The veranda had been removed but was not reinstated and sometime later members of the Elms Trust built a very small kitchenette onto the back. It continues to be a valuable resource and is currently used for Devonshire teas, and other occasions and meetings involving the serving of food. This lovely old building was repainted a few years ago in what is hoped to be closer to its original colours.

Present day cottage at The Elms (Te Papa)
Photographed by Bob Tulloch

My sincere thanks to Alison Howarth, a Bickers descendant and Tauranga Historical Society member, for this story. She lent me copies of a series of articles written by a cousin Colleen Sullivan for the BOP Times in 1977 and also the old images of the Bickers-Pennell Family homestead.

A Trip Down Memory Lane in the Tauranga CBD

Guest article by John Green.

Back in the 1960s I was a schoolboy with a bicycle and loved to explore downtown Tauranga. There were a large number of motor garages, service stations and wreckers, not to mention a blacksmith’s shop, in what we now think of as the CBD. These are the main ones that I remember. In those times all cars were either from the UK or USA. To buy a new car one had to have access to overseas money and there were long waiting lists for new cars.

Maxwell Motors Ltd, Shell Service
Detail of ‘Rose gardens in Strand weeded by Mr W. Jones’, publ. Bay of Plenty Times, 8 October 1964
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. gca-7522

·         Maxwell Motors, corner Harington Street and The Strand. Agents for Singer, Citroen and Jaguar cars.

·         C.F. Washer, corner of Hamilton Street and Willow Street. Agents for Chevrolet, Vauxhall and Bedford.

Teasey’s Buildings, Devonport Road, Tauranga, 1911
Unidentified photographer
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 99-1142

·         Teaseys Garage, Lower Devonport Rd, Eastern side.  (Building still there but now shops)

George Mason Motors, cnr Elizabeth/Durham Streets, Tauranga, undated
Unidentified photographer
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 02-299

·         George Mason Motors, originally in Grey Street then moved to Elizabeth Street/Durham Street corner. (building still there)

·         Dixie Dean’s Motorcycle shop, where Farmers Trading have just built Elizabeth Towers.

·         F.N. Christian’s Garage, firstly in Lower Devonport Rd, later Upper Devonport Rd , west side, Ford  cars, Fordson tractors.  Became Tappenden Motors in 1957.

 

Tauranga Motors, Grey Street, Tauranga, 1950
Unidentified photographer
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 04-190

·         Acme Motors (later Tauranga Motors), Grey Street, Studebaker cars and Ferguson tractors.

Advertisement from NZ Post Office Telephone Directory, Bay of Plenty & Rotorua Distructs, p25
Collection of John Green

·        Phil Prime had a workshop and car rental business in Grey Street and it went right through to Durham Street.

·       Cameron Motors, Grey Street, specialised in used cars

·       Sam Snowden’s Service Station, cnr Spring Street/Durham Streets, also sold International trucks and tractors

·       Smith’s Scooter House, Durham Street.

There were at least two car wrecking yards, one in Grey Street and the other on Cameron Road opposite St Peters Church. Later the Austin agents Bay Motors was built there.

In the course of this trip down memory lane I have discovered many older images of some of these businesses, and these will form part of a future blog.

Life at the East End of Elizabeth Street

Aerial view of downtown Tauranga, date unknown
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 03-225

When this photo[1] was taken, possibly from one of the aeroplanes that sheltered in the large hangar built on the edge of the Tauranga Moana foreshore[2], and certainly earlier than the date suggested by Pae Koroki, Elizabeth Street had been “bitumenised” and – judging by the large structures to the south – thoroughly integrated into the urban life of Tauranga.

But Elizabeth Street[3] was once one of the fringier parts of town. In 1921 it was a useful boundary marker for rating purposes[4], bisected, as today, only by Devonport and Cameron Roads.  Elizabeth still terminates the ambitions of Grey, Durham and Selwyn Streets in “T” intersections.  (Elizabeth Street itself ran from harbourside cliffs at the eastern end to the town dump near the Waikaraeo estuary.  The dump has now gone and the street connects with Takitimu Drive.)  

Occasional small businesses would be located there – dressmakers (Miss Jessie Smith, Miss Munro), a builder, a fibrous plaster works (H S Riggir), even some music teachers (E. Florence Whitlock, Miss Pearl Moffat).  By 1936 it was included in the Borough’s “Business Area” for rubbish collection[5] - just as well, since the “Mt Pleasant Hospital” had been established at 4 Elizabeth St in 1933.  This did not garner much attention as a clinical facility[6] but it certainly served as a maternity home until mid-way through World War Two[7].  After that, the Mount Pleasant boarding house did duty for the passers-through and respectably low-waged until it vanishes from the records, although not living memory[8].

“Dilston”, the substantial house on the left of the zig-zag path to the beach, was under construction in 1882[9].  This was to be the long-term residence of some notable Tauranga families:  William McKenzie Commons, who served for a single one-year term as Mayor of Tauranga, and the Norrises, whose story is told elsewhere[10].  In due course it became “Mount Pleasant”.  Before that happened, a (nearly) anonymous 1925 advertisement of accommodation available on Elizabeth Street offers “five bedrooms, two sleeping porches, every possible modern convenience, suit two or more small families, adults preferred. £2 per week - Colinoris”[11].

Properties were substantial in those days.  In the oral history recorded by Jinty Rorke for Pae Korokī, Nan Garrity (née Norris) recalls that the house was “Right on the waterfront where the big flats are now… [it] went right down to the high tide mark.”  When Commons offered the place to let in 1907, it was described as consisting of “house, gardens, orchard and paddock”[12].

And it took a lot of upkeep.  By 1909[13], a “certificated cookery teacher” was offering, at Dilston, a “high and healthy situation” under new management  - a “Comfortable home for Permanent Boarders or Visitors” with a good table, bath and piano, all at “moderate” terms.  Mrs Commons, in February 1907[14], had already had a clearance sale[15].  Presumably the table, bath and piano were passed in at auction.

Clearance Sale [Advertisement], Bay of Plenty Times, 15 February 1907
Courtesy of Papers Past

It is a large thing to reflect, as a recent arrival[16] at the site now known as Elizabeth Heights - 8 (originally, number 4) Elizabeth Street - on the vast quantities of furniture that must have come and gone from this small part of town over the 140 years of its pākeha occupation.  The area itself, once so high, wide and expansive, has become more and more urbanized, concentrated and, well, lived in.

View from Elizabeth Street, 7 March 2023
Photograph by Beth Bowden

This March 2023 snapshot offers a tiny viewshaft through to the railway bridge, a glimpse on the extreme right of the 1960’s structure known as Elizabeth Heights, and a view over the more recent infill housing built along the Dilston cliff and down to where the aero club’s hangar used to be.  The Tauranga Yacht Club, visible at foreground right in the first image, remains in place, repurposed as the Harbourside Restaurant; everything else, except the streets themselves, perhaps the concrete boat ramps and of course the bridge, has been replaced.  Your writer is now dedicated to closer examination of, and research into, surviving elements of Elizabeth Street life in the Tauranga of the twenty-first century.

A note of correction (posted 20 Jun 2023)

The last paragraph of this blog makes an erroneous reference to the “infill housing built ... down to where the aero club’s hangar used to be.”  I misinterpreted the 1932 Bay of Plenty Times article’s reference to the “[aero] club section at the foot of Elizabeth Street” as meaning the foot of the eastern cliff.  As is reasonably well-known, the aero club’s headquarters was at the western end of the street, conveniently adjacent to the low-tide sandflats of the Waikareao estuary.

So a little more thought, and a consultation with fellow THS member John Green, would have told me that the large building on the eastern foreshore was not a hangar at all. In fact it was Alf Wallings’ workshop.  Alf initially used it as a depot for his business as a roading and logging contractor. At the time this photo was taken – John Green suggests, the very early 1960s – its lower level was a garage for Alf’s truck and cars. The Walling house can be seen directly above the workshop, on the site now occupied by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council building. The top floor of Alf’s commodious structure was being used by Moller Industries Ltd to manufacture their still-famous Power Pony garden tractors. The outside ramp between the street and Moller’s factory is visible in the photograph.

---

[1] https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/14113

[2] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19321115.2.28

[3] This arterial crossway was formed in 1883 by Mr Hamilton and his plough https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18830222.2.6.1 , and named after the wife of the first native-born Taurangian to be elected Mayor, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19360922.2.17 .

[4]  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19210117.2.14

[5] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19360905.2.35.3

[6] See Dr Paul Mountfort’s account of the development of Norfolk Hospital in Tauranga (1953-2007) https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/6739

[7] Advertisements for “Mount Pleasant” vanish from the Bay of Plenty Times after April 1934, but see https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19431124.2.3.1 .

[8] Personal conversation, 24 January 2023, between the writer and one of the staff of NZ Movers, who recalled moving the boarding house furniture out of the property before demolition to make way for Elizabeth Heights’ construction.

[9] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18821117.2.7

[10] Julie Green, Tauranga Historical Society, Norris family blogs published10 June 2022 and 15 July 2022  and https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/66044 .  I am indebted to Fiona Kean of the TCC Heritage Collection for the Pae Koroki links cited here.

[11] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19250910.2.2.6

[12] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19070222.2.50.2

[13] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19090702.2.44.2

[14] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19070215.2.46.2

[15] Another such took place as the Norrises vacated: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19190813.2.4

[16] The writer helped move her husband’s household in over 24-25 January 2023