Mayfield House

J.W. Oliver homestead, Moffats Road, Bethlehem, Tauranga, c. 1905-1909
The house during Oliver family occupation
Courtesy of Pae Koroki Tauranga Library. Ref. 02-569

Since 1995 Mayfield House has stood in the Tauranga Boys’ College grounds on the corner of Cameron Road and Fifteenth Avenue due to the generosity of Sir Paul Adams. The house, built in 1905 for a farmer J W Oliver on 144 acres adjacent to the main road in Bethlehem is now 115 years old. Gordon Cummings had the first farm of 820 acres that ran from Cambridge Road to the sea and sold it to Oliver’s father who subdivided the land into farms for his sons.

Mayfield homestead, Bethlehem, Tauranga. Front view
The house Hawkridge during Mayfield family occupation
Courtesy of Pae Koroki Tauranga Library. Ref. 03-290

The building was typical of houses of that period in New Zealand with weatherboard cladding and a corrugated iron roof. A gable fronted room on the left and a verandah across the remainder of the building that ended with a side gable. There were three sash windows onto the verandah and a finial on each gable. There were two brick chimneys on the rear pitch of the roof, probably one for a fireplace and the other in the kitchen. JW Oliver farmed a dairy herd and planted an orchard.

"The kauri timber from which the house was constructed was brought from Mercury Bay in the Coromandel down the coast by the scow Pearl and through the harbour to the Wairoa Bridge where it was loaded on to a horse-drawn dray and taken to the site. The price for timber and deliver was between ten and fifteen shillings per one hundred feet.   Puriri blocks were used for the foundations. The iron for the roof and the guttering came from Chappell’s Hardware on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Cameron Road."

Colonel and Mrs. Mayfield and family
Courtesy of Pae Koroki Tauranga Library & The Elms Foundation. Ref. 2008.0455

In 1909 Major Edwin Mayfield bought the property named it Hawkridge and added on a gable fronted extension on the right-hand end of the house. He and his partner Neil Chater bought the original Golden Queen peach cuttings from the Reeve family and set up a canning factory at the orchard.  Unfortunately, by 1926 rot and fire blight brought the orchard to an end and the peaches and pear trees were pulled out. They had been canned under the brand Tauranga Peaches, Hawkridge Orchards.

Hawkridge Orchards label for canned Golden Queen peaches, Bethlehem, c 1920s
Courtesy of Pae Koroki Tauranga Library. Ref. 10-085

By 1966 all of the land except for the house and two and a quarter acres had been sold and it was then  owned by Mr T Gower. Later Sir Paul Adams bought the property and removed the old house in order to make space to build a new home. Today Mayfield House is a sports pavilion overlooking the cricket pitch at Tauranga Boys’ College.

Mayfield House, Tauranga Boys College, Cameron Road, 4 January 2022
Photograph copyright and courtesy of Shirley Arabin

Sources

Mayfield House History in https://www.tbc.school.nz/mayfield-house-history. Accessed 16/12/2021

Traill, Mrs R.G., Memories of Bethlehem, in Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, No. 49, Dec 1973, p5