Art Deco on Edgecumbe Road: Dorothy Willis, an Enterprising Woman

George H.A. Wills
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. 04-563

While Mr George Wills and his wife Mary were living in Pendarves Street, New Plymouth they had their only child Dorothy Mary on 27 February 1911. George taught at the New Plymouth Boys’ High School at the time. The family moved to Tauranga and he taught at the District High School, then at Greerton Primary School.  George Wills became Head Teacher there from 1921 to 1944. [i]

The first show of enterprise by the seven-year-old Dorothy Wills, later to become a successful architect, was a fundraising effort with her friend Barbara Griffiths in aid of the Patriotic Fund in 1918. The two little girls put on a concert for their mother’s Bridge Club. [ii] During her school days she performed in plays and concerts, encouraged by her father who was himself active in amateur theatre in Tauranga.

Dorothy Willis, from The Free Lance, 30 Mar 1949

Dorothy was educated locally at Tauranga District High School where she successfully obtained the Junior and Senior National Scholarships. After two years at Epsom Girls Grammar School in Auckland she received a bursary, yet was still too young to enrol as a university student.

House at Edgecumbe Road, Tauranga designed by Dorothy for her father George Wills, c. 1936
Photograph by Shirley Arabin, 2023

After a year at home in Tauranga, Dorothy Wills was at last permitted to enrol in the degree of Bachelor of Architecture in 1929, and by 1933 had graduated and taken a position with Mr H L D West, a Tauranga architect. [iii] She was the second woman to graduate with this degree in New Zealand. Her thesis dealt with a modern private hospital of 120 beds. The degree also carried with it the Associate Membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects, [iv] and she became the second woman to register with that professional body.

It was during this period she designed an Art Deco-style house in Edgecumbe Road for her father. It is believed that the house has to date only had three owners, the second being the Mountfort family. Dorothy later worked for the Health Department on hospital projects. [v] In 1936 she left New Zealand to work in Britain, remaining there until 1949. [vi]

Dorothy Wills presented at court
Image from DigitalNZ

Dorothy led a busy social life in London, including being presented at Court in 1937. During the Second World War she worked for the War Office. She evaluated stately homes to assess their suitability to house scientists and other government employees, as they were generally stationed in the country, away from the dangers of the blitz. She also assessed bomb-damaged buildings for the Ministry of Works. She returned to New Zealand in 1949 to care for her aging father. [vii]
 
She moved to the Head Office of the Public Works Department in Wellington. While seconded to the Health Department, she helped Lady Freyberg, wife of the Governor General, to prepare Government House for the proposed visit of King George VI. They started a countrywide project to embroider thirty-eight tapestries of coats of arms of towns for the dining chairs to be used during the event at Government House.

Dorothy Wills married James (Jerry) Coulthard in 1957 and, promoted to Senior Architect, continued to work for the Public Works Department until 1969, after which she moved with her husband to Marlborough. In 1990 she was invited with the architect Michael Fowler to work on the restoration of Saint Mary’s Church, Blenheim. She died in 2007 and bequeathed a large sum to purchase public works of art for Marlborough. [viii]

References

[i] Kennedy, W J. (compiler) Greerton School Centennial Jubilee; souvenir history 1876 -1976.
[ii] Bay of Plenty Times, 23 Apr 1918
[iii] BOPT, 22 Oct 1933
[iv] BOPT, 13 Oct 1934
[v] Cox, Elizabeth (editor) Making Space; a history of New Zealand women in Architecture, 2022, p.50
[vi] Cox, p.60
[vii] Cox, p.103
[viii] Cox, p.104

Going Downhill

The Taioma passing the Tauranga Domain, 8 April 1979
Image: Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 07-368

When talking about the tug Taioma, formerly Empire Jane, I always recall hearing of its journey to the Tauranga Historic Village in 17th Avenue. The perils of transporting a 232 tonne tug down the busiest road in Tauranga makes the basis of a good story.  I’m told that on Sunday 8 April 1979 I stood with my family, and many other Tauranga residents, to watch its progress down Cameron Road. I wish I could remember it. Fortunately the man behind the project, Sir Robert Owens, spoke of the day’s events in an oral history recording conducted by James Harstonge in May 1992.

“I’d been chasing this tug around the place for a considerable time and talked to BP who supplied us with fuel. I talked to the boss in Wellington and he said, oh well, you can have it but keep the BP logo on the funnel. So we had to tow it up from Wellington, and it weighed about 340 tonnes so we had a job of getting it on the slip, as it wouldn’t take a 340 tonne ship, so we had to take quite a bit of weight off her. From there the transfer onto the trailer was a tremendous job, and Freightways – they had the heavy haul gear in those days – and John Dale, they gave me a very good rate, very kind, and we got on with the business.”

A tense time as the Taioma is transported down 17th Avenue, 9 April 1979
Image: Tauranga Heritage Collection

“Well from an advertising point of view we all came out of it very well because that day we shifted her up the hill and into Cameron Road, we had to shift power poles and all sorts of things and she came along, and then we got her to the museum and it was getting a bit dark and so we decided we wouldn’t try taking her down the hill. We parked her across the road for the night and then we had an anchor truck behind her with forty tonnes of sand in, that was one of our trucks, and we put it on behind and this driver, a Maori guy, a hell of a nice guy, I was walking with him and there was obviously a bit of tension there and so we started on the dip and she started to go and of course the anchor truck was at an absolute dead stop and smoke started from the tires and she gathered momentum, lost me, I was running at that stage but I couldn’t keep up with her and the anchor truck passed me and the smoke from the tires was terrible. Anyway we got to the bottom and I ran up to the driver and he was the whitest Maori I’ve ever seen in my life. It was a big laugh after that because the rest of the journey was easy, but we ruined the tires.”

Official opening of the Taioma, 23 June 1979. Sir Robert Owens can be seen addressing the crowd
Photograph by Bob Tulloch, Bay Sun
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 09-063

Officially opened by Sir Keith Holyoake on 23 June 1979, the Taioma became a star attraction at The Village. So much so that an additional charge for going onboard helped to pay for the tug’s maintenance. The trip down Cameron Road had been described as the boat’s last journey. However, with the closure of The Village in 1998, the Taioma eventually travelled to its final resting place on the sea floor off Motiti Island. While this journey was made at night along the Takitimu Expressway, it was still witnessed by many whose nostalgia compelled them to catch a final glimpse of the old tug.

The Taioma travelling down Takitimu Expressway, March 2000
Image: Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 14-0147

References

(i) Several websites including these two record the weight of the vessel as 232 tonnes. http://www.tynetugs.co.uk/empirejane1944.html & https://www.shipspotting.com/photos/1718613
(ii) To listen to the entire recording, which covers many aspects of the city’s development under Sir Bob’s leadership, visit https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/20911
(iii) http://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2014/09/memorabilia-from-tug-taioma.html

The books of James Thomson Wedderspoon

From Tauranga City Library’s archives
A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

Tauranga Libraries’ Sladden Collection of older books contains at least 61 labelled as the Jim Wedderspoon Memorial Bequest. The only explicit record of how they got there is in an undated (1970s?), anonymous typescript about the Sladden, found in the Library’s Vertical Files. It says, “Another valuable donation of local material came from the family of James Wedderspoon”. 

Tauranga Historical Society had set up a special sub-committee to process the bequested Sladden and Wedderspoon books into a usable order. Its interim report, published in the Society’s Journal for September 1963, says “Both the Sladden and Wedderspoon bequests will be increased after a number of duplicates have been sold and the proceeds utilized for additional purchases. In the case of the Wedderspoon bequest, the increase will be substantial”. This suggests there was some overlap in the collections, and the 61 items are what’s left after the duplicates had been separated for sale. The books and pamphlets labelled as Wedderspoon are mostly formal Pākehā-authored publications on Māori history and artistic production.

Māori music, with its Polynesian background. Memoirs of the Polynesian Society, Volume 10.

The label from Ko Nga waiata Maori: he mea kohikohi mai (collected by Sir George Grey)

Who was Jim Wedderspoon? Using the genealogical and archival resources available in He Puna Wānanga at Tauranga City Libraries I believe we can identify him as James Thomson Wedderspoon (1900-1961), born in Scotland, the son of Alexander Carrick Wedderspoon (1864-1946) and Kate Todrich Thomson Wedderspoon (1877-1973).

Alexander C. Wedderspoon was a Presbyterian minister, who served in Tauranga from November 1909 to September 1917. Jim, and other members of the family, appear in several photographs from this period available in Pae Korokī – a wedding group, the Presbyterian church choir and a school photo. He is named in several Bay of Plenty Times articles – in April 1917 he was in the 38th Company Senior Cadets Team for the Imperial Challenge Shield Competition (Senior) for rifle-shooting.

Presbyterian Church choir c1915 - Jim is on the far left, his brother Carrick standing in front of his mother.
Tauranga City Libraries Photo 05-471 

After leaving Tauranga as a young man Jim appears to have been restless – moving regularly between Auckland, Dunedin, Christchurch and Tauranga, working at a freezing works, as a clerk, studying at Lincoln, and later working as a garage attendant. He appears in a Tauranga electoral roll in 1949 living in Devonport Road – he was at No. 154 when in 1952 he was an inaugural member of the Tauranga Historical Society.

He died on 6 December 1961. His Will left the whole of his estate to his married sister Ngaroma Nancie Ansell. Since she lived in Auckland it is possible that interested members of the Tauranga Historical Society offered to take his book collection, rather than the family having to carry it back with them. The books would be seen as complementary to the Sladden Collection.

Sources: 

• Tauranga City Libraries' subscription to Ancestrylibrary - available free when at one of our branches 

• Publications and images held at Tauranga City Libraries and on Pae Korokī.

• Items in the Bay of Plenty Times found through PapersPast.

My thanks to Fiona Kean for advice and information, all observations are my own.

---

'Poor Tauranga'

Horace Annesley Vachell
The New York Public Library Digital Collections, Ref. 5154783

I’m probably showing my literary ignorance, but I doubt many Tauranga residents have heard of 20th century English writer Horace A. Vachell. However, it appears that he had heard of us when he wrote his short story 'Civility Pays' and had it published in the August 1930 edition of Windsor Magazine. And while Tauranga receiving a mention in an overseas magazine hardly seems noteworthy, the reaction to it in New Zealand certainly was.

Miss Inez Isabel Maud Cluett née Peacocke
Courtesy of Dictionary of New Zealand Biography

No doubt Varchell’s story would have gone without notice if it wasn’t for the New Zealand author and journalist Isabel M. Cluett (née Peacocke). Cluett’s article, ‘Through English Eyes’, which first appeared in Auckland Star in October 1930, expressed consternation at the negative portrayal of a New Zealander. She writes:

“Only recently I read a story by a well-known English author, Horace A. Vachell, in which he represents a New Zealander in London as dressed in "rough tweeds, red tie, white spats with brown boots, billycock hat jammed on the back of his head, and hands like a leg of mutton," the very image, as I conceive it, of some "flashy" racecourse tout at Epsom, but without the slightest resemblance to any New Zealander of my acquaintance. The author makes this worthy, who is "doing" England—which he fatuously refers to as "My England"—force his way into an exclusive London club, assault an elderly gentleman and the silver-haired hall porter, both of whom he knocks down by "well-directed" kicks and generally maltreats, and all because he does not agree with an article on food, which he believes the elderly gentleman to have written—mistakenly, by the way. This bounder and "bruiser" comes from Tauranga, New Zealand! Poor Tauranga, with its rather exclusive and conservative population, many of them, by the way, retired English people; what has it done to be singled out by this author as the hometown of his barbarous creation?”[i]

Cluett’s patriotic response to the ignorance of the English towards New Zealanders who, in her opinion, had earned a place in the Commonwealth following the sacrifices of the Great War, was picked up by newspapers throughout the country. The phrase ‘Poor Tauranga’ was repeated multiple times, including in the Evening Post – our plight having reached the capital! “The well-known author Mr Horace A. Vachell has displayed lamentable ignorance of New Zealand and New Zealanders in a story called 'Civility Pays.' His portrait of a New Zealander is such a gross caricature that it has moved Miss I. M. Cluett to pillory him.”

“Average Tauranga men?” – Group of unidentified young men, possibly surfers, Tauranga, c. 1940s
Vernacular photograph by unidentified photographer
Collection of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī, Ref. 09-153

And what did our very own Bay of Plenty Times make of ‘Poor Tauranga’ and the picture painted of our character? Beyond reprinting Cluett’s defence of the town it would seem we were prepared to rise above it or simply had nothing else to say.

Reference

---

[i] Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 241, 11 October 1930.