Privileged Property Owners
After the opening of the Goldfield, miners could apply for a Residence Site which, initially, was only 1/20th of an acre. This provided sufficient ground for a small cottage but there was no sense of permanence about them, and most were surrendered as mining fortunes and practices changed. Property development in Thames township and Tararu was somewhat more conventional in that large tracts of land were purchased (by the government and Robert Graham respectively) and subdivided into modest sections which still exist, more-or-less in the same configuration, up to the present time. While these initiatives provided basic plots for ordinary people, a few of the more prominent citizens, principally James McKay (Warden), Alan Baillie (Junior Warden) and Captain Butt negotiated with W.H. Taipari to build houses on the Māori Cultivation Reserve. It appears no formal survey of sections was done at the time, but each house was surrounded by an acre or more of land “occupied” by virtue of an annual rent to Taipari. Various problems emerged with this arrangement and although ownership of the land was “Europeanized” and subdivided over subsequent years issues still occasionally arise in the area between Hape Road and Hape Creek.
Introduction.
Walking up Hape Road in the 1950s I always wondered about the half dozen or so properties on the south side which had long sections stretching all the way down to the Hape Creek.
Only in recent years did I learn that these houses were built on what was originally known as the Māori “Cultivation Reserve” owned by W.H. Taipari and others and quite distinct from the Thames township.
Figure 1. Two sections of 1869 maps showing the Reserve. The Wayte Map on the right marks the position of the MacKay and Taipari houses and I have added Baillie and Butt.
When we think of houses on the Reserve, two immediately come to mind: namely, the well documented European style houses built on the lower part of the Reserve on the south side of the Hape Creek in 1869. The first was a grand residence for James MacKay Jnr, the Warden of Thames, built in February 1869 who rented his site from W.H. Taipari who, in turn, built an equally grand house a few months later.
In fact, two houses on Hape Road predate MacKay’s house and were built only a few months after the Goldfield opened. Captain Butt and Alan Baillie (the Junior Warden) were taken to the Hape Road section of the Reserve (see Figure 1) by MacKay and the “Maori owners” in late 1867 and shown boundaries within which each could build a house. These houses were built by early 1868 and are clearly visible in a very early (undated) photograph and are the only two houses on that section of Hape Road (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Crop from very early photo (Thames Museum AL 4-3681-84.) showing the Butt and Baillie houses on the Hape Rd side of the Cultivation Reserve. Note the slightly unequal double gable of the Butt House.
We will discuss the subsequent subdivisions and owners in more detail below but, by1886, a great deal of the Cultivation Reserve was in European hands (Figure 3).
Figure 3. The three major blocks of the Cultivation Reserve in European hands by 1886. The earliest Deed Index references are shown. A considerable portion of 2D.182 on the side on Mt. Pleasant is still bare land with limited access; it was last sold in 2024. Extensive subdivision of the original sections has taken place in recent years. (Google Earth 2023)
Somewhat surprisingly, both the Baillie (104 Hape) and Butt (208 Hape) houses still exist today, though in extensively modified forms. In addition, there are two other pre-1900s houses in this section of Hape Road, the Souter house (200 Hape) and the Buckland house (212 Hape). In fact, the only 1800s house that has been demolished is that built by Wildman and subsequently owned by the Prices for many years. (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Pre 1900s houses still extant on the Hape Rd side of the Cultivation Reserve. Careful inspection of the two gables on the Butt house shows the same unequal structure as is discernable in Figure 2. The lean-to on the Baillie house has been replaced by a gable.
Note: It is unfortunate that 200 Hape Rd has been identified as the Butt residence in the register of Thames Historic Heritage Items. This is clearly wrong, but the error is understandable given the complex history of the area. More unfortunate is that the two earlier houses of Butt and Baillie, which were hiding in plain sight, were overlooked.
This concludes a summary of the early history of European settlement on the Hape Road side of the Cultivation Reserve. If you want more details read on, but the various land deals are quite complex and make for heavy reading. I found teasing out the history of the Baillie and Butt properties proved a formidable undertaking, but I will do my best to deal with each in turn. No doubt a surveyor would make short work of this task (at a price).
The Baillie Property.
All the current properties in Hape Rd with an even 100s number were once part of this property which, in total, covered an area of about 2 acres (Figure 3). A photograph taken by McGarrigle in 1869 (Figure 5) clearly shows the Baillie house, high up on the property with the area below planted in what are presumably fruit trees. These could have been planted somewhat earlier as similar plantings can be seen above Taipari’s houses in other early photos showing the slopes of Mt Pleasant. In Figure 5, MacKay’s house is lower down and on the other side of the Hape Creek. Note that in those early days, Hape Rd was a rather ill-defined wide tract of land, not only a road but also a strip separating the Block 27 of the township from the Reserve. Indeed, some small buildings were erected on this strip, perhaps without formal permission. These are visible in a later photograph (Figure 6); in particular, there appears to be some buildings on the edge of Hape Rd adjacent to the Baillie house. These are undoubtedly “Squatters” in a grey area outside the designated township.
Figure 5. View of Shortland from the Hape – American Photographic Company – probably 1869 as James Mackay’s house is visible behind the Baillie residence. Note the gate into the Butt residence on the extreme left and the wide sweep of Hape Road. (TePapa MA_1226079)
Figure 6 Crop from a later photo showing two buildings on Hape Road below the Baillie House. (Thames Museum 2019_001_0342 Box 8_Streets_Shortland)
Alan Baillie occupied his house without controversy until 1872, entertaining notables such as the Governor, but his circumstances changed, and he left his wife in Auckland and moved to Fiji. About this time, he sublet his house to Mr Henry Severn who had arrived in Thames as Battery Manager of the Caledonian Mine. For reasons that are not quite clear, the Māori owners were not happy with this arrangement and in October 1873 Hotorene Taipari (and others) became dissatisfied with Severn’s occupancy of the land and took him to court. In fact, it was Baillie who was really the subject of their court case, as they were debating his original rights as a tenant, lessee or whatever; Severn was just a semi-innocent party renting from Baillie.
The reader is encouraged to scan the various reports on the court case which appeared from October 21 to 23, 1883 in the NZ Herald, Auckland Star and Daily Southern Cross. They demonstrate just how complex and confusing some of these early land deals were. Who was leasing or renting to who, under what conditions, where were boundaries defined, it at all, what was government involvement, was it rent, a lease, or even freehold? Just to add to the mix, MacKay and Baillie, as Warden and Junior Warden, respectively, had also been involved with Taipari in collecting rents and setting up land deals. No wonder many of these property deals were later revisited by the Maori Land Court. Anyway, the outcome of the court case was that the owners were awarded £50 but Baillie was given a lease of 15 years at a rental of £15 a year.
(We do not know if Captain Butt had a similar lease arrangement (or a simple rental) but almost certainly, at this stage he would not own his property freehold. Baillie had earlier attempted to obtain a freehold title from the owners, but they refused. Even MacKay built his grand house on land he did not own. He paid an annual rent.)
Severn’s occupancy was now secure, and he became well known in Thames and elsewhere as a science lecturer and amateur astronomer, and even as an inventor of a method for canning peaches and shipping them to England (from the fruit trees on the property?).
In 1874 he made extensive preparations to photograph and observe the Transit of Venus, even running a telegraph line from Grahamstown to ensure accurate timings. Unfortunately, bad weather frustrated this observation, but a photograph exists of notables of Thames gathered around the 12-foot telescope on the north side of the “Baillie” house (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Preparations for observing the Transit of Venus in 1874. The provenance of this photograph is unclear but it is to be noted that the photographer R.H.Bartlett was a friend of Severns.
Severn left Thames for England in February 1877 and the unexpired term of his (or Baillie’s) lease, presumably to 1886, was advertised but the transactions were complicated when Baillie drowned in Fiji in June 1877.
Negotiations with Taipari must have taken place because Mr Gillispie appeared to obtain a freehold title in June 1878, on-sold to Mr Pearce who in turn on-sold to Mr Stone in April 1880 and then to Mr Styak in mid 1889. The house is clearly visible in this Foy photograph, probably taken in 1878 (Figure 8). Note how the land immediately above the Baillie house appears to be fenced off. Captain Souter’s house is above this “vacant” section. The land at the bottom of the section was prone to flooding and Mr Stone’s “fruitful garden was literally turned into a wilderness,” in July 1881.
Figure 8. View over Hape Road from Mount Pleasant. A just decipherable sticker on the back gives a date of 1878. This print was sold in a Webbs Auction for $60.
The Styak’s occupied the house until 1917. Mr Styak, a local sharebroker, died in 1917 and Mrs Styak a year later. What should have been a simple case of the property being inherited by the two children, Mr. W.A. Styak (a solicitor) and Mrs Mountain, turned into an expensive squabble that went through the courts until July 1921 when it was finally ruled that both were beneficiaries of a trust. Mrs Mountain appeared to buy her brother out of his share in September 1924 and shortly afterwards the property was subdivided into the numbered sections as we know them today. Of note, is that surveying of the section immediately above the Baillie house (now 108 Hape Rd sold to Stan Danby) was probably the first time for some 50 years that an accurate determination had been done of the boundary between the original Baillie and Butt blocks. We will come back to this later.
The Butt Property.
Unlike the Baillie house and property, no clear photographs exist of the Butt house standing on its original large section. We do get a tiny glimpse of the entrance to the property in Figure 5 but it is only of the gate that leads onto the property just above what I loosely refer to as the “Stan Danby” property. Again, it seems as if there was a poorly defined buffer zone between the Butt and Baillie boundaries.
One assumes that like Baillie, Captain Butt had some kind of rental or lease agreement with Taipari et al, that gave him occupancy of the house and land. Early records are difficult to locate, and the first land relevant land record appears to be the conveyancing of the whole of the land to Mary Ann Butt in August 1875 (See Figure 11). One assumes this was a freehold transaction, but a little caution must be exercised as some of these transactions were revisited after an investigation in 1885 and examination by the Maori Land Court. Anyway, within a few days, Butt had on sold a section at the bottom of the property to Captain Souter and two years later, another section just above this to Mr Wildman. The Butts retained the top half of the property on which their house stood. Captain Souter moved to Cambridge around 1881 and sold his house to Mr Bayldon who sold it ten years later to Mr Lawry who in 1895 sold it to the Thorburns who, in turn, sold it to Alfred Court in 1899.
The history of the middle property is a little hard to follow, but it appears Mr Wildman built a house but was only there for a year, after which he sold it, in 1878, to Mr Miller (a well-known local solicitor). The house is visible in the mid right-hand side of Figure 8 in a photograph taken around 1878 when it was presumably in its original state. Mr Miller must have lived there for some years before selling it to Mr Alfred Price, the cofounder of A&G Price who, in 1890 made “alterations and additions” to the house. It is to be noted that in October 1886, Alfred Price purchased, from the Taipari’s, a large block of land on the south side of Hape Creek bound by Augustus St South, and Upper Grey St (2D.182 in Figure 3). Presumably this was where they housed cows and constructed outbuildings. They also constructed formal gardens below the house, installed a tennis court and probably added the elaborate entrance on the Hape St side that can be seen in Figure 9.
Figure 9. The Seven Price Sisters (Thames Treasury via Thames Museum)
Early boundaries obviously had not been precisely defined as minor adjustments of a few metres were made by Souter and Miller and later by Price and Butt. A sliver of land was also added to the lower side of the “Souter” section.
Summarizing, the “Butt” property from 1890 -1900 onwards, which had been subdivided into three sections (now Butt, Price and Court) remained in stable ownership for some years. Alfred Court lived in his property until his death in 1925 and, although Alfred Price died in 1907, his wife Kate lived in the Price house until her death in 1934. Although Captain Butt had died in 1879, Mary Butt continued to live in their residence until her death in 1903. Not too much should be read into the fact that Mary Butt not Captain Butt had been sold the land by Taipari and co in 1875 as it was quite common for properties to be put in the wife’s name, especially if there was some risk of bankruptcy and Captain Butt had gone through some rocky financial times in 1871. Perhaps related to this, Mary Butt appeared to die intestate in 1903 with very little of value, possibly as the property had been passed on to the family who finally sold it in 1910; that is all except a section on the corner of Hape and Augustus which had been subdivided off for the son-in-law George Buckland in the 1890s (See Figure 11).
Footnotes.
1. Early Land Transfer Records.
Early surveying and Land Transfer records are incredibly hard to follow for an amateur such as myself. Land transfers in digitized form can be viewed in Deeds Index Volumes held in Archives NZ but a particular piece of land might be indexed in several places with different information in each place. Thus, when one looks at a section of an early Thames Borough Council map ML_22375_1_2 the three sections in the Butt block have the indices 2D.593, 1D.209 and 2D.293 corresponding to the Souter, Wildman and Butt properties after subdivision. Before this, the whole Butt block was indexed as 2D.295. For some reason, the Baillie block is represented as three sections although it was only one at this stage and was indexed as both 2D.550 and 1D.338. To be fair, there is a warning on the map that “Maori Blocks” may not be accurately represented and the sections in this portion of the map are obviously schematic.
Figure 10. Crop from ML_22375_1_2
The reader can follow the history of these transactions by going to the numbers on the maps in two volumes.
Deeds Index 2D
https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE93343299
Deeds Index 1D
https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE93343277
Figure 11. A page from a Deed Index book showing, first, the Conveyancing of 2D.293 to Mrs Butt in mid 1875 from Taipari.
In Figure 11, it is possible to follow a whole lot of subsequent transactions after 2D.293 was transferred to Mrs Butt in mid-1875. Shortly afterwards there was conveyancing of a section (“S part” = small?) to Souter and two years later the “M part” (middle?) to Wildman. Various other late transfers are shown, notably a section carved off the Butt land for Buckland in 1896 and minor corrections of boundaries with Price. The various transactions after Mrs Butt’s death are also listed. A complete picture of all the transactions can only be got by consulting index pages in Books 1D and 2D where the various properties are listed so this can become quite a complicated search.
The other issue with the index books is that the little sketches at the bottom of some pages are not accurate (although the dimensions on them may be so). Thus, the sketch showing the Baillie and Butt blocks and the “Price Paddock” (2D.182) is not accurate (Figure 12).
Figure 12. Sketch on page 2D.182. Compare it with Figure 3.
2. Torrens System Superseded the Deeds Index.
A local surveyor, Phil Green, explained to me that early land ownership in NZ was based on the English system and gave rise to a Deeds Index. Only in 1870 was a Lands Transfer Act put in place with provision for surveys, ownership and title (Torrens System) but “owners” under the old Deed system did not have to immediately comply with this, accurate surveys being a common sticking point. To overcome this Limited Titles were introduced in 1924 and many of the sections in this area of Hape Rd were “Limited as to Parcels” until they were surveyed for subdivision in recent times. A number still appear not to have a deposited survey, as the “Stan Danby” section.
3. Accuracy of Surveys.
Obviously, early surveys, if they were done, left a lot to be desired and various adjustments had to be made.
A case in point is the “Stan Danby” section at 108 Hape Rd. I suspect the boundary between the Baillie and Butt blocks had never been clearly defined. Indeed, when Thorburn advertised what is now 200 Hape Rd for sale in the late 1890s he claimed it had an acre of gardens. This cannot be true unless he was including the “Stan Danby” section. One suspects this ambiguity was only cleared up when the Styak’s surveyed their section properly, 20 years later for subdivision. Even so, there was a later addition to the “Stan Danby” section in 1951 when narrow strips were added to it from 200 Hape Rd (Figure 13). The reasons for this are unclear.
Figure 13. The “Stan Danby” section incorporated additional land before a house was built in the 1950s (TCDC Smart Maps)
Another fact to bear in mind is that the date of conveyancing transfers entered in the Deed Books may only loosely relate to when a Certificate of Title is issued. Thus, although the conveyancing for 108 Hape Rd was entered in 1925, the Title was only issued in 1932. Perhaps, in this case, there was some dispute over the surveying.
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