Whiteley Mission House New Plymouth | |
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General information | |
Architectural style | Gothic Revival |
Location | 453-457 St Aubyn Street |
Town or city | New Plymouth |
Country | New Zealand |
Coordinates | 39°03′44″S174°02′55″E / 39.062343°S 174.048534°E |
Completed | 1854 |
Designated | 28 June 1990 |
Reference no. | 145 |
The Whiteley Mission House from New Plymouth, New Zealand, the only surviving building of the former Grey Institute, is one a few examples of mission-style architecture from the early period of European settlement. Built as a school for local Maori girls in 1854, it is also a remainder of the beginnings of European style education in Taranaki. [1]
The Whiteley Mission House is a Category 1 heritage building registered by Heritage New Zealand.
The Wesleyan Missionary Society started sending missionaries to New Zealand from 1822 in order to ″to propose the gospel″, but ″refraining from disputing the superstitions of the natives″. Their declared purpose was to learn the local people language and to teach them labour skills, farming, etc. [2]
After a number of setbacks, in 1838 the mission sent two Maori teachers, Wiremu Nera Te Awa-I-Taia and Hahaia, to Taranaki, to begin missionary activity.
In January 1840, Edward Meurant, on behalf of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, bought 100 acres (40.47 hectares) of land at Ngamotu, New Plymouth. The sale was ratified by Commissioner William Spain on 31 March 1845 and Charles Creed established here a mission station. [3]
He was replaced in 1844 by missionary Henry Hanson Turton. With funds obtained under the Education Ordinance of 1847, Turton built a boarding school for Maori pupils next to the mission house. Visiting the mission in March 1847, Governor Sir George Grey offered government assistance and made a small donation himself. As a recognition of Governor Sir George Grey's support, the school was named the Grey Institute, identical to the Wesleyan Native Institute at Grafton Road, Auckland (later moved to Three Kings). Realizing the success of the school, Turton initiated an institution for Maori girls in 1854. [3]
Similar to the boys' school, the rimu building included elements of the Gothic Revival architecture, with two steep gables and arched windows in the front façade. Built in board and battens the school had a roof of timber shingles and included a dining and sitting room, a wash house and a dormitory for 25 students. [1]
Henry Hanson Turton was replaced in 1856 by Reverend John Whiteley, the new Wesleyan Missionary Society missionary at Ngamotu and in charge of the Grey Institute. Unfortunately, the conflicts over land and sovereignty in Taranaki forced the school to close, but in February next year Whiteley reopened it. He moved in the mission house and wrote a report emphasizing that the normal functioning of the school was totally dependent on the absence of war. [4]
After the beginning of the Taranaki Wars in 1860, the Grey Institute was closed. John Whiteley moved back into town, and the students returned to their villages. In June, the former girls' school building was temporarily hired by the government to house Maori allies, removed from their district in order to avoid charges of complicity with "the rebels". [4]
The learning for both boys and girls in the Grey Institute buildings resumed in 1865, when John Whiteley returned to the mission house. In September 1865 the government handed back the buildings, so Whiteley could carry on with the Grey lnstitute. That year there were twenty-four Maori boys and girls and twelve adults boarding there. Then, on 13 February 1869, while riding from New Plymouth to White Cliffs, Whiteley, who had openly declared his support for the government, fell victim to a Hauhau ambush, and was shot. After that, the school was closed permanently and the mission station abandoned. [4]
In 1878, a shortage of funding determined the Wesleyan Church to sell the Grey Institute building. The former mission house became a Maori minister's parsonage and the original educational purpose of the building had been forgotten. [1]
Later, in 1940, the Mission House was renovated and reopened as Rangiatea College, a boarding school of domestic science and hygiene for Maori girls until 1959, when new premises were established at Spotswood. The Moturoa property is now held by the Grey Institute Trust of the Methodist Church. [4] Since 1960 the building has been occupied by the resident caretaker and run as a community centre. [1]
Next to the mission house is the Moturoa Chapel, built in 1869 for Zaccheus Wells on his farm at Mangorei for the use of settlers and shifted in 1940 to its present site.
Taranaki is a region in the west of New Zealand's North Island. It is named after its main geographical feature, the stratovolcano of Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont.
New Plymouth is the major city of the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It is named after the English city of Plymouth, Devon from where the first English settlers to New Plymouth migrated. The New Plymouth District, which includes New Plymouth City and several smaller towns, is the 10th largest district in New Zealand, and has a population of 87,700 – about two-thirds of the total population of the Taranaki Region and 1.7% of New Zealand's population. This includes New Plymouth City (58,500), Waitara (7,310), Inglewood (3,830), Ōakura (1,720), Ōkato (561) and Urenui (429).
Te Whiti o Rongomai III was a Māori spiritual leader and founder of the village of Parihaka, in New Zealand's Taranaki region.
Richard "Dicky" Barrett (1807–1847) was one of the first European traders to be based in New Zealand. He lent his translation skills to help negotiate the first land purchases from Maori in New Plymouth and Wellington and became a key figure in the establishment of the settlement of New Plymouth. He was described by Edward Jerningham Wakefield, son of New Zealand Company founder Edward Gibbon Wakefield, as short, stout and "perfectly round all over" and fond of relating "wild adventures and hairbreadth 'scapes".
The city of New Plymouth, New Zealand, has a history that includes a lengthy occupation and residence by Maori, the arrival of white traders and settlers in the 19th century and warfare that resulted when the demands of the two cultures clashed.
New Plymouth District Council is the territorial authority for the New Plymouth District of New Zealand.
The following lists events that happened during 1869 in New Zealand.
Ōakura is a small township in New Plymouth District, Taranaki, in the western North Island of New Zealand. It is located on State Highway 45, 15 kilometres south-west of New Plymouth. Ōkato is 12 km further south-west. The Oakura River flows past the town and into the North Taranaki Bight. To the south is the Kaitake Range, part of Egmont National Park.
Moturoa is a coastal suburb of New Plymouth, in the western North Island of New Zealand. It is located to the west of the city centre, bordering Port Taranaki and the Sugar Loaf Islands. One of the islands, Moturoa, the largest, shares its name with the suburb.
Rewi Manga Maniapoto (1807–1894) was a Ngāti Maniapoto chief who led Kīngitanga forces during the New Zealand government Invasion of Waikato during the New Zealand Wars.
Te Ua Haumēne was a New Zealand Māori religious leader during the 1860s. He founded the Pai Mārire movement, which became hostile and engaged in military conflict against the New Zealand government during the Second Taranaki War and the East Cape War.
William Williams was consecrated as the first Anglican Bishop of Waiapu, New Zealand, on 3 April 1859 by the General Synod at Wellington. His son, Leonard Williams became the third Bishop of Waiapu and his grandson, Herbert Williams, the sixth. His brother, the Rev. Henry Williams, led the Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission in New Zealand. William Williams led the CMS missionaries in translating the Bible into Māori and published an early dictionary and grammar of the Māori language.
Sacred Heart Girls' College is a single-sex (girls) secondary and intermediate school in New Plymouth, New Zealand.
Patricia Laura Te Waikapoata Hond was a New Zealand tribal leader, teacher, soldier, policewoman and community worker. Of Māori descent, she identified with the Taranaki iwi.
Te Henui Cemetery, also known as New Plymouth Cemetery, is the oldest public cemetery in New Plymouth, New Zealand. It was first used in 1861.
Holy Trinity Church (Anglican) in New Plymouth, New Zealand is one of the heritage buildings in the suburb of Fitzroy, New Plymouth, registered by Heritage New Zealand as a Category 1 Historic Place. This is one of the few remaining churches that had their foundations in the earliest period of European settlement. The current building replaced the original Anglican chapel, which was built in the 1840s, with the foundation stone laid by Bishop George Selwyn and designed by Frederick Thatcher, a London-trained architect, and one of the first settlers arriving in New Plymouth in 1843.
Moturoa is a steeply sloped island off the coast of Taranaki, New Zealand. It is the easternmost and largest of the Sugar Loaf Islands, hence its name, which is Māori for "long island". Moturoa is 120 metres long at its longest point, and around 100 metres wide. It is separated from the Taranaki coast of the North Island mainland by an 800-metre (2,600 ft) wide channel. The entrance to Port Taranaki lies just to the east.
John Whiteley was a missionary for the Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS) in New Zealand, active from his arrival in the country in 1833 up until his death.
Māngungu Mission was the second mission station established in New Zealand by the Wesleyan Missionary Society. Located near Horeke, in the Hokianga harbour, it was founded in 1828 by the missionaries John Hobbs and James Stack after the first WMS mission station in the country had been sacked the previous year. Māngungu Mission was abandoned in 1855 when Hobbs, the sole missionary at the site, relocated to Auckland. The residence that Hobbs built and lived in at the mission has been preserved by Heritage New Zealand and is now a museum.
The Gables in New Plymouth's Brooklands Park was a colonial hospital originally built in Mangorei Road, on the northern bank of the Henui Stream. It was one of the four hospitals Governor Sir George Grey commissioned in the late 1840s for European New Zealanders (Pakeha) and Maori patients in New Zealand’s North Island. Now an arts centre, the building is historically important as it reminds of the first attempt to provide quality medical care to all New Zealanders and of Governor Sir George Grey's policy of assimilation by establishing mixed hospitals. The building also has rarity value as it is the last remaining of the four original hospitals. It is architecturally important as well, being one of the earliest surviving buildings designed by an architect in New Zealand.
Media related to Whiteley Mission House, New Plymouth at Wikimedia Commons