The Smithy at Teddington

Opposite the Wheatsheaf Hotel in Teddington is a little corrugated iron shed that not so long ago looked like this...

With the support of the Parkinson Trust, David Bundy has driven the restoration of the old Blacksmith's Shop, built on Gebbie family land sometime after the construction of the Wheatsheaf in 1875. The first we hear of the Smithy is an advertisement in The Press, July 1889.

Wanted known  -  J. Bryden has started a Blacksmith's Shop, Head of the Bay, Teddington, where he hopes to receive a fair amount of patronage.

Once the hotel was constructed and the road around the harbour opened up, this would have been a busy junction with farmers driving stock from the peninsula to market in Christchurch (via Dyers Pass or by sea from Teddington). It is likely that J. Bryden did get a 'fair amount of patronage'.

Smithy later in life when it was used as Ra Blatchford's contracting headquarters

Restoration of the building is almost complete and if you go past on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday you will likely find retired blacksmith Les firing up the forge. He will welcome you in for a look and a chat.

Pigeon pie

The recent controversy regarding the shooting of kereru reminded me of this excerpt from J. Hay's Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury (principally Banks’ Peninsula) and its Settlers published in 1915. Kereru were favoured as easy targets.

Several in succession could be shot from the same tree. This bird was much in request for the table of the pioneers, and it was easily procured when wanted…pigeons were best stewed or made into a pie, and pigeon soup was king of the bouillons.

Susannah Chaney, who worked for the Manson family, remembered Samuel Manson returning from the bush with the muzzle of his gun laden with native pigeons.

Fortunately the native pigeon population seems to be stable and possibly on the rise in Whakaraupō.   

Mystery solved...

Thanks to Janet and Rex Gebbie and Sue and Terry Donaldson we now know more about this photo. The house belonged to Reginald and Johanna Gebbie and was located down the hill from the original Gebbie homestead 'Greensland' (photo in previous post), nearer Gebbies Pass Road. The house burnt down when the washing copper chimney caught fire about 1920 and the site has been rebuilt on twice since. Greensland was demolished in the 1950s and the timber used to construct cattle-yards. According to Terry the car suggests the photo was taken somewhere between 1900 and 1905.

Photo mystery...

House and family in Teddington, Canterbury Museum, 19XX.2.3555

Cute car eh!! Can anyone help me identify this photo? The accompanying caption is all the information I have. Can anyone name the house and/or the family? Or identify the background? The house appears single-storey. Is there any chance the it might be the Gebbie homestead Greensland (below) viewed from a different angle??

Any thoughts much appreciated.

Greensland (Janet and Rex Gebbie)

Pairman Library

The empty spaces created by the earthquake demolitions have often opened up surprising vistas and revealed previously hidden treasures. Along Cresswell Avenue, visible now that the Community Centre is no longer, is the old Pairman Library.

The Port Victoria Public Library opened in April 1874 in the classroom of the old Governors Bay School with an annual subscription of five shillings. In 1928 Dr Pairman (more about him in another post...) loaned the community a sum of money and donated 2.2 perches of his land above Merlincote Crescent, to house a community library. The Governor’s Bay Public Library Association was formed on the 25 May that year and the little building we can see now was purpose built to house the collection which was supplemented with books from the Canterbury Public Library and later from the Country Library Service.

Dr Pairman’s library building was physically relocated to the new Community Centre on Cresswell Avenue in July 1962 and the library was still going strong in the late 1980s. There was a Library Committee, a roster of volunteers and a particularly excellent collection of children’s books. However the advent of a library at the school, the decision of the National Library to cease its rotating contribution to the collection, plus competition from other forms of ‘recreation’, eventually spelt its demise. The building was then used for a playgroup.

As the sign says - the community wants to keep the Pairman Library, perhaps as a new home for the pottery group. Now's your chance to get a good view of the old building before it disappears behind a  (hopefully) newly constructed community centre!

Old time fishing...

I just saw Peter Langland's facebook reference to garfish - and it reminded me of these local recollections...

A great sport for the youths was Garfishing at night from the little wharf. A long handled net of bird-wire dipped into the water to catch the fish that came seething up to a low-held storm lantern. Maoris from the Pa, also, at certain seasons, came in dog carts, then, removing their pants, waded into the shallow water near the big wharf and, armed with gorse-slashers, attacked the Dog-fish which were so thick at these times, had to be seen to be believed. I believe the Maoris dried them for future use. They filled their dog carts anyway. As light hearted children on our way home from school, we threw stones in among these great shoals of Doggers, just to see them collide with each other as they darted away from the stone. [1]

Then there were the rig (young shark).

They used to come in their thousands through the heads of Lyttelton Harbour … Those fish used to follow [a trail] and it came right through up to the flats in the Allandale area and the flats of the Teddington area. The local people knew when it was happening … they could tell by the number of sea birds that were clouding the sky above the approaching shoal of rig. There were so many thousands of them coming up that they pushed the ones in the front right up onto the shoreline and that’s when all the locals … rushed down with clubs and anything that could hit the fish on the heads with and kill them …There were so many of them piled on the beach that they used to go to Jesse Allan’s, who was the local postmistress and had the one and only telephone, and they would ring through to the one and only [telephone] at Rapaki and the Maori people immediately came round with horses and carts and they would fill up the carts with the rig because the rig bypassed the Rapaki Bay.[2]

The Rapaki Maori would smoke the rig. “Smoke would pour from Rapaki for days afterwards. My father used to laugh and say that every blowfly, bluebottle in Canterbury flew over the hills to Rapaki to feast on whatever was lying around from the filleting of the fish.”[3] Head of the harbour residents would also smoke or salt the rig.

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[1] ‘Alma’ notes (Alison Hussey Archive).

[2] Interview, Coyla Radcliffe-Oliver, 2/6/2001, GBHS archive.

[3] Ibid.