HISTORIC MAORI CARVINGS DISCOVERED

Chronicle (Levin), 31 January 1947, Page 2

HISTORIC MAORI CARVINGS DISCOVERED

(Special Correspondent.)

WERE HEAP OF TIMBER ON ENGLISH FARM

lieceivea anursaay, i p.m. LONDON, Jan. 30. Thirty-eight vears after they left New Zeaiaiid aiid after lying for years011 an Oxfordshire farm unreeognised as anything bnt a lieap of strangely earved and painted timber, 32 seetion.-^ of the porchway and portals of thu famous Tuhoroinatakataka Maori ineet ing house at Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, will shortly be returned to their native land. In 1909, when the famous Maon guide Maggie Papakura left Kotorua to lead a party of JMaoris to the Pestivai of the Enipire exhibition at Crvstai Palaee, London, she took with her these earved panels of Tuhoroinatakataka fo. re-erection as part of the New Zealaud seetion of the exhibition. Included among them were sections of a earved potaka or Maori storehouse of the type exhibited today in the inodel pa near Maggie 's old home, and a memorial ereeted to her by the Tuhourangi tribe of Whakarewarewa. When the Festival of Empire closed after the ebronation of Iving George V in .1910, the house was dismantled ansl re-ereeted at ihe* Franco-British ex hibition at Sliepherd's Bush, London. Thereafter Maggie and her party weuc on a tour of Britain and after giving a series of Maori entertainments, returned to New Zealand. But while in England Maggie Papakura met an Englishman, Captain Staples-Brown, of Oddington Grange, near Oxford, and later she returned to England to marry hini and become the inistress of a typical English country estate. To this estate, possibly as a reminder of her homeland, Mrs. Staples-Brown removed the potaka and sections of her ancestral meeting house, intending to re-erect them near her new home. Whether they were ever so ereeted cannot be ascertained but with the death of their owner and passage of years, they were t'orgotten until last year when Miss B. M. Blackwood, a member of the staff of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, while visiting Brandon farm, part of the Oddington estate, saw aua examined the large pile of timber stacked in the yard near the farmhouse. The timber was ovcrgrown with grass and nettles but Miss Blackwood, as a trained observer, recognised it for wliat it was — New Zealand totara earved foi an ornamental porch and frontage of u Maori meeting house. Miss Blackwood coinmunicated with the New Zealand authorities in London and as a result New Zealand representatives were sent to Brandon Farm to inspect the fiml. Now, with the full cooperation of tlie present occupier of the property, Mr. F. K. Olinkard, the carvings have lieen handed over to the New Zealand Govemment and are stored in London ready for shipment to New Zealand. Despite the fact that two of tlie earved slabs had been nsefl to repair a coalshcd and that another had been removed and the back of it used as a workbench on a ncigh bouring farm, all of the timber was sound and none of the earved surfaces damaged. Dr. R. A. Falla, Director of the Canterbury Museum, who has inspected it, confirms this and ivas expressed tlie opinion that the carvings are undoubtedly of historic and artistic value Even the paint with which they had been coated still remains. The Oddington Grange property was oecupied for some time after his inother's death at Oxford, by the late Mr. William Dennan, Maggie Papakura 's son by her lirst marriage. After Mr. Dennan 's return' to New Zealand where he subsequently married Guide Rangi, of Whakarewerewa, the Oddington property passed into other owner ship and the story of the strange carvings in the yard of Brandon Farm house appears to have been forgotten.