Blockhouse to Home

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 102, 21 July 1927, Page 10

Blockhouse to Home

Historic Building in Jellicoe

Park Once Place of Refuge

ITIDDEN beneath the close-clipped creeper which covers the old blockhouse in Jellicoe Park, Onehunga, are bricks chipped by bullets fired by hostile natives in the early days of New Zealand. Blockhouse schoolhouse—councilhouse—home; those are four periods through which the old building has passed in the pageant of Dominion history. How lonely but how secure it must have looked before the habitations of man gradually gathered round it to form the town of Onehunga. Perched

on a knoll of rising ground, the blockhouse commanded an unbroken view of ever-changing loveliness —-the wide, irridescent sweep of Manukau Harbour, the silhouette of the blue 'Waitakeres and the verdant slopes of nearer hills. That view is still beautiful, if one can reconcile oneself to the red roofs which form cubist patterns in the foreground. Through the leafy branches of towering puriri, Norfolk pines and macrocarpa one sees the sentinel hills which stand on perpetual guard over Auckland. Across Manukau Harbour there is Mount Mangere, in the opposite direction there is One Tree Hill. Then comes Mount Eden, with Mount Wellington and Mount Smart completing the line. Anxious eyes must have watched those hills and mountains from the many windows of the blockhouse when the Maoris were troublesome.

To-day the blockhouse stands among green carpets of lawn. The iron-plates which covered the windows have gone; the loopholes have been bricked up, but their positions can be traced by the shape of the bricks. There are bullet marks among the bricks under the covering creeper. The original heavy iron and wooden door still swings on its old hinges, the only modern note is a slit through which letters are dropped by the mailman.

Until a few years ago the blockhouse was vested in the Admiralty, but Sir Frederic Lang was responsible for an Act of Parliament which transferred the historical building and the land to the Onehunga Borough Council.

Originally built as a refuge from hostile Maoris and the home of the armed Constabulary, the blockhouse must have been erected in 1850 or

thereabouts. When the Rev. G. Brown arrived in Onehunga in 1860 it was standing where it stands to-day. Before his arrival a few whites who lived in the vicinity had found protection behind its strong, brick walls and ironcovered windows.

As the years went by and the land became one of peace and progress the blockhouse was not necessary as a refuge. In about IS6S or 1569 Mr. Brown opened a school in it—the first in Onehunga. The Rev. G. Brown, who lives close

by the blockhouse, is 97 years of age and the oldest Presbyterian minister in New Zealand. Many a time, in the old days, he walked from Onehunga to Auckland through • the tea-tree. The next period in the history of the blockhouse belongs to the time when it became the Onehunga Borough Council Chambers. Captain M. Yates wa§ then Mayor of the town. As Onehunga increased in size, bigger premises were required and the council moved out.

Then the old blockhouse became a home —first for the caretaker of Jellicoe Park and now of Constable Johnston and his family. The large living room was once the women’s quarters, and later a school room. Except for an additional outhouse the old building is just as it was when Onehunga consisted of a few cottages and the Maoris paddled their canoes on the harbour or bartered fruit and vegetables on the beach below.

The magnificent trees which dot the lawns round the blockhouse to-day were planted in 1874 or 1875. Among them is the pohutukawa, which makes vivid splashes of colour at Christmas time.

Once horses were trained on a track round the house, and then, as the years went by, the present Jellicoe Park became a wilderness. Mr. J. Park, the architect, worked hard and successfully to have Jellicoe Park put into its present trim order. Although the blockhouse makes a charming home, in an ideal setting what a perfect building it would be, with its historical associations, for a museum for Onehunga—a fit place to house the treasures of the port. Already two old cannon, said to be 127 years old, stand on guard outside the blockhouse.