MARSLAND HILL

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 235, 9 February 1911, Page 7

MARSLAND HILL

AX INTEREST IN G SKETCH. The following interesting sketch of Marsland Hill, its histcry and associations, appeared in a recent issue of the Lyttelton Times: Marsland Hill, or Pukaka, to give [i its Maori name, on which a memorial to Taranaki troopers who lost their lives in the South African war was unveiled on Thursday, is imme.diately behind St. Mary's Churchyard and overlooks the town of New Plymouth. Prior to 1885 it was some seventy feet higher than at present, and on its summit was the ruins of a very strong Maori pa. Owing to the outbreak of the Puketapu lend in 1854 and the then isolated position of the settlement, it was deemed advisable to garrison the place, and on August 1!), 1855, the sliip Duke of Portland (Captain Seymour) arrived from Auckland with 10 officers, 13 noncommissioned officers and 250 rank and file of the 58th Regiment, detachments of artillery and sappers, and several field pieces. A camp was pitched in the Market Square, which is now occupied by departmental buildings. On September (i the Duke of Portland arrived from Wellington with 210 non-commissioned officers and men of the 05th Regiment.

The crown of the hill was then levelled for the erection of a corrugated iron barracks, the material for which was procured in Melbourne. During the process of levelling, human bones were found and a coffin containing a skeleton which had fair hair attached to the skull. Naval buttons were found in the coffin, from which it is supposed that the skeleton was that of some naval officer who had died off the coast and whose body had been brought ashore for burial, while another supposition was that the remains were those of the victim of a duel a l'outrance. The barracks were continuously occupied until the withdrawal of the war in 1870. The change from the intense excitement of the war to the quiet of a small agricultural and pastoral community was very noticeable. No longer was the reveille sounded at daybreak from the hill to arouse the garrison and the inhabitants of the besieged town and to give the weary night picquets license to leave their posts for their homes and firesides; no longer the "'alarm" called all men off duty to arms and to face the foe; no longer the "Dead March" wailed out. its sorrowful strains over the remains of the fallen brave.

On the inauguration of the public works and immigration policy of Sir Julius Vogel the barracks were used for some time as an immigration depot, and when the Maori land-ploughing troubles of 187!)-81 took place it was occasionally used by the Armed Constabulary, and for some little time about the same period it was used by the families of the "unemployed" sent from Wellington. The last time it came into use was in 1885, when it was thrown open for the refugees from the Stratford fires. Its last occupant was the late Mounted-Constable Scully, probably because the police stables were just at hand. Some twentj years ago it was dismantled and a portion was taken to the mountain and no\« forms the North Egmont Mountain House, and the remaining portion was sold at auction.

It may be of interest to some of your readers to know that somewhere on the front slope of the hill the remains of Charles Armitage Brown, the friend of the poet Keats, are interred. Mr. Brown became interested in the formation of the Plymouth Company of New Zealand, and became so eager to engage in colonial life that he sent his only son (the late Major Brown) to New Plymouth in March, IS4I, following on himself in the Oriental, which left Plymouth on June 22 of that year and arrived at New Plymouth on November II). The stern utilitarianism ot colonial life of those days must have been a great contrast to the life' Mr. Brown had led in London and Florence among the elite of literature and art. After seven months' residence in the colony, he died suddenly of apoplexy in June, 1842. He was buried on Marsland Hill, on the slope facing the'sea. A .large slab of stone was placed over his grave, but when the hill was scarped and fortified this rude memorial was faced with earth, and now no one can point out exactly his restingplace. The hill is now vested in the Borough Council as a public park. It has latelv been re-planted and footpaths formed and graded. The memorial to those who .served in the Maori wars from 1845 to 1870 stands on the plateau overlooking the town. The one just unveiled—a memorial fountain—is some fortv yards in the rear and to the left of this.