INGLEWOOD'S BIRTHDAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 January 1920, Page 6

INGLEWOOD'S BIRTHDAY.

TOWN'S GROWTH REVIEWED. PARIHAKA SCARE RECALLED. This 22nd day of January, 1920, marks the forty-fifth year since the town of Inglewood was declared to be Jnglewood, with all due ceremony, though no pomp, by the members of the Provincial Council of Taranaki. The superintendent of those days (the late Mr. F. A. Carrington) not being able to be present, the duty of christening the new-born town fell to the lot of the late Mr. Arthur Standish, his deputy. Since that day Inglewood has experienced many vicissitudes, and, until the discovery of the refrigerator and its adaptation to ocean going ships opened the markets of the Old World to New Zealand's food products, times in this, as in most other parts of Taranaki, were by no means rosy, but since the start of co-operative dairy factories in the district, in 1895, the whole condition of the place has improved. In the earlier days, times were such that money for farm produce was hard to get, and "fungus" was the mainstay of many bush settlers. In those days Inglewood was largely dependent for her existence on the saw- | mills, of which Mr. Henry Brown's was locally the principal. During this time, too, came the Parihaka scare, the levelling for strategical reasons of the railway reserve in the centre of the township, and the enrolling of three volunteer companies. The premier company only, the "Inglewood Rifles," under Captain Hy. Brown, was armed with Sneiders, the other two with old and nearly useless muzzle loading rifles whose ammunition was hopelessly unreliable. In spite of all difficulties and setbacks the little bush township held her own.

In the earlier years Mr. Wm. Courtney, and later Mr. Newton King, held periodical cattle sales in yards put up by the first-mentioned gentleman. Then in August, 1889, Messrs- Vickers and Stevens took out an auctioneer's license, and built yards in the town where, as times improved, they held weekly sales, giving place in their turn to Messrs. Matthews and Bennett, which firm, in iti turn, became that of Matthews, Gamlin and Co., with yards at Dudley road, and then in 1916 Mr. Newton King took over the business as a branch, while at the same time the Farmers' Co-operative Society established their Inglewood branch, between them raising this to one of the chief centres of the cattle trade in Taranaki. Meanwhile other advances had been made. Co-operative dairy factory companies sprang up in 1895, and a bacon factory company, on similar lines, in 1899, all of which have helped the town forward. Nor must the establishment of the Electric Light arid Power Company, since taken over by the Borough, be forgotten. The Town District, which was started in 1876, in 1903 was promoted to the dignity of a Borough, and now. in this coming forty-sixth wear of its life, it is to assume the still higher position of the chief centre of n County, when on the Ist April the Moa Rond District becomes the Inglewood County. The Moa District, which practically came into being at the same time as Inglewood. has grown with it, and its welfare has become indissolnbly bound up with that of Inglewood, and is as important to Inglewood as that of Inglewood is to it, or even more so, and, if the prosperity they both now enjoy is to be of a permanent and increasing nature, it should be the aim of each and every one of the voters, in both town and country, to take a keen interest in- all their public matters, and watch jealously the actions of their representatives on the Borough and County Councils, for in that way those representatives will feel encouragI ed and spurred on to do the best they know.—TAHT HERENI.