CHANGE OF SCENE

This issue marks 40 years since this magazine was first published. We asked some veteran heritage advocates what’s changed on the heritage scene since 1983

WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES

Casting his mind back to Wellington in the early 1980s, conservation architect Chris Cochran MNZM lists some alarming examples of heritage buildings under threat at that time.

“The Wellington Town Hall was almost demolished, and the Public Trust and BNZ buildings on Lambton Quay and the Hunter Building at Victoria University of Wellington were all threatened. These are such extraordinarily important buildings to the city, it’s hard to fathom it now.”

His description of that perilous climate for the city’s heritage was echoed on the pages of the first issue of Historic Places in New Zealand (the predecessor to this magazine), which was launched in June 1983.

A profile of the massive refurbishment of the AMP Society Building on Customhouse Quay, listed as a Category 1 historic place that year, begins: “Demolition sites and halfbuilt tower blocks are a common sight in Wellington these days. But among the rubble and new concrete there is hope for those who cherish what remains of ‘old Wellington’.”

Chris, who recently retired as a conjoint member of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Board and Māori Heritage Council, was among a growing community rising up against the tide of heritage destruction wrought by the large-scale redevelopment of our inner cities. During that time he was a member and later chair for three years of the Wellington Regional Committee of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust – a group whose actions helped ensure that such buildings stand today.

While the rise of such activism was a direct response to specific heritage threats, Chris notes it was also due to a growing and wider appreciation of our heritage. He points to seminal events such as heritage preservation campaigns decades earlier (the campaign to save Wellington’s Old St Paul’s is one example), and later, in 1980, a popular professional seminar on adaptive reuse called ‘New Lives for Old Buildings’.

Awareness of the trust’s process of identifying and classifying specific heritage buildings to provide them with recognition was also growing through the 1980s, laying the foundation for today’s New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero.

Also contributing to the groundswell was a wave of publications in the 1980s highlighting our built heritage, including Jeremy Salmond’s Old New Zealand Houses 1800–1940, Geoffrey Thornton’s The New Zealand Heritage of Farm Buildings, and Chris’s own book, Restoring a New Zealand House

The trust hoped to capture the interest generated by the publishing wave with its launch of the magazine, as then-chair Neil Begg noted in his introduction: “We have wider hope for the magazine, that it will increase New Zealanders’ awareness of the variety and interest of their historic places and stimulate greater eagerness to see such places preserved and protected.”

Dame Anna Crighton’s involvement with heritage preservation was forged a decade or so later, with the 1996 campaign to save the Kaiapoi Woollen Mill from demolition.

The fight for heritage also drew the Christchurch Heritage Trust chair and former Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga board member (2003-10) into politics. Dame Anna ultimately served as a Christchurch city councillor from 1995 to 2007 and chaired the council’s arts, culture and heritage committee. Heritage hadn’t previously been on the council agenda, she says, but the emergence of the Resource Management Act 1991 offered scope for local authorities to begin identifying heritage assets and noting them in district plans.

“I thought, we need more protection for these places, and it needs to happen politically because it won’t happen just by advocating.”

Reflecting on the aspiration expressed in the magazine’s first issue –for the development of a greater understanding and appreciation of our heritage – Dame Anna is ambivalent about the progress we’ve made in the intervening years.

“I don’t think it’s improved dramatically. It’s been a slow, hard slog because people still seem to have the mindset that it’s not that old, so it can’t be that important. The developers and investors – the people with money and influence – do a lot of travelling. They see heritage buildings overseas and compare that heritage with our colonial heritage – and think ours doesn’t really matter. It’s taken a lot of work to get that mindset, that myth, dispersed.”

However, she says the loss of almost half of central Christchurch’s heritage-listed buildings following the Canterbury earthquakes has led to greater heritage appreciation in the city.

“It’s been post-earthquake that people have come to love and respect and want whatever’s left to be saved.”

1. A story on a major Wellington restoration project sounded a positive note during a perilous period for the city’s heritage.

2. Glossaries of te reo Māori terms used in stories were a feature of the magazine then – and are again today.

Heritage is not “a Pollyanna issue”, says Dame Anna, and while she says there’s a place for the success stories profiled in Heritage New Zealand magazine, she’d like to see more space given to “ugly stories”, where those in power are held to account for decisions that have led to heritage losses.

Local heritage activism is still strong, she says, but it took a hit following the dissolution of the trust’s branch committees with the advent of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014.

Dame Anna was the founding chair from 2010 to 2013 of Historic Places Aotearoa – the collective body of regional heritage organisations established following the demise of branch committees – and she says it has taken time to re-engage some communities with heritage causes and projects.

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Board Deputy Chair and Māori Heritage Council Chair Sir John Clarke (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) says the introduction of the Act almost a decade ago “helped us to prepare for the 21st and pass all these pou – these signposts across the land – to see the difference that’s made to our cultural landscape.” century”, ensuring the work of the board and council was grounded in the principles of te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Among further developments, Sir John notes two of particular importance.

One was the introduction, following the passing of the Act, of a new listing classification for Māori heritage – wāhi tupuna/tīpuna, defined as “a place important to Māori for its ancestral significance and associated cultural and traditional values”.

“Achieving wāhi tupuna status for the Waitangi Treaty Grounds in 2015 was a great and most appropriate first milestone for the Māori Heritage Council,” he notes, adding that this status was further enhanced when the site became New Zealand’s first National Historic Landmark in 2020.

Another was the release in 2017 of Tapuwae – the Māori Heritage Council’s vision document used to guide the Māori heritage work of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and make the organisation’s work more relevant to iwi, hapū and wider society.

Sir John says that under the previous legislation there were limited opportunities for Māori input, particularly in the archaeological consent process, and the changes gave greater recognition to Māori associated with many archaeological sites.

“Māori heritage is central to New Zealand’s unique identity,” he says. “It is New Zealand’s earliest heritage, the ‘footprint’ of iwi life and culture since the first arrival in Aotearoa some 800 years ago. It’s substantial and touches all parts of our country.”

As both a former cultural advisor to the Office of Treaty Settlements and a Waitangi Tribunal member, Sir John says the return of many sites of significance to Māori in conjunction with the Treaty settlement process has also affected the heritage landscape.

“You only have to drive along the motorway between Hamilton and Auckland, for example,

Māori heritage featured prominently in the first issue of the magazine, with a spectacular aerial image on the cover of Te Kura a Maia pā (listed as a Category 2 historic place in 1984) in the Bay of Plenty. The issue also carried a story on Te Miringa Te Kakara – the rare cross-shaped meeting house at Te Hape, near Benneydale, Waikato, which had been slated for restoration before it was shockingly destroyed by fire.

Fire remains an ever-present threat to our heritage places, but Sir John notes the emergence of other challenges that now loom large in the consciousness of those working in heritage. There’s increased awareness of the threats posed by earthquakes following the experiences in Christchurch and Kaikōura, as well as the effects of climate change, particularly extreme weather events such as Cyclone Gabrielle.

Reflecting on the past, but with an eye to the future, he says: “We must plan for greater resilience.” sub-tribe