The Taranaki region is thought to have been settled by Maori around 600-700 years ago. Archaeological evidence suggests that pa were being built in the area, which surrounds Mount Taranaki, as early as the fifteenth century. A number of iwi hold mana whenua in the west coast of the region, including Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga, Te Atiawa and Taranaki. The area which would become New Plymouth was initially populated by Nga Mahanga a Tairi of Taranaki, and then Te Atiawa, who affiliate with the waka Tokomaru and are said to descend from the semi-divine origins of ancestor Awanuiarangi, whose people moved south from Northland to the Bay of Plenty and Taranaki.
European whalers initially arrived along the Taranaki coast in the first half of the nineteenth century, and generally integrated themselves relatively harmoniously with the local Maori communities. By the early 1840s, a Ngati Te Whiti pa at Ngamotu, called Otaka Pa, was still populated but many other Maori strongholds in the region had been abandoned following attacks by taua from the Waikato a decade earlier, which had prompted a major migration of the remnant Te Atiawa population to Otaki, Wellington and Marlborough. However, increasing numbers of European settlers created a demand for land and the resulting tensions between tangata whenua and colonists had lasting effects on all Taranaki residents.
Organised colonial settlement at Taranaki was first instituted by the Plymouth Company in 1839-1840, who arranged to purchase land from the New Zealand Company for the settlement of immigrants from Devon and Cornwall, although this purchase would be much disputed in the future. The site of the township was chosen and laid out by Chief Surveyor Frederic Carrington in February 1841, and settler ships arrived from England from March 1841 onwards. By this time the Plymouth Company had fallen into financial difficulties, and was formally merged with the New Zealand Company in May 1841. Settler ships continued to arrive, but disputes around the Crown’s role in transferring land out of Maori ownership, and between tangata whenua over who had the authority to transfer land were already evident, frustrating all involved.
The series of prolonged conflicts during the 1860s are now commonly known as the Taranaki Wars, waged between the Crown and Maori in response to Maori uprising against the enforced alienation of their land. These caused widespread deprivation, suffering and loss of life and land for iwi, resulting in the heavy confiscation of tribal land taken by the Crown under the Land Settlement Act of 1863. The devastating effects of these actions have since been acknowledged by the Crown through formal apologies and efforts of redress by settlement agreements.
The conflicts also affected the fledgling European settler communities, with many residents of outlying areas abandoning their homes and taking refuge in the urban centre of New Plymouth town, or leaving the region altogether for a time. Complaints from anxious European settlers eventually forced the Government to station troops at New Plymouth, and the site of the former Pukaka pa (Marsland Hill) was transformed into a military stockade and barracks in 1855. As the frequency of battles decreased the British troops were gradually withdrawn, until the last detachment of the 50th regiment left in 1867.
Although land-related clashes occurred sporadically until the 1880s, the relative security of the less frequent military engagements saw the European settlers able to develop the township of New Plymouth with more certainty. Brougham Street became the early centre of commerce and administration for the town, due to its proximity to the Huatoki landing (in use before the harbour at Ngamotu was developed), and was the site of the Provincial Council building, as well as banks and numerous trade and small businesses.
As the colonial population grew, the town’s commercial activity flourished. To service the growing settlement, a number of financial institutions and administrative businesses were set up to facilitate lending services for settlers to establish their own homes and personal finances, including systems for investment. Investment and building societies were formed on the British model, with the aim of providing facilities for the safe and profitable investment of small savings, capital loans for property purchase, debt consolidation, building costs, and other expenses necessary to establish or advance oneself in a fledgling society. Funds for the activities were sourced from the monthly subscriptions of a society’s members, based on their shareholdings.
New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society
In New Plymouth, the Taranaki Land and Building Investment Society had been founded in 1865. However, in January 1876, a preliminary meeting of interested parties was held in the Taranaki Institute to discuss the formation of a new society, to be called the New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society. The proposed operational rules included a scale for the repayment of loans over varying periods of time, and a scale of frequency of repayments. A preliminary committee was appointed to formally draw up the rules, and included local solicitor Robert Clinton Hughes (1847-1935), and Clarence Sydney Rennell (1831-1906), an accountant and house, estate, land and commission agent.
In March 1876 intending shareholders gathered to further discuss the intentions of the new Society, and to correct the ‘erroneous impression’ that the Society they were about to start was in opposition to the existing Taranaki Land and Building Investment Society. It was emphasised that:
‘The society they were about to start was for the purpose of enabling the labouring men and those who were in receipt of weekly wages an opportunity of putting aside a portion of their earnings. At present a labouring man would have to save up his money during the month, and many found this a difficult thing to accomplish… It would be the same with the borrower. Many who would not perhaps be able to meet a monthly payment, might not feel the re-payment of the loan weekly from their wages in the same way as they would pay their rents.’
Another point of interest in the new Society was that borrowers need not necessarily be shareholders. By April the Society had been officially formed with over 50 shareholders, and held its first meeting, at which Clarence Rennell was appointed Secretary, a position he was to hold for 30 years.
New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society office building, 41 Brougham Street
Seven years later, in May 1883, the successful Society reported an accrued balance of £745 4s in credit, and the intention to build ‘more suitable premises than they now occupy’ on a central site in Brougham Street that the Directors had recently purchased. Progress on the new offices moved quickly. By August 1883 prolific architect Mr Henry J.T. Edmonds had designed the building, and W. Sole’s tender of £783 for construction was accepted, with Mr. H. Hooker sub-contracted for the masonry foundations. Edmonds, who had won a large number of residential and commercial commissions, was flush from the recent success of his design for the Alexandra Hall nearby on Devon Street West, which shared stylistic similarities with the Society office building in its Italianate features.
On 15 February 1884 the new offices were opened. The building was corrugated iron with a timber façade sand-painted in an imitation-masonry effect, carved and embellished with pilasters, cornices, pediments and parapet balustrading. The façade was topped with an ornamental legend commemorating the 1876 date of the Society’s establishment. Consisting of a main public office, manager’s office, board room, strong room, and associated facilities, the rooms had a 16 foot high stud and were well-appointed. The carved rimu and kauri desks and counters were French polished and made by Mr J.C. George, and the bricks were locally made in Fitzroy. The interiors were celebrated in the Taranaki Herald:
‘The [Society] is one of those institutions to which we can point with unqualified pride. Established eight years ago, it has had a career of uniform and increasing success…The entrance to the public office is neatly paved with patent glazed tiles, and admittance is gained through two inner swing-glass doors, having a large fanlight… The walls are plastered and distempered, and the ceiling is painted white, picked out in blue…. The walls [in the board room] are plastered and dadoed, the wood work being polished. A well-finished gasalier is fixed in the room, over which, in the ceiling, is a ventilator. We also noticed a fireplace, with nicely carved and polished mantelpiece. The floor is carpeted…’
The Directors later reported that the total construction cost had gone over budget at £1,603 19s 9d, but ‘considering the class of buildings being erected in the town, it was thought advisable not to have the offices of the Society in any way inferior to them.’ The building was also given extensive coverage - including an illustration - in the Taranaki Jubilee supplement to the Taranaki Herald in 1891, suggesting its importance in the commercial streetscape of the town. A photograph dating from between 1885-1896 shows the office standing out from its neighbours on Brougham Street as the finest, most ornately decorated building on the street. At some point over the years the finial and decorative urns that once adorned the parapet have been removed.
The premises were also used by the New Plymouth Gas Company and the New Plymouth Harbour Board, a situation no doubt assisted by Clarence Rennell’s position as Secretary for these organisations as well as the New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society. Rennell also ran his own business from the site, and the Union Insurance Company and New Zealand Insurance Company also rented office space.
Clarence S. Rennell died in December 1906, aged 75, and was succeeded in his position as Secretary of the Society by his son, also named Clarence Rennell (1874-1937). C.H. Wynyard became the secretary of the Society in the 1930s, and from this time until 1972 the building was also the offices of his accounting firm, Duff & Wynyard, as well as various other administrative and trade organisations. Like many other similar finance societies, the New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society was eventually merged into the Countrywide Building Society, which became Countrywide Bank, now incorporated into the National Bank.
R.C. Hughes office building, 43 Brougham Street
Serving as its solicitor and adviser for over 30 years, Robert Clinton Hughes had a long association with the New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society from its inception in 1876. Therefore, the site next door at 43 Brougham Street was a convenient location at which to build the new offices of his law practice, which were constructed in 1896. This section had been originally granted to Robert Clinton Hughes’ father, Robert Hughes, who had run his bootmakers’ business from an older building which was demolished to make way for Hughes’ new office.
Hughes was born in Auckland in 1847, but moved to New Plymouth with his family three years later. His surviving diary writings from his schooldays are a valuable account of what it was like for settlers living in the town during the conflicts of the 1860s. He continued his education with an apprenticeship to New Plymouth solicitor William Halse and was admitted to the Bar in 1870, at which time he opened his own law practice. Hughes, whose legal business included acting for commercial organisations and conveyancing, was fluent in Te Reo and had a lifelong interest in Maori culture, which saw him also take a number of cases to the Maori Land Court.
Always community-minded as well as being a keen outdoors enthusiast and environmentalist, Hughes made many lasting contributions to New Plymouth’s society, culture and landscape. He is perhaps best remembered today for being the driving force behind the institution of Pukekura Park (then called the Recreation Ground) in 1876. This 128-acre tract of native bush and botanical plantings surrounding man-made lakes in central New Plymouth remains a much-treasured amenity with an international reputation for its beauty, as well as a popular cricket and cultural venue. Hughes’ interest in conservation also saw him lead a successful campaign against a proposal to use New Plymouth landmark Paritutu as landfill, and he served membership on the New Plymouth Beautifying Society. He was a member of the Provincial Council and New Plymouth Borough Council, and of a great number of community and religious organisations and political and cultural groups.
In 1896, when the time came for him to construct new purpose-built premises, W.F. Brooking won the commission to design the building for the Brougham Street site. Brooking was well known to Hughes as a Director of the New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society, and a Borough Councillor. The multi-talented Brooking also ran a building and construction firm as well as an undertakers and monumental mason business from premises on the corner of Brougham and Powderham Streets, neighbouring Hughes’ new office site.
Messrs Boon Bros, a prominent local construction firm, won the contract to build the offices, at £424 10s. Construction was finished by June 1896, when Hughes took occupancy of the building. Brooking’s design had the new building directly adjoin the New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society building, and complement it with a false-front façade featuring a frieze of moulded corbelling, fluted pilasters and ornamental volutes that echoed the Italianate features of its neighbour.
Hughes’ law practice continued to thrive, eventually evolving into the venerable law firm of Hughes Grey & Co, which forms part of the legacy of present day law firm Till Henderson, who inherited Hughes Grey & Co’s asset of Post Office Box no. 1, New Plymouth. Hughes continued to play a very active part in the community until his death on 18 January 1935. He was survived by his widow, Amy Hughes.
His office building continued as the premises for the legal firm until the 1970s, when it was then occupied by real estate agents E.A. Wood & Co until 1992.
L’Escargot Restaurant
In 1976 André Teissonniére opened New Plymouth’s first ‘genuinely ethnic’ French restaurant on a site in Devon Street, and in 1982 moved the restaurant to the former New Plymouth Loan and Investment Society Building, the design of which suited the ‘French café’ style of the restaurant. Following adaptation to house the restaurant kitchen and services, further alterations to the building were undertaken in 1983. André’s L’Escargot has since become a New Plymouth culinary institution with a much wider reputation for excellence, and in 1992 Teissonniére purchased the adjacent Hughes building next door at 43 Brougham Street and extended the award-winning restaurant into both buildings. The relationship between the two buildings was reinforced at this time by the partial removal of the wall between them, enlarging the dining space into one split-level room. Other major alterations around this time included the removal of the fireplace and strong-room in the New Plymouth Investment and Loan Society building and the installation of a new staircase in its place, removal of the existing stairs to the mezzanine, installation of a new bar in the place of the former Board Room, and replacement of the front sash windows in the R.C. Hughes building with the present casement windows.
In 2006, with partial funding from the New Plymouth District Council’s Heritage Incentive Fund, the south, east and part of the north walls were reclad, and new window awnings were added. A heritage grant was again provided for repairs and maintenance to the facades in 2010, illustrating the importance of these buildings to the community and their place in new Plymouth’s heritage landscape. The buildings feature on the New Plymouth central Heritage Walkway, and in 1998 were voted in the top 10 favourite heritage buildings in the town.
