The settlement of the Nelson region is said to have begun with the landing of the prominent early iwi, Waitaha, in the waka Uruao. This travelled from Hawaiki and the voyagers made landfall on the Boulder Bank circa 850, near what would become Nelson city. From there scouting parties set out to explore the interior while others continued their journey by sea down the east coast of the South Island. Maori later developed a series of trails inland around the Murchison and Nelson Lakes area, such as that through Tophouse Pass. For Maori, and eventually the Europeans who used it in the mid nineteenth century, this and other tracks in the area were vital passages providing access to the West Coast as well as eastern and southern districts.
A European association with the Nelson area was first established in 1642 when Abel Tasman anchored in what was to be called Murderer's, then Massacre, and now Golden Bay. The result of this first visit was a lethal exchange between the Dutch sailors and Ngati Tumatakokiri. It was centuries after this initial encounter that European interest in the area began in earnest with explorative visits from Captain James Cook and Dumont D'Urville and a few others. Then in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century flax traders and sealers began to frequent the coast around Nelson. However, because there were few whaling stations in the immediate area there was no substantive European settlement until the New Zealand Company's establishment and settlement of Nelson from 1841.
The company explored the potential of several sites for its settlement but Nelson was chosen as the nucleus, despite the generally swampy nature of the low lying areas, because of its harbour and the plentiful supplies of game and fish. It was then a matter of Captain Arthur Wakefield meeting with the various iwi of the region to persuade them to agree to the proposed settlement. This was essentially a confirmation and extension of a land sale organised by the Tory expedition in 1839. The meeting took place at Kaiteriteri and Wakefield eventually negotiated a deal with those in attendance. However, subsequent events demonstrate that in regard to this and some later transactions there were discrepancies in what each party believed they had agreed to. This led to several instances of conflict in the Nelson region during the 1840s, in particular. Perhaps the most well-known occurrence was the 'Wairau Affray' in 1843.
It was not until the 1850s that the Nelson community and other towns in the area began to coalesce. Provincial government was established in 1853, and most of the farm land from Wakapuaka to Brightwater was occupied by this date. By the 1850s all of the major Christian denominations could also boast of clergy and associated buildings in and around Nelson. Between 1853 and 1858 the European population of the district had risen from 4,587 to over 7,000 and continued to grow and prosper into the 1860s and 1870s with the aid of the local gold rushes and the nationwide demand for the area's produce. The gold rushes also saw the development of small trading and supply settlements further inland.
Early explorations into the Murchison area were undertaken in the 1840s by Charles Heaphy, Thomas Brunner, and William Fox. Until the discovery of gold in the proximity there was little to entice people into the area, but by 1865 there was sufficient interest in the area for Brunner to return and survey the town, which was first called Hampden. This name was changed to Murchison in 1882 to forestall confusion with a town in Otago and also one in Hawke's Bay. However, at this time and indeed until the twentieth century, Murchison was considered a frontier settlement and its continuance relied on small-scale gold mining operations and its timber industry. Roads in the area were rudimentary, if they existed at all, and so access was minimal and difficult. This isolation did not foster commerce and as such the standard of living of most local residents in the late nineteenth century was barely above subsistence.
The first Commercial Hotel in Hampden was constructed in 1873 by Thomas Kerr who had previously had an inn on the Porika Track. A few years later Kerr sold the business to George Fairweather Moonlight in1878. However, soon after Moonlight became the proprietor the building was severely damaged in a flood so he decided to move location and build a new hotel of the same name. By this time Moonlight was well-known locally because of his role as the postmaster and because of his larger than life personality. Prior to living in Murchison Moonlight had followed goldrushes around the world, working the goldfields in California and Australia before trying his luck on the West Coast of New Zealand in 1863. After speculating in several other areas he set up an accommodation house and stables in the Maruia Valley and then ran a coach business before opening a general store in Hampden in 1870. However, his literal association with gold-diggers got him into financial strife and he was declared bankrupt in 1883, mainly because of a series of unhonoured loans he had made to local gold prospectors. As a consequence the hotel was sold to John Rait.
Business continued as usual under the Rait's ownership. However, from the late 1880s Charles Downie, who would later build Downie's Hotel in 1900, leased the Commercial Hotel from the family. This expired in 1899 and the Raits moved back but then sold the hotel in 1901. It is probable that it was around the period of Downie's proprietorship that the stables were built. Because most of the Commercial Hotel's clientele were travellers at the time the stables were constructed and the main forms of transport involved horses, it was reasonable for the hotel to offer stable facilities. It would seem that stable facilities were a requirement at the time for hotel's to be able to be competitive; for example other hotels in Murchison, such as Downie's Hotel situated close to its counterpart, also offered such housing. Downie's stables could accommodate twenty horses and therefore must have been comparable in size to the Commercial Stables.
Murchison seems to have come of age in the early twentieth century; changing from a frontier settlement into an established support centre for the burgeoning dairy and other industries. This transition was recognised in 1909 when the town became the centre of Murchison County, an area that was previously incorporated into the Inangahua County. This was a status symbol, but also a result of the growth of Murchison's identity as a dairy farming area as opposed to that in Inangahua County which was characterised by mining and milling. The transition from frontier community to established town and seat of local governance was physically marked in Murchison by the building of the Council Chambers (1913) and other civic buildings.
The presence of several large hotels, complete with stables, in the town centre by 1900 and enough patronage to ensure their ongoing viability is also evidence of this early twentieth century change in the town's fortunes. The Commercial Hotel was prominent among these and as such when the timber building was destroyed by fire in 1927 it was big news in the town, especially since several people were killed in the fire. The fire had threatened to repeat the devastating 1914 fire in the town and could have easily spread to the stables and other surrounding buildings, but fortunately the fire fighters were aided by the winds being light.
Perhaps the biggest event in Murchison during the twentieth century was the Murchison Earthquake on the morning of 17 June, 1929. Despite both being magnitude 7.8 earthquakes the devastating effects of the Murchison Earthquake were overshadowed in the national consciousness by the destruction caused by the Hawke's Bay Earthquake. However, for those who it experienced in and around Murchison the earthquake was a terrifying experience. A Glenhope resident, Jean McWha recalled everyone's relief when the initial reports that Murchison 'had disappeared completely under slips' was proven false by the streams of refugees who evacuated the town and headed for Nelson the next day.
These refugees were mostly women and children who were being sent out of the area. One of the 'plucky' young men who stayed on to help in the aftermath was thankful to be allowed to doss in the Commercial Stables in the days that followed:
'we were allowed to take a mattress from the Commercial Hotel and made a communal bed on the floor of one of the rooms at the front of the Commercial Stables...and turned in for the first sleep in a bed since Monday. Sunday morning at 6 a.m. the heaviest after shock occurred. What I remember most of all is the others tumbling over me to get out quickly. The first out saw the front of Hodgson's Store finally collapse.'
Hodgson's Store had been a concrete building constructed only fifteen years earlier. Even though the men scrambled to get out of the stables during the aftershock, the timber construction made it a recognised reasonably safe place to stay in the days following the main earthquake, and a remarkable survivor. The result of the ongoing seismic activity was that the Murchison area 'was shattered to the extent of being virtually uninhabitable.'
With the rise in use of motorised vehicles the use of horses for conveyance was reduced and made the Commercial Hotel's stables redundant in terms of their original purpose. However, it would appear that in the years subsequent to the Murchison Earthquake there was an accommodation block built onto the side of the stables. This row of small cabins was used for auxiliary hotel accommodation and also as staff lodgings. This addition meant that the building still had a function and relevance, in addition to the main section of the building being used as a general shed and utility space for the hotel. This is perhaps why, unlike its counterpart at Downie's Hotel and also others around New Zealand, the Commercial Stables survived into the motorised transport age. The change of function into utility and shed spaces of smaller stables seems to have been more common, and within Murchison Hodgson's Stables is one such example. The rarity of stables that were the size and form of Commercial Stables was recognised by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (NZHPT) in the late 1970s, at which time it was thought to be 'the only remaining commercial stables in the country.'
