Cape Broom Hotel and Dairy stands around 14 kilometres from Alexandra on State Highway 8 in an area now known as Fruitlands. The Hotel and hexagonal form dairy date from the mid 1870s and provided services for the local community, as well as acting as a changing station for horses en route from Lawrence to Alexandra. The stone hotel, replacing an earlier one on the same site, operated from 1874 for at least thirty years. In the twentieth century the building fell into disuse, but has remained a notable ruin adjoining the one of the main routes into to Central Otago.
What was to become known as Fruitlands became the centre of gold mining activity in 1862, when, following the opening of the Dunstan Gold Field, miners moved to prospect in the streams running from the Old Man Range. On the slopes of this range are the Butchers, Gorge, Obelisk and Coal Creeks, and the site of the packers' town that was called Chamounix. These places are important in local history for the stories of hardship, danger and loss of life associated with gold mining in the 1860s. Fruitlands itself is located mainly on the flood plain of Obelisk Creek and extends north towards Butchers Creek. Gold was discovered on Coal Creek (according to McCraw, more likely to be Obelisk), resulting in a rush to the area. Mining eventually focused on the more productive area of the Obelisk Creek flood plains, where the creek crosses Bald Hill Flat.
According to McCraw , John Kemp, first proprietor of the Cape Broom Hotel, was responsible for renaming the area Bald Hill Flat in 1865. The bald hill Kemp referred to is a prominent conical hill to the east of the main road, capped with porous gravel that prevented the growth of vegetation.
Miner John Rymill Kemp arrived in the area in 1865. Miners had the right to occupy a residential area of one acre but no right to freehold occupation. Kemp first had a mining claim at Butchers Gully, and also grew vegetables to sell to miners and packed goods over the Old Man Range to Campbells Gully. Following a petition to the Provincial Government, 2,046 acres (828 hectares) was surveyed off the Teviot Run in 1869 and subdivided into 51 sections from 17 to 50 acres. John Rymill Kemp was one of the first to take up his lease.
An 1870 survey plan shows Kemp's lease of 38 acres, with two buildings located on it. McCraw identifies these as Kemp's store and an earlier hotel built prior to the Cape Broom Hotel. The Hotel was a changing station for the coaches travelling between Lawrence and Alexandra, when the road to the west of the Clutha River was developed in the early 1870s.
By the early 1870s Kemp had plans to enlarge his premises. In January 1873 the Governor of New Zealand, Sir G.F. Bowen, while he was on a journey from Tuapeka to Queenstown, laid the foundation stone of the Cape Broom Hotel. This building was completed before December 1874, when Kemp's establishment, consisting of the hotel and store, was described in the Otago Daily Times as:
without exception, the prettiest place on the road between Dunedin and Queenstown. The buildings are all of stone and upon the most extensive scale, and although the means of the owner have not permitted him to carry out fully his rather extensive ideas, his outlay up to the present time upon buildings alone already amounts to £2000.
Kemp's land holdings consisted of forty freehold and eighty leasehold acres. The hotel had two acres of gardens planted with fruit and ornamental trees. The garden was hedged with Cape broom (now known as Montpellier broom, Cytisus monspessulanus) intermixed with sweet briar. This explains the origin of the hotel's name.
In an 1874 photograph, John Kemp and his sister are standing outside a building named the Cape Broom Hotel and Store. The sign shows that the store was also the Bald Hill Flat Post Office. While the hotel would have been important for providing accommodation, the store and post office would have provided essential functions in such an isolated rural community in the nineteenth century, supplying food and other goods to miner and settlers as well as postal services. In the dairy, milk would have been processed into butter and cheese, and these products as well as milk itself kept cool at a time well before any refrigeration. The hotel provided accommodation for those travelling to and from the further Central Otago gold fields, as well as miners proceeding to the diggings up the Old Man Range behind Bald Hill Flat.
In 1873 Cape Broom Hotel was the focus of a growing conflict of interest in the Bald Hill Flat community between farm settlers and miners. Miners wanted to continue mining land within the subdivided sections, and wanted to build a sludge channel over a mile long to section 27, in the middle of the Flat. Farmers, entitled to freehold their leases after three years of occupancy, were anxious to do so, and to prevent mining from taking place on their productive sections. A meeting was held at the hotel in August of 1873 to look at the issue, which polarised between the two groups. Following further public meetings an inquiry was held. This resulted in the richest auriferous flood plain of Obelisk Creek being declared a Mining Reserve. It was surveyed off in 1874 and licences issued from 1876. The intention of mining section 27 of the subdivision was dropped and the fertile, subdivided land retained by the farmers.
Mining continued for a further thirty years at Bald Hill Flat. In 1899 the Bald Hill Flat Freehold Gold Dredging Company bought all of Kemp's land, as well as that belonging to George Burton of the neighbouring Speargrass Hotel, a total of 300 acres. The company began using a large dredge in March 1901, behind and just downstream from the Cape Broom Hotel, but ceased working only three months later. The company was in debt, the dam was too small for the dredge, and the gold was not easily separated from the clay at the bottom of the stream. The company was liquidated and the dredge dismantled and moved to the West Coast.
One of the last mining companies to operate at Bald Hill Flat was the Last Chance Company, with a water race cut to Obelisk, Coal, Gorge and Shingle Creeks in about 1890, although the Gorge Water Race Company had built earlier races in the 1870s. This company stopped working in about 1910, but the water rights were sold to the government and subsequently formed the basis of the Last Chance Irrigation Scheme.
John Kemp sold the hotel in 1900 to the Bald Hill Flat Freehold Dredging Company Ltd. The following year the Company on sold it to John Dowdall. Dowdall owned the property until 1910, when he sold it to members of the local Butler family.
Original owner John Rymill Kemp died on October 15 1914, aged 84.
After mining days at Bald Hill Flat ended, in 1915 the Otago Central Fruitlands Company began the enterprise that gave the area its current name, planting extensive orchards. Around 1920 Company bought the Hotel site, consolidating its large holdings in the area of some 478 acres. According to Moore, the name of Fruitlands was a misnomer as the company's efforts failed, only a single crop of fruit being picked and exported as the climate was too severe for this kind of enterprise.
In the 1930s the Company sold the property, and little is known of its use during this period. By the 1980s the Hotel was being used as a shearing shed by the then owners of the property.
Over the years the hotel fell into a ruined state. In the 1990s the section was subdivided with plans to establish gardens and a small retail nursery, restore the building, and build a new residence on the rear of the section, with the New Zealand Historic Place Trust supporting the proposed development.
Currently the hotel is unoccupied.
What was to become known as Fruitlands became the centre of gold mining activity in 1862, when, following the opening of the Dunstan Gold Field, miners moved to prospect in the streams running from the Old Man Range. On the slopes of this range are the Butchers, Gorge, Obelisk and Coal Creeks, and the site of the packers' town that was called Chamounix. These places are important in local history for the stories of hardship, danger and loss of life associated with gold mining in the 1860s. Fruitlands itself is located mainly on the flood plain of Obelisk Creek and extends north towards Butchers Creek. Gold was discovered on Coal Creek (according to McCraw, more likely to be Obelisk), resulting in a rush to the area. Mining eventually focused on the more productive area of the Obelisk Creek flood plains, where the creek crosses Bald Hill Flat.
According to McCraw , John Kemp, first proprietor of the Cape Broom Hotel, was responsible for renaming the area Bald Hill Flat in 1865. The bald hill Kemp referred to is a prominent conical hill to the east of the main road, capped with porous gravel that prevented the growth of vegetation.
Miner John Rymill Kemp arrived in the area in 1865. Miners had the right to occupy a residential area of one acre but no right to freehold occupation. Kemp first had a mining claim at Butchers Gully, and also grew vegetables to sell to miners and packed goods over the Old Man Range to Campbells Gully. Following a petition to the Provincial Government, 2,046 acres (828 hectares) was surveyed off the Teviot Run in 1869 and subdivided into 51 sections from 17 to 50 acres. John Rymill Kemp was one of the first to take up his lease.
An 1870 survey plan shows Kemp's lease of 38 acres, with two buildings located on it. McCraw identifies these as Kemp's store and an earlier hotel built prior to the Cape Broom Hotel. The Hotel was a changing station for the coaches travelling between Lawrence and Alexandra, when the road to the west of the Clutha River was developed in the early 1870s.
By the early 1870s Kemp had plans to enlarge his premises. In January 1873 the Governor of New Zealand, Sir G.F. Bowen, while he was on a journey from Tuapeka to Queenstown, laid the foundation stone of the Cape Broom Hotel. This building was completed before December 1874, when Kemp's establishment, consisting of the hotel and store, was described in the Otago Daily Times as:
without exception, the prettiest place on the road between Dunedin and Queenstown. The buildings are all of stone and upon the most extensive scale, and although the means of the owner have not permitted him to carry out fully his rather extensive ideas, his outlay up to the present time upon buildings alone already amounts to £2000.
Kemp's land holdings consisted of forty freehold and eighty leasehold acres. The hotel had two acres of gardens planted with fruit and ornamental trees. The garden was hedged with Cape broom (now known as Montpellier broom, Cytisus monspessulanus) intermixed with sweet briar. This explains the origin of the hotel's name.
In an 1874 photograph, John Kemp and his sister are standing outside a building named the Cape Broom Hotel and Store. The sign shows that the store was also the Bald Hill Flat Post Office. While the hotel would have been important for providing accommodation, the store and post office would have provided essential functions in such an isolated rural community in the nineteenth century, supplying food and other goods to miner and settlers as well as postal services. In the dairy, milk would have been processed into butter and cheese, and these products as well as milk itself kept cool at a time well before any refrigeration. The hotel provided accommodation for those travelling to and from the further Central Otago gold fields, as well as miners proceeding to the diggings up the Old Man Range behind Bald Hill Flat.
In 1873 Cape Broom Hotel was the focus of a growing conflict of interest in the Bald Hill Flat community between farm settlers and miners. Miners wanted to continue mining land within the subdivided sections, and wanted to build a sludge channel over a mile long to section 27, in the middle of the Flat. Farmers, entitled to freehold their leases after three years of occupancy, were anxious to do so, and to prevent mining from taking place on their productive sections. A meeting was held at the hotel in August of 1873 to look at the issue, which polarised between the two groups. Following further public meetings an inquiry was held. This resulted in the richest auriferous flood plain of Obelisk Creek being declared a Mining Reserve. It was surveyed off in 1874 and licences issued from 1876. The intention of mining section 27 of the subdivision was dropped and the fertile, subdivided land retained by the farmers.
Mining continued for a further thirty years at Bald Hill Flat. In 1899 the Bald Hill Flat Freehold Gold Dredging Company bought all of Kemp's land, as well as that belonging to George Burton of the neighbouring Speargrass Hotel, a total of 300 acres. The company began using a large dredge in March 1901, behind and just downstream from the Cape Broom Hotel, but ceased working only three months later. The company was in debt, the dam was too small for the dredge, and the gold was not easily separated from the clay at the bottom of the stream. The company was liquidated and the dredge dismantled and moved to the West Coast.
One of the last mining companies to operate at Bald Hill Flat was the Last Chance Company, with a water race cut to Obelisk, Coal, Gorge and Shingle Creeks in about 1890, although the Gorge Water Race Company had built earlier races in the 1870s. This company stopped working in about 1910, but the water rights were sold to the government and subsequently formed the basis of the Last Chance Irrigation Scheme.
John Kemp sold the hotel in 1900 to the Bald Hill Flat Freehold Dredging Company Ltd. The following year the Company on sold it to John Dowdall. Dowdall owned the property until 1910, when he sold it to members of the local Butler family.
Original owner John Rymill Kemp died on October 15 1914, aged 84.
After mining days at Bald Hill Flat ended, in 1915 the Otago Central Fruitlands Company began the enterprise that gave the area its current name, planting extensive orchards. Around 1920 Company bought the Hotel site, consolidating its large holdings in the area of some 478 acres. According to Moore, the name of Fruitlands was a misnomer as the company's efforts failed, only a single crop of fruit being picked and exported as the climate was too severe for this kind of enterprise.
In the 1930s the Company sold the property, and little is known of its use during this period. By the 1980s the Hotel was being used as a shearing shed by the then owners of the property.
Over the years the hotel fell into a ruined state. In the 1990s the section was subdivided with plans to establish gardens and a small retail nursery, restore the building, and build a new residence on the rear of the section, with the New Zealand Historic Place Trust supporting the proposed development.
Currently the hotel is unoccupied.
