Historic Significance

This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1980. The following text is the original citation considered by the NZHPT Board at the time of registration. Information in square brackets indicates modifications made after the paper was considered by the HNZPT Board. Historical Significance or Value One of the first major tasks of the settlers on the Otago Peninsula was to clear their land of both trees and stones. Even farmers who did not or could not build walls piled stones along boundaries and into heaps. The walls not only provided durable, low maintenance fences but also shelter around houses and yards and along ridge lines. Stone walling was a traditional skill for many of the farmers who came from Scotland, and a desire to create a familiar landscape may also have encouraged wall building. Wire for fencing did not become common until after 1880 and required cash to buy, whereas collecting stones off the fields cost only the labour involved. There is little historical evidence about the identities of the professional fencing contractors who built stone walls on the Peninsula but who were not qualified masons. Their existence is deduced from the quality of the walls which local farmers such as Ian Robertson sat were built by professional wallers and not by stone masons. The latter were trained to dress stone and mortar the blocks for which they were paid higher wages than a fencing contractor. Stone walls known to have been made by masons tend to be on farms which they themselves owned, such as William Dick's at Sandymount and James Baird's at Mihiwaka. Stone walls thought to have been built by farmers untrained in walling are much poorer in quality and now decayed. The quality of the Robertson stone walls varies sufficiently to suggest that different wallers built them. [The farm was taken up by the Stuart family whose descendants have owned the farm ever since. Ian Robertson is the great-grandson of the original settler and he and his wife, Pat, lived on the property until their retirement, when their son took over the farm].

Physical Significance

Architectural Significance: Simple vernacular structures. Townscape/Landmark Significance: Stone walls occur around Dunedin wherever lava flows have left boulders in arable fields. They occur in distinct groupings on these flows and give the landscape of such places as the Otago Peninsula, Mount Cargill and Wakari and unusual and characteristic pattern.