Traditionally, the first people to make Nelson their home are the ancestors of the Waitaha people. The canoe Uruao is said to have brought these people to the Boulder Bank by Whakatu. Here the crew split up, with the captain Rakaihautu leading an expedition through the interior and his son Rokohouia exploring the East Coast, the two parties meeting up in Waihao in South Canterbury. Although there is no complete archaeological evidence, carbon dating in and around Nelson suggests that the region was first settled about the twelfth century. Settlers found ample sources of food, predominantly moa and seals, and hunting, gardening and quarrying quickly became important activities. Minerals were also plentiful.
A major early activity was gardening. Many ancient gardens have been found around the North of the South Island, often with the soil’s natural fertility being enhanced by the addition of vegetable matter, wood ash, sand and gravel, making the area perfect for growing kumara.
It is thought that the region was occupied by Ngati Tumatakokiri by 1642, the time of the area’s first contact with Europeans. In this year Abel Tasman, the Dutch navigator, anchored off Golden Bay, where fighting broke out between his men and the local Maori. Captain James Cook was the next to visit the area in 1770, followed in 1827 by the French explorer Captain Dumont D’Urville. However, the first European settlement was not founded until the New Zealand Company’s establishment in Nelson in 1841.
Known as the ‘second colony of New Zealand,’ the settlement of Nelson was conceived in early 1841, Wellington having been settled the previous year. In 1841, Captain Arthur Wakefield met with local iwi and established terms for the purchase of the land, although confusion as to what had been purchased led to a number of confrontations in the 1840s, including the Wairau Affray of 1843 in which Arthur Wakefield was killed. Despite much of it being mudflat or swamp, the area of Nelson was considered ideal, due to its harbour and quantity of fish, birds and pigs.
Despite poverty being common in Nelson in the early 1840s, more immigrants arrived. A notable community among these settlers were the Germans, who gave Upper Moutere (also known by its German name Sarau) and Waimea East (Ranzau) their own distinctive character.
Hops in the Area
From earliest times the Nelson region was significant in terms of farming. At the end of the 1840s, the land produced a third of New Zealand’s total crops. An essential ingredient in the brewing of beer, hops first began to be grown in Nelson in 1842, and by the 1850s large hop gardens had been established by local breweries. The hop plant’s flower (Humulus lupulus) adds flavour and bitterness to beer, being used for at least 1,000 years in brewing. Using hops brought over from Europe by German and English settlers, the area quickly became well known for the quality of the beer produced, with the standard being so high that there was no demand for bulk imported beer. The region’s climate, with little wind and much sun, is perfectly suited to hop growing.
As hop growing became a bigger industry in the area, an article in the Nelson Examiner from 1871 reassured would be growers that there would always be a demand for Nelson’s hops: The demand for hops in this and the neighbouring colonies is so large, while their growth must be considerably circumscribed by climate and soil, that where, as in Nelson, everything favours the plant reaching its highest perfection, there need be no doubt of the demand keeping pace with the supply.
Hop marketing in the Nelson area was dominated by the merchant Frank Hamilton, who owned the business E. Buxton and Co. 1883 was a boom year for the hop growers, and the success of which inspired others to begin growing. However, this led to the market becoming flooded, and in 1885 the price crashed. This had a huge impact on small farmers and casual labourers, who lost almost all of their cash income. After another successful year the yield dropped in 1890, with Hamilton stockpiling his harvest in his warehouse for six months. Subsequently, the English crop failed and prices for New Zealand hops rose sharply.
In the nineteenth century, the hop-picking season was an important social feature for many. The picking was done in large part by women, many being accompanied by their children, as the school holidays were often timed to coincide with the picking season. It also provided an opportunity for young people to meet. Historian Jim McAloon states that ‘the town of Collingwood became largely deserted in the picking season, and young single workers got some ready money and a chance to socialise and to brighten up their love-lives.’
Once the hops had been harvested, they needed to be dried. This posed a significant risk, as if they were not dried adequately the harvest would be lost. This was something quickly learned by farmers as some at first made little money through their crop not being properly dried. The process of drying was done in one of the hundreds of kilns, built for the purpose, which became features of the landscape. These hop kilns are significant in terms of New Zealand’s history, as Nelson was the only region in New Zealand where commercial hop growing existed. There were over one hundred hop kilns in the Nelson region originally, with the growing and selling of hops being important to both British and German settlers. However, there are thought to be less than twenty growers left today.
There are a number of factors that have contributed to the change in the hop-growing industry in the region. From the 1920s New Zealand’s dominant hop cultivar suffered from Black Root Rot, causing many plants to die. Growers were so concerned about this disease that they approached the Government, leading to the establishment in 1949 of the Riwaka Hop Research Station in Motueka. Resistant cultivars were developed, and by the 1970s production had grown, with supply exceeding the domestic demand. In the 1960s mechanised picking became widespread, and by the 1970s the world market was oversupplied, resulting in the number of growers halving. Hop prices fell, and many small hop farms became uneconomic, with grower numbers falling from 76 in 1962 to 32 in 1980.
With the hop industry becoming smaller and export orientated, many hop kilns became disused and neglected, leading to these historically important buildings becoming rarer and significantly at risk from deterioration and demolition. In 2007 data was gathered for an inventory of the remaining Hop Kilns left in the Tasman district, updating a previous study from 1988. Since 1988, 12 of the 69 originally identified hop kilns had been demolished, with many others extensively altered or rebuilt, and others now in a poor condition due to neglect.
The Harvey Hop Kiln represents one of the many kilns designed to dry the hop flowers, built in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These kilns are distinctive buildings, noticeable from a distance by their chimney and ventilation cowl. They reflect an important aspect of New Zealand’s history, as new settlers began a unique industry. Nelson/Tasman is the only region in New Zealand where hops are grown commercially. These hops are then exported all over the world, with 80 percent of New Zealand’s hops being exported. They are often used in well known beers such as Heineken and Guinness. Hops from this area are well respected internationally, with exports rising from $1.4 million in 1990 to $5.6 million in 2004.
Harvey Hop Kiln
The Harvey Hop Kiln and Worker’s Hut stand on land that was part of the original crown grant to settler George Harvey, who was one of the first Europeans to settle in the immediate area. The farm was formerly known as Willowdale, and George and Cornelia Harvey’s original cob cottage, which has been restored and is a Category II registered building, still stands nearby on George Harvey Road. This cottage, in which the Harvey’s raised their nine children, is on a Heritage Trail and has many visitors each year.
The fourth generation of this family still own the land on which the Harvey Hop Kiln stands. Prior to the first hop kiln being built on the site, the property owner James Harvey, son of George Harvey, took his hops from Willowdale by express wagon to Upper Moutere for drying. The first hop kiln on this property was built for James Harvey in 1913, by George White and Will Ewers. Its large size also housed a packing shed for the apples that the family grew, and the farm lorry. In addition, the building was used to seat 70 guests at a wedding shortly after it was built. This hop kiln was used by James Harvey and his sons Cyril and Sefton until 1938, when a discarded cigarette destroyed the building.
The present kiln was built in 1939 for the Harvey brothers Cyril and Sefton, by Adolph Bensemann and Crick Eggers, two builders from Upper Moutere. Other members of the community also helped with the construction. It was built on the same site and to the same measurements as the original kiln, and was completed in time for the following hop picking season. The structure consists of a kiln and its chimney at the south end, with a storage shed attached. The shed takes up roughly two thirds of the overall structure, and extends towards the north. There was originally a landing on the west side of the structure, used for storing the green hops, which was taken down in 1957. The owners intend to rebuild this landing at some point in the future. A new fruit packing shed was built separately on a different site. The Harvey Hop Kiln, being well maintained, is an excellent example of a wooden kiln. There are not many wooden kilns left, and many of those that remain are now in a bad state of repair.
The ground floor of the Harvey Hop Kiln contains a brick furnace, which was originally fired by coke and charcoal. This was required to be done every 20 minutes, and was an incredibly painstaking process. The hops would then be spread out on the drying floor, which was constructed of horsehair on scrim about three metres above the furnace. The heat from the furnace would be drawn up through the floors and escape out of the cowl at the top, drying the hops as it went. Having been allowed to dry for 12 hours the hops would then be removed using a large wooden framed shovel or scuppet, and once cool compressed into bales in the press on the lower floor. In 1961, the kiln was changed to oil firing, and an electric fan was installed above in the cowling in order to draw the heat up for faster drying. The original malthoid cladding of the kiln’s pyramidal roof was replaced with corrugated iron in 1958. The storage shed part of the building retains its original corrugated iron roofing material.
The hop industry provided many women with employment, handpicking the hops. In the 1920s the local schools would close to allow the children to help with the picking of the crop. Originally, large tents were erected on the property in order to house the women who would gather for the picking season. These tents were supplemented by a ‘whare’ near to the kiln, which contained a cook house. In 1944 a smaller, one person hop picker’s hut was built by Eric Heine to replace this earlier structure. This Worker’s Hut still stands today. The Harvey Hop Kiln was used every season until 1981, when the present owner retired from hop growing. Since this time, the hand tools associated with the growing and drying of hops have been stored in the building, and it is the owner’s intention that these tools be eventually placed on public display in the restored building. The area is a popular tourist destination, and there is much public interest in hop kilns. Bicycle tours are a popular activity in the area, and one company has specifically designed a route to take in hop kilns and George Harvey’s Cob Cottage on the Nelson Heritage Trail.
Timber hop kilns in the Tasman district are relatively rare and are more at risk from deterioration, with the predominant construction materials of the other remaining kilns being concrete or corrugated-iron cladding over timber frames. It has been estimated that there are only about six timber kilns remaining. The Harvey Hop Kiln and Worker’s Hut have been well maintained, and the owners have always had the interests of the kiln and its preservation at the forefront of their repairs. Over the last twenty years repairs have included the roof being repainted, while the original timber structure remains in good condition. It is also a rare remaining example of a kiln that has not been converted for another use, with many other former kilns now being used for other agricultural industries or as residences.
