Historic Significance

Historical Significance or Value The land on which the building stands was granted to Eliza Symons of Bloomsbury, London, in 1862 and she had leased it through Mathew Holmes in 1861 to John Lewis, a master mariner of Dunedin, Miss Symons may have lived in Dunedin at some stage - she made her will in Dutch in Sourabaya, Java, in 1878 and died in 1889. Her executors transferred the land to a local lawyer, E P Kenyon, and an accountant J J Hall, in 1890. They sold three years later to Charles Sew Hoy, whose dredging and gold mining activities had been very successful. Charles Sew Hoy himself died in 1901 and various members of the family have held the land since, until it passed to Sew Hoy and Sons in 1956. Stafford Street to Carol St was an urban centre for Chinese in Dunedin from quite early on and the Sew Hoy family held other sections on Stafford Street. The chemical manufacturers, Kempthorne Prossers, for whom the building was erected, were like Sew Hoy another of the business successes of nineteenth century Dunedin, being founded in 1863. Thomas W Kempthorne was trained by a wholesale druggist and chemist in Melbourne and sent across to New Zealand at the start of the gold rush to evaluate the potential for a new business in Otago. Liking what he saw, he took Evan Prosser, a welsh chemist, into partnership and started his own business. West coast gold mining was an important part of their market and Prosser became Mayor of Hokitika and eventually Westland's representative in the Canterbury Provincial Council. Judging by early street directories, the firm at first occupied the site of the smaller buildings in Stafford St below the big warehouse where the head office of Sew Hoy and Sons is at present. Another drug merchant H E Youngman and Co occupied the warehouse site until about 1870s when Kempthornes took over. In 1879 business was so good that they formed a public company with a nominal capital of 200,000 pounds which was quickly subscribed. In 1881 the firm set up the first sulphuric acid works in New Zealand at Burnside, and expanded to Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington where they built warehouses similar to the Stafford St building, the Auckland one having a very similar classical façade. At the height of their activities Kempthorne Prossers occupied most of the buildings from St Matthews church down to the Provincial Hotel. Fertiliser production became a major part of the business and the Hornby works were set up in 1922 and the Wanganui works in 1926. The company seemed to run out of steam in the 1970s and the local works are now owned by Ravensdown Fertiliser Co-op Ltd and the warehouse building is used by the long term landowner, the Sew Hoy family.

Physical Significance

Architectural Significance: A well preserved example of Victorian industrial building with fine architectural detailing showing pride in the physical representation of the firm. Townscape/Landmark significance: This tall warehouse building is an important element of the older buildings on the west side of Stafford Street, in the first block above the main street.

Cyclopedia of New Zealand, 1905

Cyclopedia Company, Industrial, descriptive, historical, biographical facts, figures, illustrations, Wellington, N.Z, 1897-1908, Vol. 4 Otago and Southland, Cyclopedia Company, Christchurch, 1905