Ponga Whare, constructed circa 1867 at Wharekauri Station on Rēkohu/Wharekauri (Chatham Islands), is among the oldest surviving European-era domestic structures on the islands and holds outstanding historical and architectural significance. Built for station owner Edward Chudleigh, the dwelling was constructed using ponga (tree fern trunks) (Cyathea cunninghamii) and local timbers – a distinctive adaptation to the islands’ remote environment and limited building resources. This vernacular building style was once common to the Chatham Islands during the mid to late nineteenth century. Oral and written sources suggest that Māori prisoners transported to the Chathams following the East Coast conflicts of the 1860s may have provided labour for its construction. The whare therefore stands at a unique intersection of early pastoral life, penal-labour dynamics, Māori resistance, and colonial settlement in one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most isolated settings.

Lying east of New Zealand, the Chatham Islands include two inhabited islands – Rēkohu/Wharekauri (Chatham Island) and Rangihaute/Rangiāuria (Pitt Island) – together with several uninhabited islands. Settling the island in several migration phases, the latest of which was in the early 1400s, the Chatham Islands are home to Moriori, descendants of East Polynesian settlers with a distinct language and culture. The islands were rich in birdlife, eels and seafood. The kōpi (karaka tree), brought to the islands by Moriori, supported their subsistence and contributed to a thriving culture. Their society is shaped by a collective decision to live without killing, later cemented by Nunuku’s law, a pacifist doctrine that forbids killing and warfare. European contact began in 1791 with the arrival of the brig HMS Chatham, followed by European sealers from the 1830s. In 1835, the whaling brig Lord Rodney brought Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama from Te Whanganui-a-Tara to the Chatham Islands. Both European arrival, and that of Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama, had significant and lasting impacts on Moriori including significant population decline due to killing and enslavement. In 2001 the Waitangi Tribunal found that the Crown had failed Moriori by not providing protection, land security, and support.

Edward Chudleigh, a prominent figure in early island agriculture, commissioned the Ponga Whare around 1867. Chudleigh arrived from England in 1861 and initially settled in Canterbury. In 1866, he and a business partner, Hoel Pattison, moved to Rēkohu and leased land along the northern coast, which became known as the 'Maori Wharekauri Block'. Whilst the Ponga Whare is recognised as a structure built in 1867 for Edward Chudleigh, it is located in a cultural landscape of exceptional importance to Moriori, the tangata whenua tuturu ake (original inhabitants) of Rēkohu/Wharekauri (Chatham Islands). The northern coastline where the building is located forms part of an area recognised under the Moriori Claims Settlement Act 2021 through an exclusive statutory overlay, reflecting its extreme importance as a settlement place with significant customary fishing grounds, and extensive urupā. This overlay area borders Wharekauri Station, in a landscape shaped by layers of successive Moriori, Māori, and European use.

The construction of Ponga Whare coincided with another episode of Māori displacement from Aotearoa: the transportation by the Crown to the Chatham Islands of Pai Mārire prisoners from Taranaki and Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. Among those transported were people of Rongowhakaata and other Tūranganui iwi, held without trial under harsh conditions, confined, and used for labour on station properties and government works. Their labour built Ponga Whare to the design of a ship’s carpenter, believed to be William Gordon Jacobs. Ponga Whare’s association with this episode links it to wider colonial policies of suppression and punishment of Māori resistance movements. The place therefore reflects not only colonial settlement, but also the endurance of Māori communities removed from Aotearoa under extreme duress, and the intersections between Indigenous agency and imposed labour within a colonised landscape.

In 1870 a Native Land Court was convened on the island. This was preceded by a preliminary survey in 1867, which divided the island into five large blocks. The large block size was likely to have been to facilitate a prompt survey and to reduce costs. The Native Land Court awarded the Wharekauri Block to Māori claimants, who leased it almost immediately. Two small reserves were set aside for Moriori (Wharekauri 2 - 600 acres and Wharekauri 3 - 50 acres) in the land to the east of Wharekauri Station. The Ngāti Mutunga claim to mana whenua in parts of the Wharekauri rohe, based on assertions of conquest and subsequent occupation and through takahi (walking the land), was tested in 2001 through the Waitangi Tribunal process, which found that ‘the main relief by far is due to the Moriori people’.

The Ponga Whare is a small, single-storey rectangular dwelling constructed primarily of ponga with supplementary timber framing and corrugated iron roofing. The timber framing is likely Chatham Island hakapiri (Olearia traversiorum). Originally the structure was roofed in thatch and clad internally with rough-sawn timber boards. Its form is simple – a rectangular plan with a central door on the east side featuring a thumb latch and an arch-shaped cut-out opening in the top part of the door. There is a small window opening in the west elevation, and interior lining of horizontal dressed tongue and groove boarding. The floor shows evidence of bricked and timbered areas but appears to have been primarily earth. The use of ponga as an external walling material is unique within New Zealand domestic architecture and demonstrates adaptation to local resources where durable hardwoods were scarce. Whilst modest in scale, the building’s materials and construction typify the ingenuity and resilience of early builders. It is the last known remaining ponga structure on Rēkohu/Wharekauri/Chatham.

Throughout the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Ponga Whare remained in use as seasonal accommodation and a storage facility, including as an apple house. By the 2000s it had fallen into disrepair and was at risk of collapse. A conservation and restoration project in the 2020s, led by Tourism Chatham Islands with support from Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, reinstated structural stability, replaced decaying lower wall sections with ponga material, and ensured conservation of surviving nineteenth-century fabric. It remains a well-known landmark on Rēkohu/ Wharekauri/Chatham, contributing to local identity and linking residents and visitors with the layered history of occupation, penal labour, and resilience that defines the Chatham Islands’ story. Ponga Whare is on private land and not open to the public without permission.