The Taranaki region is thought to have been settled by Maori around 600-700 years ago. Archaeological evidence suggests that pa were being built in the area, which surrounds Mount Taranaki, as early as the fifteenth century. A number of iwi hold mana whenua in the west coast of the region, including Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga, Te Atiawa and Taranaki. The area which would become New Plymouth was initially populated by Nga Mahanga a Tairi of Taranaki, and then Te Atiawa, who affiliate with the waka Tokomaru and are said to descend from the semi-divine origins of ancestor Awanuiarangi, whose people moved south from Northland to the Bay of Plenty and Taranaki.
European whalers initially arrived along the Taranaki coast in the first half of the nineteenth century, and generally integrated themselves relatively harmoniously with the local Maori communities. By the early 1840s, a Ngati Te Whiti pa at Ngamotu, called Otaka Pa, was still populated but many other Maori strongholds in the region had been abandoned following attacks by taua from the Waikato a decade earlier, which had prompted a major migration of the remnant Te Atiawa population to Otaki, Wellington and Marlborough. However, increasing numbers of European settlers created a demand for land and the resulting tensions between tangata whenua and colonists had lasting effects on all Taranaki residents.
Organised colonial settlement at Taranaki was first instituted by the Plymouth Company in 1839-1840, who arranged to purchase land from the New Zealand Company for the settlement of immigrants from Devon and Cornwall, although this purchase would be much disputed in the future. The site of the township was chosen and laid out by Chief Surveyor Frederic Carrington in February 1841, and settler ships arrived from England from March 1841 onwards. By this time the Plymouth Company had fallen into financial difficulties, and was formally merged with the New Zealand Company in May 1841. Settler ships continued to arrive, but disputes around the Crown’s role in transferring land out of Maori ownership, and between tangata whenua over who had the authority to transfer land were already evident, frustrating all involved.
The series of prolonged conflicts during the 1860s are now commonly known as the Taranaki Wars, waged between the Crown and Maori in response to Maori uprising against the enforced alienation of their land. These caused widespread deprivation, suffering and loss of life and land for iwi, resulting in the heavy confiscation of tribal land taken by the Crown under the Land Settlement Act of 1863. The devastating effects of these actions have since been acknowledged by the Crown through formal apologies and efforts of redress by settlement agreements.
The conflicts also affected the fledgling European settler communities, with many residents of outlying areas abandoning their homes and taking refuge in the urban centre of New Plymouth town, or leaving the region altogether for a time. Complaints from anxious European settlers eventually forced the Government to station troops at New Plymouth, and the site of the former Pukaka pa (Marsland Hill) was transformed into a military stockade and barracks in 1855. As the frequency of battles decreased the British troops were gradually withdrawn, until the last detachment of the 50th regiment left in 1867.
Henry Scotland
The newspapers of the time were filled with commentary and debate about the situation, and the Honourable Henry A. Scotland (1821-1910) was one resident who was outspoken on matters of the war, and many other issues during his lifetime. Scotland immigrated to New Zealand from London in 1850, arriving on the ship Eden. The son of a former President of the Supreme Court in British Guiana and Chief Justice of Trinidad, Scotland also followed a legal career and had been called to the Bar in London in 1849, following an Oxford education.
While practising as a barrister and Justice of the Peace in New Plymouth, in 1854 Scotland sold his property on Courtenay Street and it was at this time that he is thought to have moved to a new residence on the eastern bank of the Te Henui river, Town Belt Section G. It is located between the former site of the old Colonial Hospital building (now known as The Gables and relocated to Brooklands Park) to the north, and Pukewarangi Pa to the south. Although Henry Scotland was described as being possessed of a good deal of wealth when he first came to the country, his new house was a spacious but simple cottage of unostentatious design, using materials that were to hand along with some imported joinery. Built from rough-sawn timber the cottage is single-gabled with a rear lean-to and front verandah, clad in vertical board and batten. A photo from c.1875 shows the building was originally roofed with timber shingles, making the house a typical New Plymouth settler residence of the time, although notable for its river-stone foundations - boulders from the nearby Te Henui River. Historians Ron and Gail Lambert state that ‘the predominance of small wooden buildings with vertical cladding and kohekohe shingles were a distinctive feature of the town in the first twenty years.’
The wars of the 1860s saw many such homesteads - especially those in outlying areas like Henui - fall prey to the fighting, sacked and burned. 187 settler homesteads were known to have been destroyed during the conflicts, all located outside the defensive cordon of the central township. Henry Scotland’s cottage is therefore a rare survivor of this significant period in Taranaki’s history.
In 1868 Scotland was called to the Legislative Council, a Government-appointed authority modelled on the English House of Lords and designed to regulate legislation passed by the elected House of Representatives. Although Scotland stated in an interview in 1905, ‘I’ve never distinguished myself..I am not a politician, and never was’, by the nature of his position as one required to scrutinise and review Bills, Acts and Amendments of Parliament, he commented publically on many issues of fundamental importance to New Zealand society. An abundance of newspaper articles of the time document Scotland’s apparent steadfastness and mettle as a man not afraid to stand against the tide of popular opinion and remain loyal to his moral convictions, however unpopular this made him with his contemporaries.
For example, in December 1868 Scotland came up against his fellow Justices in Taranaki when he opposed a resolution to form a local bush force, as being ‘an aggressive measure’ against the Maori population. He also made a charge of the alleged transgressions of settlers in the Okato area, who were said to have driven their cattle and horses onto Maori lands in opposition to the wishes of the landowners. For bringing this assertion to the attention of the Colonial Secretary, Scotland earned the wrath of the leaders of the European community, who were already sensitised by earlier charges that settlers had been the cause of the recent hostilities over land.
Scotland resigned his commission as Justice of the Peace but survived the controversy and retained his seat on the Legislative Council, but in 1876 his conduct was again publically condemned when his attempts to stand up for the cause of social justice were published in the forum of the national newspapers. The nationwide eruption of indignation caused by Scotland’s letter to the Belfast Newsletter, in which he supported statements made by a Mr J.G.S. Grant who ‘in a most unwarrantable and malicious manner tried to damage the credit and fair fame of our Colony and its inhabitants’ by suggesting that many of New Zealand’s female immigrants had had to take to the streets ‘to earn a crust of bread in the market of shame’, was on a par with a later episode of Scotland’s notoriety when he accused Sir Julius Vogel of being a ‘broken down gambler’. Scotland also caused outrage for his low opinions of the New Zealand clergy and the intentions of those who had volunteered to serve in the Boer War. New Zealand society was scandalised by a public figure in a respected position of Government making such statements, whereas Scotland felt that he had been ‘persecuted by the snobs ..for presuming to censure the general want of humanity here with regard to the poor man. I am the black sheep of the place..’
Although by the late 1890s the press considered Scotland to be ‘ranked among the fossils, and [with] a reputation for eccentricity’, in 1905 he was appointed Solicitor-General. At his death in 1910 Scotland was, at 89, the oldest living member of Parliament and had contributed significantly to New Zealand’s legal system through his 42-year service on the Legislative Council. His passing was marked by a Parliamentary resolution recording the House’s appreciation of the faithful services rendered and offering condolences to Scotland’s widow.
New Plymouth Girls High School
By the early 1890s Scotland had sold his property in New Plymouth and moved to the Pahi River north of Auckland. His land on Mangorei Road in New Plymouth neighboured the original site of the Gables Colonial Hospital. Part of this land became an educational reserve in 1903 and was eventually absorbed into the grounds of New Plymouth Girls’ High School.
After initially sharing premises with the boys at New Plymouth High School, then an itinerant three years in various buildings around town, a new high school for girls was constructed on a site in Mangorei Road and the pupils moved to the new facilities in the third term of 1916. By 1920 the school needed a new hostel for boarders, and after four years of fundraising for the construction costs the New Plymouth High School Board eventually decided on an adjacent site in Mangorei Road - Henry Scotland’s former land. Although expensive, the beauty of the property - which Scotland had planted extensively with puriris, blue gums, camellias and magnolias - won the committee over. The Board of Governors were helped by further fundraising efforts of the Old Girls’ Association, and the land with its historic cottage was purchased and a new hostel building erected, adjacent to the cottage. The hostel, which was opened in February 1928, was named ‘Scotlands’ in reference to the historic owner of the site.
Henry Scotland’s cottage was then utilised by the school as accommodation for the caretakers, and also as a space for piano practice for the boarders. Four small rooms on the west side of the building were used as cubicles for this purpose, and the instrument was taught between 6am-8pm every day of the week except Sunday. Perhaps because of inconveniences presented by this arrangement the caretakers did not have to pay rent for their accommodation in Scotland Cottage, although Ruby and George Cloke, who lived in the cottage for 40 years from 1938, said they did get used to the sound of students at practice.
Author and Old Girl Christine Cole Catley reminisced in 1985:
‘I’ve just come from looking again at the historic cottage where so many of us did our piano practice from 6am in the row of music cubicles, and where the Clokes lived for so long. We had no idea, then, that it had survived from the days of the Colonial Hospital, but now the cottage has been classified by the Historic Places Trust, and there’s general rejoicing. The [NPGHS] Centennial Committee has decided that the careful upgrading of the cottage should be the first project when the Centennial Trust is established...’
Although the NPGHS Centennial Trust funds must be used for projects that benefit the whole school, the charter contains a clause that gives particular precedence to bestowing grants that enable the preservation of Scotland Cottage in the first instance.
Scotland Cottage has been well-maintained over the years, and the basic form of the building remains. At some point after 1903 the western end of the verandah was enclosed to form a small sunroom, and the eastern end was also enclosed but these partitions were removed in an extensive refurbishment project in 2004-2005, going some way towards reinstating the original layout. The original shingle roofing has been replaced with corrugated steel, and the small timber finials visible in a photograph from 1903 are also no longer present. Only one chimney of the two original remains, servicing the kitchen, and this was repaired and strengthened in 2001. The interior has seen some rearrangement for use as music practice rooms, but is now restored to a residential configuration. The kitchen fittings appear to date from around the 1930s, which would correspond with the time the house was outfitted for use as accommodation for the caretakers.
The 2004 restoration project saw the removal of an outbuilding to the rear of the house, which had been used as laundry. An old well was found during this work, and covered over. The cottage was repainted and re-landscaped at the rear. The restoration project involved the repair of damaged timber of the cottage, and where possible this was replaced with timber from the laundry outbuilding. Some elements of the original joinery were removed, such as an outside door at the rear southwestern corner of the building and the window over the kitchen sink, which was replaced with windows of a sympathetic design. Under repair the front door lock was investigated and found to be of a type made in England in the 1850s, which suggests that the joinery was imported from England and that the cottage could have been partially pre-fabricated.
Since then the cottage has been used by New Plymouth Girls’ High School as meeting rooms for staff and senior students, and for storage. The 2010 celebrations of the 125th anniversary of the school saw a large number of former pupils gather, who shared their memories of the cottage.
