Early History
The future site of Springhead was on the eastern edge of Pukenui Forest, also known as the Western Hills, which lies to the west of Whangārei Harbour. The coastal area of the Whangārei Harbour were long occupied by Māori, evidenced by a range of features including pits, terraces, shell middens, cultivation sites, burials and pā. South of Springhead are a number of recorded archaeological features associated with Kauika Pā and the pā of Te Parawhau including pā, pits, midden, ditches, terraces, and firecracked rock. The current Town Basin area and inland to Kamo, Ketenikau and Parahaki, was the territory of the Ngāti Kahu People. Tīpene had his village at Pihoi on the high land next to the present Town Basin and extending along the north side of the harbour.
The first permanent European settler in Whangārei was William Carruth, a Scottish settler, who purchased just over 390 hectares from Ngāti Kahu in 1839, encompassing much of the future commercial area of Whangārei. Carruth sold portions of this property to other settlers as they moved to Whangārei including a 279 acre section in the western hills, northwest of the present town centre, to Sir Samuel Osborne Gibbes, 2nd Baronet of Springhead, Barbados in 1856.
Creation of Springhead
Shortly after purchasing the land Osborne Gibbes built a large house for his family on the eastern side of the property overlooking the town towards Whangārei Harbour. The builder was Henry Charles Holman, another early settler in the Whangārei area who built a number of other houses at the settlement. It was a large two-level, nearly square building, possibly in a double box cottage style which was commonly used by early settlers. It was described by the next owner as having a wide entrance passage or hall and containing ‘a good sized study, large dining and drawing room, 2 bedrooms and a pantry on the ground floor, five bedrooms upstairs and a storeroom’ as well as a granary which could be accessed by an external ladder. Its timber construction used Australian hardwood for the framing as well as other pit sawn kauri timbers from local sources. It was clad in vertical board and batten style with double-hung window with six pane sashes and likely had a steep pitched shingle roof. A lean-to was located on the south side of the cottage and the front door was likely in the centre on the north side. The house had ‘every convenience’ for the time and was approached via a bridge. The site incorporated several outbuildings including a kitchen and cow sheds. Osborne Gibbes named his estate Springhead, very likely after his baronetcy although there was also a spring in a gully behind the residence. At the time of construction Springhead was one of a number of early European residences in Whangārei. Since its construction many of these other residences have been demolished and Springhead remains the oldest surviving residence at the settlement.
Sir Samuel Osborne Gibbes
Osborne Gibbes was a well-respected and influential figure in early Whangārei. The Gibbes family had made their fortune from their sugar plantations in Barbados, which were named Springhead and Taitts. Osborne Gibbes’ grandfather was made the first Baronet of Springhead in 1774. The abolition of slavery in 1834 led Osborne Gibbes to sell the Barbados estates and move his family first back to England, then to Sydney in 1850 and finally to New Zealand in 1855. Osborne Gibbes was a minor member of the British nobility who as young man had served as page of honour to the future King George IV. He also had connections to the colonial government through his cousin John George Gibbes, customs collector of New South Wales, who he had joined in Sydney. In Whangārei Osborne Gibbes took on a leading role in civic affairs. He was the local representative on the New Zealand Legislative Council between 1855 and 1863, a member of the Road Board and also acted as the local Coroner and Justice of the Peace. In the latter role he often mediated disputes between his fellow settlers. Osborne Gibbes also took on a military leadership role in the small settlement. He had been a member of the British army in his youth and he served as an aide-de-campe to the Governor of Nova Scotia. In 1863 he wrote to the government offering to form a volunteer militia in Whangārei. Though it is unclear whether his offer was accepted there are reports of being settlers enrolled as soldiers under him during the 1860s. He was also a prominent Freemason in Australia and New Zealand having been made the Provincial Grandmaster of New South Wales while residing in Sydney. He was also a founding member of the Waitemata Lodge in 1855 and at the time of death was noted as being ‘one of the highest masons in the colony’.
Osborne Gibbes resided at Springhead for a decade. He appears to have had money difficulties and the property was sold against his wishes in 1864 to Reverend Henry Wyatt Cottle in a mortgagee sale. After the sale Osborne Gibbes and his wife built and moved into a new property named Osborne House closer to the centre of Whangārei where they lived until his death in 1872.
Subsequent Ownership of Springhead
Cottle was an Anglican minister who had recently arrived from England and moved to Whangārei to take up the vacant position at the Anglican Church. He was in delicate health and required a position that wasn’t physically exerting. He brought his wife and 10 children with him to live at Springhead which the family operated as a functional farm where they kept pigs, cattle, turkeys, cocks and hens, horses, cats, dogs, ducks, and sheep and also grew and sold vegetables. Cottle died in 1871 and his family remained at Springhead for a time before moving down to Auckland during the following decade. Cottle’s will was probated in 1879 and Springhead was put up for auction in August that year. The estate was described as containing a dwelling house, outbuildings, an orchard, and with a considerable portion being laid out in paddocks. Charles Herbert Reid purchased Springhead in 1881. Reid was a founding Board member of Whangarei High School which opened the same year he moved to Springhead. Reid remained at the property for a decade and sold Springhead in 1892 to William Alphonso Smith.
Smith had served in the British militia during the Waikato Wars before taking up land at Ruatangata as a farmer. At Springhead he continued farming and also took up civic positions during his years in Whangārei. He was the first rate-collector appointed by the Whangarei Council, worked as a land agent selling Crown land in the wider district, and was a returning officer for the Kensington Road Board. During the late 1890s the Whangarei Council was considering the future water needs of the town and looking for a water source. One of the sources considered was the spring at Springhead, a scheme which had been first proposed in 1886. Smith wrote to the council in 1900 offering the spring for this purpose, but the council decided to use another source as assessment of the spring found the quantity of water needed for the growing town was more than could be supplied by Springhead alone. Smith sold the property to Benjamin George Hall, a farmer from the Waikato in 1902.
Hall raised several breeds of chickens for their eggs at Springhead which became known as the Springhead Poultry Yards. The estate was used in May 1906 to paddock the Marsden Mounted Rifles’ horses while they were encamped at the bottom of the western hills in Kensington Park. Later that year Hall sold part of the wider property, reducing the land around the residence to 33 acres which he continued to occupy until 1908. That year he sold the property to Arthur Duncan Lambly, a farmer from the Bay of Islands who also worked as a contracting builder while he lived at Whangārei. The property was described at that time as including the residence, outbuildings, a small orchard and vineyard and enclosed fowl runs. Lambly lived at Springhead with his family for over a decade before selling the property in 1922.
Alterations at Springhead (1902-1915)
By the early twentieth century the residence had purportedly become rundown. Hall reportedly found the house too large and made substantial changes to the residence between 1902-8, converting the 1855 two-level building into a single storey villa. Some changes were additionally made to the rear portion of the building in 1915 by Lambly.
By the late 1910s the second level of the building had been removed, possibly in order to lower the pitch of the roof and a villa-style extension added to the east side of the house, creating a ten room residence with a Regency Revival influenced villa appearance. The main entrance to the residence was now from the extension which had two wide bay windows as well as a full length verandah with bullnose roof. A return verandah was added around the original cottage on the north and west sides with a gable above the west wall. Internally, villa door and window architraves were used in both the new structure and added around the doors and windows in the now middle rooms which had been part of the 1855 structure. The kitchen was probably relocated from the outbuilding into the rearmost room of the residence during this period. Indoor plumbing was installed using water from the spring and also for the garden. It is possible that the alterations made by Lambly include the enclosing of portions of the verandah on the west and south sides.
Subdivision of Springhead
Lambly sold the property to his neighbour James Edmund Holmes who, in 1906, had purchased the surrounding land from Hall and now owned the original section. Holmes was a farmer who entered Whangārei local politics in 1912 when he was elected to the Borough Council and the Marsden Licensing Committee and to the Harbour Board in 1913. He later became Whangārei mayor between 1925 and 1927 and was a prominent freemason. Holmes was one of the largest property owners in Whangārei and purchased Springhead to further his plans for a large residential subdivision in the western hills where the property was situated. Holmes had the land surveyed in 1922 which laid out new roads in the eastern part of the wider property and, while generally maintaining Springhead’s 1906 boundary, created seven residential lots between Springhead and the newly formed Russell Road. The new lots cut off the existing nineteenth century approach to Springhead from the southeast and a new entrance had to be formed which approached the building from the north side instead. The spring was set aside as a water reserve and the land associated with the residence was reduced to 24 acres following the subdivision. To fund the subdivision Holmes borrowed money in 1924 from Mabel Annie Money. She still held the mortgage over Springhead when Holmes died in 1934. At the time that Holmes began purchasing land for this subdivision the Northland economy was booming from the success of the kauri timber and gum digging industries however by the 1920s these industries were in decline. Holmes does not appear to have continued his subdivision plans during the late 1920s, possibly reflecting the decline of the wider economy and the subsequent global depression, and by 1927 the Springhead residence was being rented by Edwin Stanton Green, a carrier. Aerial imagery from 1942 shows only one residence had been built on the new lots although the Springhead boundary was marked by a number of mature trees and four outbuildings were still present to the west of the residence. After Holmes’ death Springhead was rented for another decade and a half before Money exercised the right of mortgagee sale in 1950.
Springhead from mid-twentieth century
Springhead was purchased by Ronald Merrie Bird, a civil servant from Christchurch who kept a flock of sheep on the property in the 1960s after he retired and, among other things, used the spring water to make tea for visitors. By 1970 the remaining lots in the Holmes subdivision all had residences built on them and in 1971 Springhead was purchased from Bird by Barry Maxwell Atkins and Pamela Phoebe Atkins. They undertook some restoration work on the house and modernised the kitchen and bathroom. They also added a garage to the southwest corner and an in-ground swimming pool on the south side. Three of the outbuildings behind the house were removed leaving only the western-most cowshed that had been visible in 1942. Atkins sold the property in 1985 to Malcolm Innes Finlayson. Shortly after purchasing Springhead, Finlayson had new surveys completed to further subdivide the property. While his initial plans were opposed, in 1988 the current lot boundaries were approved creating a 2384m2 property which incorporated the residence but not the cowshed. The property was sold several times between 1991 and 2014. Other physical changes to the place that were made during the twentieth century include replacing the kitchen windows on the northern wall with four casement windows, the relocation of a window to the centre front room beside the French doors, addition of a small bay inspired window to the south end of rearmost room, addition of three rounded archways in the interior and relining of many internal walls. In recent years further work has been undertaken by the owners including re-piling, fixing timbers, uncovering the board and batten bathroom ceiling, as well as adding insulation and adding an open porch area on the southern end of the garage. In 2020 the place remains a private residence.
