Displaying Wealth and Status in Buildings: Part Two

Welcome back to Part Two of ‘displaying wealth and status in buildings’. Now, before we get into the interior of the building, I want you to use your imagination when looking at the upcoming photos. Prior to taking these photos, this grand old dwelling was rented out by room and when people moved out… well they left a lot of stuff. There were also squatters who broke in and appeared to have a party in multiple rooms (and a small fire or two). I’m sure it wasn’t the type of sendoff the Ballantynes envisioned for their house but it’s the one it got. I’ve tried to spare you all of some of the horrors I faced in this building, but some may have slipped in. It is surprising the things building archaeologists have to face in our line of work, but a lot of the time in Christchurch the damaged buildings we work in have been squatted in… so we find some very interesting and gross things. But they make great work stories and sometimes blogs!

Anywho, the Ballantyne dwelling surprisingly had many original features remaining in the interior, including a couple that I hadn’t seen before. This may be due to my limited years working as a building archaeologist or the fact I have mainly worked on smaller cottages and villas that were not owned by people of the same status as the Ballantynes.

First things first, the layout of the dwelling. The Ballantyne home was laid out similarly to almost every other Christchurch Victorian home. It had a central hallway with rooms coming off it on either side and a staircase that led up to more rooms. The dwelling would have had 15 rooms originally, with all of the public rooms and smaller utilitarian rooms on the ground floor of the building. Bedrooms and servant quarters would have been on the first floor. This hypothesis is based on the grand scale of the front rooms and smaller back rooms on the ground floor. On the first floor, it is probable that the larger front rooms were the bedrooms for the Ballantyne family while the smaller back rooms were the servant quarters. Below I have rejigged the floorplans for the ground floor to show my theory on how the dwelling was originally laid out.

My imagined floorplan of the Ballantynes original dwelling. Like most 19th century dwellings, it had a central hallway that connected the main rooms of the house and went all the way to the back. The three rooms that have been labelled as ‘public rooms’ were highly decorative and were likely the parlour, dining room and drawing room – rooms that the Ballantynes would host guests in but also would use in their daily lives. The two utilitarian rooms off to the side, I’m not sure what the exact use of these rooms were. I like to imagine that they might have been a small scullery that servants could use to serve guests from while the Ballantynes entertained in the adjoining room.

Now the fun bit of the blog. Below I have singled out some stunning decorative features (some were also functional) that showcase the Ballantyne’s style and shows how they portrayed themselves to their guests.

Textured wallpaper on the ceiling of the hallway. Screams wealthy to me!

Only four large ceiling roses remained. Ceiling roses doubled as beautiful decorative pieces as well as providing ventilation to the rooms. These ceiling roses were found in the central hallway, two public rooms and the master bedroom upstairs. There were likely more but had been removed over time.

Cornices, cornices, cornices. The Ballantynes seemed to love their cornices! There is a saying “the bigger the cornice the fancier the room”… ok maybe I just made that up but its true! Large decorative cornices are usually found in public rooms of larger homes and in the case of the Ballantynes, they even put these large cornices in their master bedroom upstairs. Fancy.

The classic Victorian divider. Found in many different 19th century homes, a type of divider was used in the hallway to show a physical divide between the front of the house and the back of the house (think public vs private rooms). Now this timber divider is one I had never come across. The Ballantyne’s used a lot of wooden detail in their house, so it makes sense they had this timber divider. The more common dividers we see are usually plaster archways or the use of plaster corbels.

Please ignore the man in the back and instead focus on this beautiful Rimu staircase. A grand staircase for a grand dwelling. Now you know a lot of money went into this beautiful thing. Don’t worry this staircase found its new home in the North Island. While I am always sad to see a 19th century building demolished, its nice when items are able to be salvaged and given a new life elsewhere.

This may be one of the most beautiful fireplace surrounds I have ever come across. The detail was amazing. This fireplace surround was in the larger front public room. The Ballantyne home had eight fireplaces, which would have been very expensive to put in. Typically, fireplaces were constructed in the kitchen and a public room, depending on the size of the house and the money available. Sometimes we find an extra fireplace in a bedroom or two. But for this house to have eight is extravagant, and truly showed their wealth. (This piece also found a new home before the demolition).

Don’t mind the cast iron register that has fallen out… As a comparison for the fireplace surround above, this one was in the public room at the back of the house. Still a nice wooden surround, but it does not have the grandeur of the first surround. The large front room may have been the main room to receive guests while the back public room was reserved for only some guests to see but was likely mostly used by the family.

While not in the best condition anymore… imagine this timber finger plate with brass inlaid decoration, the brass key escutcheon and timber doorknob with brass decoration in prime condition – they definitely added some elegance to the Ballantyne’s doors.

The true star of the hallway (it also continued up the stairs and onto the landing) was this decorative varnished rimu wainscoting, which had been stencilled with a Greek key variant for the boarder and a four-corner design inspired by classical motifs. This highly decorative feature was added to the central hallway as it would have been seen by everyone that entered the dwelling. Other wainscoting was featured in a public room, but it did not have the decorative stencilling.

I have found that it is quite rare to find a 19th century toilet still in use in a house I’m recording. So, I was surprised to find one! Lucky for you I did not take a photo of the lid up… but trust me it had the original porcelain toilet! It was a ‘Unitas’ which was a one-piece ceramic pedestal closet that was manufactured from 1883. Also, very impressive that the Ballantynes had this toilet connected to the main house.

The Ballantyne dwelling is a great showcase of a dwelling built for a family with some wealth and status in the community. As touched on in Part 1, the exterior of the dwelling was well decorated and would have been impressive to view. The features they chose to have on the exterior set the tone for the rest of their house and it was the first impression a guest would have of them and their status. They clearly wanted to give a very prominent impression. On the interior there were decorative elements throughout the rooms, but they were mainly focused within the public rooms. This shows the Ballantynes were conscience of the way their house was viewed by their guests and that they made an effort to make the rooms that guests would enter be highly decorative, showing the Ballantynes as upper class.

Now, while all these features together are impressive, and they would have cost the Ballantynes a bit of money, these features can be found throughout different 19th century homes of families with different wealth and status. What makes the Ballantyne’s dwelling impressive is the combination of all of these features and the use of them throughout the dwelling.

Jamie-Lee Hearfield

Bonus content!

Our very lovely historian found deep in her files two photographs that I wanted to share with you all.

The first is this photograph from ca.1912 of Josiah Ballantine and his family in front of their stone motor garage in their new 1912 Unic. The stone garage behind them was sadly demolished prior to our involvement. There was a local legend about this stone building, that it was actually a small chapel, sadly this is not the case and instead it was just a very impressive garage! Image: Ogilvie, G., 2004. Ballantynes, The Story of Dunstable House 1854-2004. J. Ballantynes & Co.

The second is of this model of the Ballantyne house! Apparently, it is housed somewhere at the Canterbury Museum, but we have only ever seen this photo of it. As you can see this was created prior to enclosing the veranda and balcony. Image: Christchurch City Council, 2020. Property File. 

 

 

Displaying Wealth and Status in Buildings: Part One

The act of showing off wealth and status through material is a concept that has been happening throughout human history. This does not necessarily mean that the person had the wealth and status they were portraying, instead some people just wanted to give the illusion that they were more well off than they actually were (known nowadays as ‘keeping up with the Joneses’). The Victorians were well involved in the concept of showing off their wealth and status to the public through how they decorated and organised their buildings both inside and out.

We see this in many of the Christchurch buildings we record. Depending on the person’s budget, a Victorian dwelling in Christchurch would have the street facing façade as the decorative exterior elevation (sometimes the sides of the dwellings also had decorative features – dependent on the view from the street and/or if the owner could afford to). Inside the dwelling, the decorative features were mainly focused on the rooms that guests would view and use (sometimes referred to as ‘public’ rooms).

Before we jump in let’s first familiarise ourselves with common features of a 19th century building. Luckily, I have prepared this one below (full disclosure this drawing is three different buildings I’ve recorded combined into one so I could show different features that we find on 19th century buildings in Christchurch. This is not a legit building…):

A diagram showing different decorative elements on 19th century buildings. Purely for educational purposes.

The case study in this blog today was a dwelling built for a member of the Ballantyne family, a wealthy family in Christchurch who established the well-known Ballantyne’s drapery business in central Christchurch. The land was purchased by Jessie Montgomery Ballantyne, the wife of Josiah Ballantyne, in October 1889. The Ballantynes appear to have constructed their residence on the section ca. 1892 and remained there throughout the remainder of the 19th century. The property was then sold by the Ballantynes in 1927. The dwelling was a two-storey timber framed weatherboard bay villa with a T-shaped gable roof clad in corrugated iron. Unusual for such a grand building, no architect could be found connected to the design of this dwelling.

So, with the background of the dwelling complete, I hope you are now thinking ‘what does a dwelling owned by a member of a wealthy family in the 19th century look like?’ Well, lucky for us, a fantastic photograph was taken of the building in 1898.

Photograph of Josiah and Jessie Ballantyne’s house in c. 1898. Image: Canterbury Museum, 1898.

Now, as a comparison, this is how the dwelling looked when I started recording it in 2020 (122 years later):

Photograph of Josiah and Jessie Ballantyne’s house in c. 2020. Image: J. Hearfield.

It may initially be a bit of a shock to see the state in which the grand house ended up, but when you look past the modifications, you can see many of the remaining decorative features the Ballantyne’s put into their home. I’ve compiled a few comparisons below to show these features.

If you ignore the tv dish, the hole and the plyboard in the right photograph – this gable hasn’t really changed! The highly decorative gable features circular designed carved bargeboards finished with rosettes, and decorative timber stickwork detailing. The first-floor triple sash window set had a traditional style architrave, a moulded flat pediment and decorative aprons. Very fancy.

Once again: ignoring the modern additions (this time modern material to stop the squatters from getting back into the building…). The bay window appears original with dentils under the roof and decorative aprons underneath the sills. The bay window featured three sash windows and it’s not super obvious in these two photos but above each sash window was a coloured glass leadlight window with a geometric floral motif reminiscent of the Art Nouveau style (I’ll post a photo of the windows below because they are beautiful).

The beautiful Art Nouveau style leadlight windows, photo taken inside the dwelling. Now, don’t worry, these windows were all salvaged prior to the demolition.

The same post just 122 years between the photos. The timber worked chamfered post was incorporated into the enclosed veranda and only one fretwork bracket remained for this post. Above the post you can see the fretwork lace still in situ.

The veranda and the balcony were extremely detailed with fretwork lace and brackets. It would have been very eye-catching for the public walking past. While the right photo is the west elevation of the balcony, it shows the original timber fretwork for the balcony, and it was the same as the street-facing elevation fretwork. It also shows that the original posts in the 1898 photo were still in situ, they were just incorporated into the enclosure of the veranda and balcony. This photo also shows the closed west wall of the balcony (the original leadlight window was removed prior to demolition but look below to see it before it was removed)

I don’t know about you, but I think this was the original leadlight window. A lancet-shaped window isn’t super common, let alone a lancet-shaped window with a colourful leadlight pattern for a balcony! This was also salvaged and is hopefully living a new life in someone’s home for the next 100 years.

The front façade of the dwelling was the first impression the public and guests would have had of the Ballantynes. Based on the exterior of their house, it appears image was important. As you can see from the images above, they put a lot of effort (and money) into the presentation of their home. This dwelling would have been very impressive to look at from the street. For comparison I’ve added below another historic photograph of another dwelling I have recorded in Christchurch, an 1880s dwelling owned by the Whitehead family.

Photograph of George James and Mary Ann Whitehead outside their house, Kilmore Street, Christchurch in c..1920. Image: Alexander Turnbull Library, 1920. Just a side note: this is actually one of my favourite photos I’ve come across because if you look real closely you can see George James Whitehead looking lovingly at his wife Mary.

This dwelling had decorative elements such as fretwork on the barge boards, fretwork brackets on the veranda and sash windows with decorative moulded pediments in a classical style. While these decorative features are nice, they are nowhere near like the conspicuous features the Ballantynes presented. George James Whitehead was a post-office clerk, so it’s likely the Whitehead family were more middle class and their dwelling gave the appearance of some wealth on the exterior but had a small simpler interior. Unlike the Ballantynes, who went all out on the interior of their home. However, I must stop here as this concludes Part One of this blog – to see how the Ballantynes decorated the inside of their home (well what remained of the original features) tune in next time.

Jamie-Lee Hearfield

References

Alexander Turnbull Library, 1920. George James and Mary Ann Whitehead outside their house, Kilmore Street, Christchurch. Whitehead, Henry Norford, 1870-1965 : Negatives of Napier, Hastings and district. Ref: 1/1-022247-G., Wellington, New Zealand./records/29948500

Canterbury Museum, 1898. Houses, Linwood, “Waverley” Worcester Street. Christchurch City Council Property File

Where did that wood come from?

Archaeology is a broad discipline, with a multitude of subsects and specialisations. One of these is buildings archaeology, where we use archaeological methods to record and analyse buildings and see what that can tell us about the people that constructed them. We’ve written various blogs before about some of the different houses that we’ve recorded, and while this blog is also within the realm of buildings archaeology, it’s also quite different to those other blogs. Part of our work as archaeologists is to place things within the historical context of the period that they date to. If we were excavating a Roman villa and we found glass windowpanes, then we’d be interpreting that villa as probably belonging to a pretty wealthy individual. However, when we find window glass in Christchurch, that doesn’t really tell us anything about the status of the person that built that house, as window glass was readily available and used in the majority of buildings. We’re really lucky as historical archaeologists that there are large historical datasets that we can use to help us with determining the context of the period that our sites date to. However, there’s hours and hours of research that goes into building a database from raw historical data, and even more hours spent looking at patterns and trends to help us establish that historical context.

Returning to buildings archaeology, one of the key elements that we look at when we record a building is what it was made from. Here in Christchurch, that’s almost always timber. From our recording, we know what types of timbers were typically used here in Christchurch for houses, but that’s only half the story. By doing detailed historical research on the timber industry, we can find out if there were patterns in what species were available for purchase and then use that historical information to provide more context to what we find in the archaeological record. It all sounds so simple, but let me tell you it’s not. I’ve spent countless hours doing research into the Christchurch timber industry, and I’ve only gotten through the first 20 years. That period is going to be the focus of this blog.

That sure is some nice timber, I wonder where it came from?

Prior to 1850, the year that the city of Christchurch was founded, the Canterbury Plains were largely devoid of forests. Although opinion is divided on the exact extent of forested area in Canterbury at the time of Pākehā settlement, Roche (1990) estimates that the combined forest area in the Canterbury settlement added up to only 240,000 acres, or 12 % of the total land area (Roche 1990: 75). Near Christchurch there was a small forest of 54 acres where Christchurch’s most notable pioneers, the Deans brothers, established their Riccarton farm in 1843 (Orwin 2015: 25-26). The largest areas of forest were located some distance away. These included the native podocarp forest of Banks Peninsula, comprised mainly of matai (then known as black pine), kahikatea (white pine) and totara (for some reason just known as totara); and the mixed podocarp and beech forest at Harewood Forest, with kahikatea, rimu (red pine), matai and totara, with silver and black beech (they called it birch back then and were big time into their colour naming system; Roche 1990a).

Map of bush cover in Canterbury collated and reconstructed from 1850s and 1860s surveyor’s notebooks and maps by W. B. Johnson and redrawn for Pawson and Holland (2005: 171).

An 1851 sketch of the upper reaches of the Waimakariri River showing Harewood Forest, one of the largest areas of bush close to the city of Christchurch. Image: Fox, W. and Allom, T., 1850-1851.

Suitable building timber was not readily available in Christchurch and so Canterbury’s pioneer settlers built their houses from materials that they either brought with them from elsewhere, such as canvas, calico and sheets of iron to form tents and rudimentary temporary dwellings, or resources that might have been available on or near their chosen sections. These included volcanic stone, rammed earth, sod or mud brick for the walls and thatched or slab roofs made from raupo, toetoe, tussock, or bark (Bowman 1941, Isaacs 2015, Salmond 1986). In areas where timber was more plentiful wooden slabs or logs were used to build basic wooden structures, but even then, some timber had to be imported because of the difficulty in getting the logs milled once they were cut down.

Although it was located right beside one of the largest stands of forest near Christchurch, Deans Bush, the first house on the Canterbury Plains built by the eponymous Deans brothers was constructed from framing timber that they brought with them from Wellington (Bowman 1941).

Photograph of the first house built by the Deans brothers near Riccarton Bush in 1843. The house was built with timber brought from Wellington but was dismantled in the late 1890s. Image: Canterbury Times, 1900.

With the founding of Christchurch city and the rapid expansion of its Pākehā population, an increasing number of settlers had to obtain the materials they needed to construct their permanent residences, fuel their fires, and fence their farms. Although Canterbury was comparatively bereft of a sustainable supply of timber, wood was still the dominant building material for houses in Canterbury in the nineteenth century (Government Statistician, Registrar-General’s Office 1874). This all led to the establishment of a burgeoning timber importation trade (Roche 1990).

Banks Peninsula was the largest and most easily accessible source of timber close to Christchurch, meaning this region was one of the major suppliers of building timber and firewood to the colony. If you want to read more about sawmilling on the peninsula and what happened after the timber arrived in Christchurch, I highly recommend that you read Lydia’s excellent post on the topic from earlier in the year. The timber supply from Banks Peninsula was, however, short lived and the capacity to saw and ship it was limited, so in this post we’re going to explore exactly where Christchurch got all its wood from.

By combining the magic of PapersPast and the dark arts of Excel, I tracked the ups and downs of the Canterbury’s timber economy over the first few decades of Pākehā settlement in Christchurch to figure out where the town was getting its timber from and how this changed over time.

January 11, 1851, was the first issue of the Lyttelton Times to be published and the first issue to include a list of vessels that had arrived in Lyttelton Port since the previous December, including the first four ships carrying the pioneer settlers and all of their possessions to Lyttelton (Lyttelton Times 11/1/1851: 5). Included was a schedule of the cargo each vessel carried, with the schooner, Phoebe, the first reported timber carrying vessel arriving from Wellington carrying a load of timber. For the first few years of settlement Wellington was to be the predominant supplier of Canterbury’s timber.

Not the Phoebe. Also not Lyttelton, but this is probably what it looked like when the first load of timber arrived in Lyttelton. Image: Frederick Nelson Jones.

Although several gangs of pit sawyers had established themselves in many of the bays of Banks Peninsula by this time, their contributions to the overall timber supply in the first years of settlement were negligible in comparison to other regions. Timber imports soon picked up though, as did the quantity of timber arriving in the city from Banks Peninsula. By the mid to late 1850s, imports from Tasmania were contributing a significant quantity of timber to the market, and from the early 1860s vessels from North America and the Baltic region were bringing large cargoes of Northern Hemisphere timber, such as Baltic pine, Douglas fir and cedar.

Within the first ten years of the arrival of the settlers, timber imports had increased considerably. This coincided with an increase in the population of Canterbury, as well as the number of wooden dwellings that were being built. This was a pattern observed across the study period, although population tended to increase in a more or less linear fashion, while timber imports fluctuated more but trended upwards almost exponentially overall.

A steep decline in the quantity of timber being imported to Christchurch and Lyttelton occurred in the late 1860s. There were several factors that probably contributed this. The population had continued to grow, and wooden dwellings were also being constructed at an increasing rate, so it was not likely a lack in demand for house building materials. The market commentary in the newspapers around this time suggests that the timber supplies were overstocked, likely due to huge shipments arriving from overseas and the from the Nelson and Marlborough region. On several occasions in 1866 newspaper correspondents reported that the timber market was depressed, Sales were low and likewise timber prices had tanked (Lyttelton Times 7/7/1866: 2, 2/11/1867: 2). This glut in the market likely caused timber merchants to refrain from importing new stocks until the oversupply had diminished and prices had increased. Due to the time lag between orders and shipment this reduction in imports was not fully realised until 1867-1868.

Customhouse Street wharf area, Wellington, circa 1868, with the harbour and Queens wharf in the background. The sailmaking premises of John S Burn, a boat under construction, and a timber yard, are visible.  Couchman, (Mrs), active 1967. Customhouse Street wharf area, Wellington. Ref: 1/2-029401-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22751906

A notable shift in the regions supplying timber occurred after 1864. Shipments from the Wellington and Auckland/Northland regions declined towards the late 1860s, but were replaced with considerable supplies from the upper South Island. Imports from the West Coast were non-existent until around 1867, which coincided with the end of the gold rush in this region. The milling industry in Westland was initially established in order to supply the requirements of gold miners, but, after the rush was over, had expanded significantly. By the 1870s the West Coast milling industry was supplying sawn timber to other regions, including Canterbury, as well as a thriving trans-Tasman export trade (Roche 1990a: 179).

While mainland Australia was a consistent, albeit minor, contributor to timber imports over the study period, Tasmania remained an important supplier to the Canterbury timber economy, from the first cargoes that arrived with the pioneer settlers in 1850, up until at least the early 1870s. It is likely that most, if not all of the timber that was imported from Tasmania at this time was harvested by convict labour. From 1804 convicted felons were transported to Van Diemen’s Land, as it was then known, and forced undertake hard labour while also forming a founding population for the new British colonies. Convict labour was employed in the harvesting of timber, a task that served both as punishment and progressed the economic ambitions of the colony by generating an exportable commodity, which found a ready market in Christchurch (Tuffin and Gibbs 2020; Tuffin et al 2020).

The original human centipede? Convicts hauling a log at Port Arthur c.1836. Image: State Library of Victoria: ML 185. 

The predominant target species were varieties of Eucalyptus, mainly stringy bark and blue gum. Stringy bark was favoured for construction and blue gum was used as a general-purpose timber and for ship building (King 2019; Tuffin et al 2020). The Tasman Peninsula remained a timber production centre until the closure of the Port Arthur penal settlement and prison in 1877. Although Tasmanian timber was available on the Christchurch market, imports from there declined towards the 1870s, possibly as a result of the decline in the use of convict labour.

The number of inward arrivals and quantity of timber being imported dramatically increased again towards the mid-1870s when large quantities of timber began arriving from Auckland. Commonly known as ‘The Vogel Era’, the 1870s was a boom time for the New Zealand economy, stimulated by the flow of money from the gold rushes of the previous decade and the success of the wool export market, and accelerated by a public borrowing programme instituted by Julius Vogel (McLintock 1966). Vogel instigated heavy public investment in infrastructure, such as a roads and railways, which saw a corresponding expansion in timber milling, including the revival of milling at Harewood Forest (Roche 1990a). This increase in arrivals to Christchurch is, therefore, predictable, as millers geared up to supply timber for railways and ports.

Over the course of the entire study period Banks Peninsula supplied the greatest quantity and the highest proportion of timber in total, though this supply began to decline towards the end of the study period. Roche (1990a: 79) notes that the number of sawmills in operation on Banks Peninsula had dropped from at least ten in the late 1850s to just four by 1876; although those that remained were by all accounts “doing a brisk trade”. Milling on the Peninsula had all but ceased by the 1880s, and although the study period doesn’t cover these later years, the data for 1875 seems to reflect the decline of the milling industry on Banks Peninsula with a diminishing contribution to the Christchurch timber market.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to continue the shipping research beyond the latter 1870s. Scrolling through PapersPast collecting this data takes an extraordinary amount of time, but I really want to know what happened to the Canterbury timber economy in final decades of the nineteenth century, through the decline in milling on Banks Peninsula (and the regions that replaced this supply), the 1880s depressions era and the subsequent economic recovery. I probably wouldn’t get your hopes up, but one day I might write a sequel to this story.

Kirsa Webb

References

Bowman, A., 1941. The study of the historical development of domestic architecture in Canterbury, New Zealand. Thesis submitted for membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Government Statistician, Registrar-General’s Office, 1874. Results of a Census of the Colony of New Zealand taken for the night of the 1st March 1874. Wellington, NZ: Government Printer.

Isaacs, N.P., 2015. Making the New Zealand House 1792-1982. Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

King, S., 2019. The Architecture of Van Diemen’s Land Timber. Fabrications, 29(3): 338-358.

Lyttelton Times 1851-1920. Newspaper [online]. Retrieved from https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/lyttelton-times. Accessed: April 2022.

McLintock, A. H. (ed.), 1966. “The Vogel Era: economic history”. An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand [online].Retrieved from: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/history-economic/page-3. Accessed: July 2022.

Orwin, 2015. Riccarton and the Deans Family – History and Heritage. Auckland: David Bateman Ltd.

Pawson, E. & Holland, P., 2005. Lowland Canterbury landscapes in the making. New Zealand Geographer, 61:167-175.

Roche, M., 1990. History of New Zealand Forestry. Wellington: New Zealand Forestry Corporation.

Salmond, J., 1986. Old New Zealand Houses 1800 – 1940. Auckland: Heinemann Reed.

Tuffin, R. and Gibbs, M., 2020. The Archaeology of the Convict Probation System: The Labor Landscapes of Port Arthur and the Cascades Probation Station, 1839–55. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 24: 589–617.

Tuffin, R., Gibbs, M., Clark, D., Clark, M. and Rigozzi, P., 2020. ‘…One of the Most Severe Duties …’: Landscapes of Timber-getting at a Former Tasmanian Convict Station. Industrial Archaeology Review 42(2): 126-140.

Early Christchurch women, breaking the rules: the exhibition.

The ideal Victorian woman

In Victorian society, a woman was to be meek, mild, virtuous and peaceful (Whiteside 2007). She was expected to marry and have children. She would stay at home, looking after her children and her husband and keeping the house perfectly. Public affairs were men’s matters, although a woman might engage in charitable or other social works, but nothing that could in any way be construed as ‘masculine’. She was selfless – everyone else always came first. She certainly wasn’t involved in politics, and nor did she run a business. At least, that was the theory!

Left: M Heslop & Co (Christchurch) fl 1870s: Portrait of unidentified man, woman and child. Ref: PA2-2063. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23056667. Right: well, it would be an alternative middle class family! Image: Observer 14/11/1903.

In fact, this standard was mostly applied to middle class women, and it seems to have been much less unusual for working class women to, well, work. But there were middle class women who broke these ‘rules’ of Victorian society too, in a range of ways. Discovering the lives of a number of these women in 19th century Christchurch – and our fascination with their ‘hidden’ lives – has led us to curate an exhibition: Women breaking the rules. You can see the physical display at Rewind at Ferrymead Heritage Park on Sunday 14 October, and also follow these women’s stories online via our Instagram exhibition @womenbreakingtherules.

Designed by A. Gibson.

But regardless of class, women were always defined in relation to the men in their life, whether father, brother or husband. So, being a spinster could be difficult and challenging. Much as we might not like it in this day in age, men provided often critical financial security for the women in their lives, particularly in a world where there was no pension or unemployment benefit, let alone a domestic purposes benefit. In fact, there was no state support of any kind in New Zealand until the end of the 19th century, and the poor were reliant on charities for support.

Unlike spinsters, widows seem to have had far more freedom and to have been more ‘respectable’ than unmarried women. While their situation might have been financially difficult, the range of jobs society approved of them taking on was broader than the range available for single women. And widows – as in some of the stories here – often ended up running their husband’s businesses, meaning they took on a variety of professions (Bishop 2012).

Women and work

Yes, women did work in the Victorian era! And not just as domestic servants – although this was far and way the most common occupation for women. In fact, some women ran businesses of their own. The jobs that women took on, though, and even many of the businesses they ran, tended to involve caring, or to be domestic in character. Jobs like teaching or nursing were both acceptable for middle class women (Bishop 2012).

Working class women could take on quite a range of work: dressmaker, needlework, hotelkeeping, storekeeping, confectionary, haberdashery, drapery and so on. Women could also earn money by taking in boarders, doing laundry or by looking after other women’s children. And let’s not ignore that they could be prostitutes. These were all ways of earning money that might fly under the radar and not be recorded officially (Bishop 2012).

Just relaxing under a tree, along with other women, working in the seaside or the countryside, riding a horse… working women and classy ones, all sort of women depicted through the artefacts! Image: J. Garland, C. Watson and M. Lillo Bernabeu.

Telling women’s stories

As regular readers of the blog will know, researching the lives of most people who lived in 19th century New Zealand is tricky – official records can be patchy or may not even exist (Minchinton 2017). People only turned up in the newspapers if they were famous, got in trouble or were advertising for servants, leasing or selling properties. Unless someone has a really unusual name, you often can’t be certain you’re researching the right person.

Mary Portelli, the antithesis of the Victorian ideal, a woman in endless trouble! Images. Right: Star 29/05/1895: 3. Left: Southland Times 20/09/1906: 2.

Studying women’s lives is even harder. For one thing, they changed their surname when they married. Then, they were often referred to only as Mrs…, without their first name, or including their husband’s name instead – for example, Mrs L. J. Smith. Women who ran businesses often traded under their husband’s name, or didn’t advertise at all (Bishop 2012). And, in general, women’s activities meant they didn’t end up in the newspaper.

The branded china L. J. Smith – and presumably Elizabeth, L. J. Smith’s wife – used at events he organised as caterer. Image: C. Dickson.

Despite these difficulties, archaeology and history reveal the lives of six Christchurch women who, in one way or another, broke the rules of late 19th and early 20th century society: Fanny Cole, prohibitionist; Elizabeth Robinson, chemist; Sarah Gault, dressmaker; Elizabeth Smith, caterer; Caroline Rantin, timber and coal merchant; and Mary Portelli, woman in trouble.

There are no Māori women in this exhibition, unfortunately, because we’ve not found any record of Māori women living in 19th century Christchurch. This isn’t to say that they weren’t, just that we’ve not found them yet. If you want to learn more, we highly recommend checking out the book He Reo Wāhine: Māori Women’s Voices from the Nineteenth Century.

Why are these women important?

These six women were not the only exceptional ones who broke the rules. It turns out that there were many more women pushing the boundaries of Victorian society than we initially expected. The six women we’ve featured in this exhibition serve to highlight the lives and occupations of all these women, along with their concerns and daily battles and how they struggled against what was accepted and respectable (Whiteside 2007), whilst working within the confines of the ideals of that time. But slowly, slowly, pushing these boundaries would come to change society as a whole. So, let’s look at the archaeology and the historical record and bring women into the picture!

This exhibition is a joint production between Underground Overground Archaeology and the Christchurch Archaeology Project.

Katharine Watson and Maria Lillo Bernabeu

References 

Bishop, Catherine, 2012. “Commerce Was a Woman: Women in Business in Colonial Sydney and Wellington.” PhD thesis, Australian National University.

Minchinton, Barbara, 2017. “’Prostitutes’ and ‘lodgers’ in Little Lon: construction a list of occupiers in nineteenth-century Melbourne”. Australasian Historical Archaeology, 35, pp. 64-70.

Whiteside, Heidi, 2017. “’We Shall Be Respectable’: Women and Representations of Respectability in Lyttelton 1851-1893”. MA thesis, University of Canterbury.

The changing face of a 19th century farmstead

We have published previously on the importance of buildings, be they residential or commercial, as an artefact in understanding 19th century culture in New Zealand. While it’s easy to overlook the humble cottage as a source of archaeological data, houses are a snapshot that capture not only information about the person who constructed the building, their wealth and social standing for example, but also provide a glimpse of the larger economy in which the house was built. However, buildings go beyond that, and by investigating alterations we can make a profile of the people who lived there and track technological and stylistic changes through time.

Towards the end of last year, we were contracted to investigate and record a farmstead in Halswell. At the time of recording it was the location of a heavily modified Victorian ‘L-plan’ cottage and several outbuildings. Historical research for the Halswell area is notoriously difficult due to a general lack of sources, although we did know from land records and a valuation issued in 1905 that the farm had been purchased by Cornelius Murphy in 1871, and that the house was standing on the property by at least c.1881.

What made the property special is that the house had remained the home of the murphy family until recently, being passed down through the generations.

Northeast elevation of the cottage.

Plan of the house as it was prior to demolition.

From the outset the house appeared to be a standard 19th century cottage that had been heavily modified in the 20th century. Most of the wall linings, original skirtings and cornices, and ceilings had been replaced. A large section of the original timber floor of Room 10 was missing (see the above floor plan for room numbers). Even the original sash windows had been replaced with timber framed casement windows. At least three large extensions had also been made in the 20th century.

But by peeling back the layers, the original house started coming to the surface. Cuts in the weatherboards on the northwest elevation suggested the original house was much shorter. Weatherboards were discovered behind the wall lining on the northeast wall of Room 6. A fireplace had been removed in Room 3. At least two walls had been removed in Room 10, one of which would have originally formed a hallway between Rooms 10 and 1. Cut marks in the weatherboards on the northeast elevation suggest a door had been removed from between the two windows under the veranda.

Northwest elevation of the house. The red arrow indicates cut marks in the weatherboards that correspond with the back wall of Room 10.

Cut marks in the weather boards highlighted in the above image.

Original weatherboards exposed in the northeast elevation of Room 6 (the back wall of Room 4).

Southwest elevation of Room 3. A brick fireplace had been removed and replaced with an electric heater.

Room 10 looking north. Note that a wall has been removed separating what probably would have been two bedrooms.

Marks on the floorboards in Room 10 show where a wall once ran. (The wall to the right is Room 1).

A little bit of deconstruction work revealed even more treasures. A covered over window frame was revealed in the northeast wall of Room 9 (the wall separating Room 9 from 10) confirming that this was the original back wall of the house. A covered over door frame was also present in this wall.

A covered over window frame revealed in Room 9.

Covered over door frame in Room 9 that originally gave access to Room 10.

Plan of the house with the (known) removed walls, doors and window indicated in red.

Removal of the floorboards in Room 9 revealed that the floor sat on stone piles and brick piles. The piles were marked ‘B’ (a marked used by John Brightling 1880-c. 1898) suggesting this was a 19th century room, although, as it had covered over an original window,  Room 9 must have been a 19th century alteration to the house!

The removal of the floorboards in Room 9 revealed stone and brick piles.

A red brick used as a pile. The brick was marked ‘B’ suggesting this was a 19th century addition.

Then removal of the wallpaper in Room 1 revealed a hidden door in the northwest wall!

Covered over door in room 1 – an idea of the original layout of the house is taking shape.

What is likely the original wallpaper was also revealed. This had probably been preserved under the original architraves.

The original wallpaper of Room 1.

So now we had a house with at least one removed hallway, and a bedroom with two doors….

More secrets were revealed during the demolition. The original gable roof line was made visible above the southeast wall of Room 1. The demolition of the back-to-back fireplaces in Rooms 1 and 10 revealed that the fireplace of Room 10 had originally been a very tall 1.2 m. Big enough for a cooking range perhaps?

Demolition of the house revealed the original gable roof structure above the southeast wall of room 1, indicating that this was the original outside wall of the house.

Fireplace in Room 10 as it looked prior to the demolition.

The fireplace revealed behind the 20th century facade. The fireplace was originally arched, and about 1.2 m tall.

The bricks for this fireplace were marked ‘RS’ – a mark used by Royse, Stead and Co. between 1875 – c.1882.

‘RS’ stamped brick taken form the chimney of the fireplaces in Rooms 1 and 10.

The completed demolition revealed the that Rooms 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 and part of 9 (mentioned above) had been constructed on stone piles, suggesting the they were all 19th century constructions. Can any more information be pulled from the foundations? Yes! Luckily the concrete foundation that had supported the original fireplace in Room 3 was still in situ, and still had a layer of bricks affixed to it.

Foundations of the house, looking west.

A row of stone piles that ran under the southeast walls of Rooms 1 and 10. Looking southwest.

Foundation of the fireplace that originally sat in Room 3. Looking southeast.

Red brick from the above fireplace foundation. While faint, the letter B can be made out.

The bricks were marked ‘B’, suggesting that rooms 3, 4 and part of 9 were contemporary constructions.

Putting all the information together, we can piece together the life history of the house.

The building had begun life as a simple box cottage, constructed by Cornelius Murphy between 1871 and 1881. The house had four rooms. Room 1 was probably a living room, while Room 10 was likely to have been two bedrooms and a kitchen. The small stature of the house probably reflects the financial means of Cornelius as his farm was just starting out.

Approximate plan of the original house constructed by Cornelius Murphy. Not depicted – an unknown number of windows that couldn’t be identified during the recording.

A decade after the farm was established the Murphy family had become relatively well off, and the little house was no longer suitable for the family. The house was extended between 1880 and 1900 with the addition of Rooms 3 ,4 and 9. Room 9 was a reasonable size and probably became the kitchen. The extensions would forgo the tongue and groove panel and wallpaper wall linings of the original house and would instead use more expensive (and higher status) lath and plaster.

The house at it probably appeared after the extensions in c.1880-1898.

Further additions to the house could be dated using aerial photography (Canterbury Maps n.d.). The house was extended again in the early 20th century with the addition of Rooms 5 and 6 before 1944  (which included indoor toilet facilities). Rooms 7 and 8 were added, and Room 9 was extended, between 1980-1984. This added a modern bathroom and kitchen. Finally Room 11, a conservatory, was added in the 1990s.

But this is just the beginning of the story this house has to tell. Makers marks found on the roofing iron, timber, nail, and brick samples collected during the demolition, wallpaper patterns, and analysis of wall linings will all provide vital information that will inform us about the choices made by Cornelius in the construction of his home, and of the wider economy that played a part in the construction of the building.

And all this is before we get to the analysis of the outbuildings and other archaeology found on the site.