Category Archives: Buildings archaeology

Displaying Wealth and Status in Buildings: Part Two

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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. 

 

 

Where did that wood come from?

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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.

Virtual Horizons: how heritage is communicated or forgotten

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One of the most obvious, but frequently overlooked, facts of archaeological investigation is that it is often a destructive process, and one that consumes a non-renewable resource. The awareness of this is particularly acute within the field of buildings archaeology, for unlike subsurface archaeology where there remains the constant possibility of an archaeological feature being unearthed; it is clear there is a dwindling inventory of pre-1900 structures. The economic factors such as development that drives the heritage sector are legislated for and administered by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and private sector consultants, with the assessment of archaeological values largely determining how onerous the conditions for demolition and re-development will be. It is often tacitly understood that the commissioning of an archaeological report as a condition for an archaeological authority to demolish is sufficient mitigation for the irrevocable and destructive loss of New Zealand pre-1900 building stock. Whilst the rigor and detail of an archaeological report is essential, I would argue that the opportunity for providing the broader public with a more accessible and tangible way of engaging in New Zealand’s lost built environment has not yet been sufficiently met, with much of this information lost in the oblivion of ‘grey literature’. This situation is not helped by Heritage New Zealand’s practice of removing detailed information about listed buildings that have been demolished, further reducing the already scant amount of information about demolished heritage buildings available to the public.

In terms of visual representations one of the most common recording requirements is the production of two dimensional plans, sections, elevations, and other architectural details. Alongside photography this provides the primary visual record of a building. Advances in technology have reduced the time spent recording so that it is no longer necessary to record a building with a tape measure and graph paper as I was first taught, but the ways in which such information is shared and communicated still lag behind the building industry whose technical innovations are relied on so heavily by buildings archaeologists and heritage architects.

Example of Level 2 recorded elevation from a now demolished house in Christchurch. These kinds of images largely disappear after publication. Image: Michael Healey

Example of Level 2 recorded elevation from a now demolished house in Christchurch. These kinds of images largely disappear after publication. Image: Michael Healey

What I propose

 What I propose here is a publicly assessable 3D database of NZ heritage buildings. This would be a web-hosted platform where consultants would upload 3D data such as point clouds, photogrammetry, 2D elevations drawings – these could then be navigated zoomed and rotated, thus providing an accurate representation of our lost building stock for future generations.

What is photogrammetry and point cloud

 American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing states that photogrammetry is “the science and technology of  obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant imagery and other phenomena” (aprs.org). A basic picture of a photogrammetry workflow would involve somebody with a camera or drone taking pictures of a building, importing the photo data into a computer program which would then process an exportable 3D model of the building that could then be hosted on-line. Point cloud is similar to photogrammetry and is usually captured with a 3D scanner. It provides a similar result but is generally a much faster recording process if somewhat more expensive due to the required equipment.

This is usually a three-step process that involves:

  • The creation of a complex 3D model (very processor intensive) where the photos are extracted, and a texture rich model is generated.

Photogrammetry virtual model heritage building, J. Ashford & Sons building in Birmingham. Image: Seeable.co.uk

  • The initially complex model is the reduced to simplified mesh that enables the efficient use within a 3D viewing environment.

Optimized mesh model J. Ashford & Sons building in Birmingham. Image: Seeable.co.uk

  • The photos are then texture mapped onto a 3D mesh model.

Texture mapped 3D model, J. Ashford and Sons building in Birmingham. Image: Seeable.co.uk

A video link of both photogrammetry and point cloud models is provided below and should provide some indication of the attractiveness and ease of use of such media for the end user

What is stopping this happening?

 Like most problems in professional life, they can be divided into two categories: technical and bureaucratic.

The technological problems are manifold, this first issue would be that of hosting. There are a variety subscription services (free to the end user) where 3D models can be hosted. But the optimal solution would be to have a New Zealand-based platform and preferably a government subsidised one. But stable long-term platforms such as sketchfab.com with over 3,000,000 users worldwide, is a viable alternative in lieu of a New Zealand-based site. One argument for democratising this process on an open platform is that it would enable the public to 3D print models of demolished heritage building and bring them back to life in a tangible way.

3D printed model produced from photogrammetry capture. Image: https://www.3dnatives.com/

The second technical issue is data security and avoiding obsolete formats, at the present time uncompressed TIFF is considered the gold standard for archiving digital photos and is all that would is required to reconstruct a 3D model in the case of data loss or eventual platform obsolescence.

The third issue is having personnel trained to capture adequate quality photography. A buildings archaeologist will often piggyback off architects and engineering consultants who will initially record a large site with a 3D scanner, sometimes with variable results. The below image is an ‘ortho-photo’ – a scale photographic elevation produced from point cloud data which can then be traced over in native CAD application to produce metric drawings. In this case several digital artefacts are reproduced in the image and will need to be corrected for by having recourse to photography.

Image of a 3D Point cloud ortho-photo prior to the production of CAD drawings. Image: modified Michael Healey

The cost of implementing this is quite affordable and would only require a digital SLR and several hundred dollars for an appropriate software option. The use of affordable drone technology paired with HD cameras makes such a workflow flow a cost-effective option over standard building recording techniques due to the reduced recording time, and had the added benefit that scale 2D elevations (a normal requirement of most building reports) can easily be extracted at a later time.

Example of measured elevation extracted as part of a 3D point cloud workflow from orthographic photo. Image: Michael Healey.

In fact, it has been proven that by using appropriate methods of image capturing and by using robust software, the high expense of 3D laser scanning can be completely replaced.

3D virtual model capture with the use of a drone. Image: project Hayastan in Armenia.

On the bureaucratic side of the equation there are two major problems. Firstly, there is the question of who would take responsibility for administering a visual database. In the case of sites of international significance web-hosting is often site-specific, but on the other end of the spectrum there is a push for a more democratic and crowd sourced photogrammetry, especially for museums and curated collections. This makes obvious sense for cultural institutions that lack financial and human resources for digitisation work, and there is no reason why this could not be scaled up to include large objects such as built structures. Such a strategy has been used successfully in digitally reconstructing lost artefacts and monuments that have been destroyed during recent middle east conflict, and the idea is clearly relevant to potential natural disasters. I would go as far as to suggest that Category 1 heritage listed buildings should be pre-emptively 3D scanned, a process that could piggyback off engineering and condition reports that would use the same data sets. It would seem to me that this would be better implemented at a regional level through local body council regulations as a best practice for significant buildings scheduled on district plans. Christchurch is the prime example, where this loss of place is felt most acutely in an urban environment. Unfortunately too few buildings were scanned prior to demolition following the 2011 earthquake, even so many of these point clouds that could be easily converted to 3D models in the public domain remain largely neglected, and provide a valuable if unrecognized resource for digital heritage projects

Assyrian lion 3D reconstruction. Image: sketchfab.com

But more broadly there needs to be a reassessment of how mitigation is understood for heritage management. The usual process when a developer attempts to demolish a heritage building is they have first proven that it is unfeasible to repair it for reuse or relocate it elsewhere, in which case assuming the assessment of values does not determine the building is of unique significance, it is then recorded prior to demolition. In the case of particularly significant buildings there is often additional monetary mitigation which might be, for example, directed to a local heritage fund. What I suggest is being lost in translation here is the understanding of mitigation relating to site specific intervention. The argument would go that if a structure is significant enough in terms archaeological values to warrant additional mitigation beyond the cost of commissioning a consultant’s report to the required standards, then these outputs should primarily be related to the production and preservation of site specific interpretations commensurate to the archaeological and historic heritage value of the building – 3D models are but one example of this. A non-virtual example of this often-missed opportunity is the too infrequent use of interpretative panelling, signage and other site-specific intervention that memorialize place. It should be noted that these two categories are not mutually exclusive, the overlapping of physical and virtual geographies is the next frontier in heritage management, with companies like http://www.virtimeplace.com/ producing apps that enable the viewer to walk through heritage sites and reconstruct a lost or degraded built environment based on an archaeologically accurate reconstruction. There is no reason why this technology could not be integrated with heritage signage and potentially broadened to incorporate other socially significant historical events where the connection between memory and the built environment has been disrupted. Overseas examples abound of the seamless integration of interpretive signage and multimedia that is incorporated into local body heritage planning policy, and should be understood as an aspect of forward looking and humane urban planning that takes some local responsibility for the inevitable consequences of development in New Zealand towns and cities.

Virtual image of a restored Mesquita de Cordoba taken from inside the building through the Virtimeplace.

What is being suggested here is really not that radical but requires a broadening of policy focus, one that takes further account of the stake the public has in its heritage. Such a shift would have the additional positive consequence of educating developers about the public interest in the management of heritage assets, one which is not merely a financial penalty, but a process of producing memory and cultural knowledge on a larger scale.

Michael Healey

Lismore Lodge, Over the Barrel: how the other half lived.

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Most of the work I do as a buildings archaeologist focuses on the humble 19th century cottage. These types of buildings, their construction methods and materials have become well trod territory in post-earthquake Christchurch, meaning we now have a fair picture of many of their occupant’s wealth and social standings, and how this changed through time. This story typically features a humble cottage growing up to be an, at least semi-respectable, middle-class villa – perhaps a reasonable aspiration for any house.  Less often does one have the opportunity to explore the houses of the wealthy and elites of Christchurch society in the colonial period.

Recently we were contracted to investigate one such building in Fendalton, a house known as Lismore Lodge, that was notable for its association with the prominent early Christchurch Stoddart family, and then one very interesting Christchurch personality: the broadcaster, philologist, academic, mountaineer and botanist, Professor Arnold Wall CBE.

The front facade of the homestead was well preserved with most original building fabric intact. Image: M. Healey.

The rear of the homestead showing some significant additions from the 20th century. Image: proprietor.

Professor Arnold Wall CBE, looking rather sharp. Image: Alexander Turnbull Library.

Lismore Lodge, a formidable establishment as it might seem, was, architecturally speaking, a restrained affair. It seemed sure of itself, not suffering from an identity crisis like so many late Victorian houses with the ‘battle of the styles’ that raged throughout the 19th century between the gothic and the classical. The fenestration consisted of sash windows on both levels, with the first story having faux shutters attached. Relatively few decorative embellishments adorned the house, although those that were present included fretwork around the veranda, some classical mouldings around the bay window, and brackets attached to the cornice, under the roof’s eaves.

One of the main tasks as a building archaeologist is to understand the phases of a building’s construction, and this is sometimes difficult prior to demolition, especially when much of the framing is concealed. We knew a few things from historical research:

  • The homestead was built within a year and was completed by September 1880.
  • After Mark Stoddart’s death, his wife Anne was no longer living on the property from 1886 and it was leased in 1901 by Arnold Wall, who went on to formally purchase the premises from Stoddart in 1907.
  • As was commonly the case with large dwellings from this period, Lismore Lodge was converted to flats in 1936.

From the outset, slight irregularities in the layout of the building suggested the house had undergone some expansion in the early 20th century. However, unlike less ambitious constructions, large wooden houses can conceal their growth so that later additions are less obvious to identify, as their elements are often materially and stylistically coherent and seamlessly integrated.

With the building’s phasing unclear from the outside, the next recourse a buildings archaeologist has is to look at the floorboards, interior walls and ceilings. Often differences in construction will indicate a house’s growth, but in this case it proved difficult because of the uniform use lath and plaster.

Typical of most of the interior was lath and plaster wall coverings. Image: M. Healey.

The ceiling viewed from the second story after the floorboards had been removed. Image: M. Healey.

What buildings archaeology project is not complete without an obligatory secret door? Image: M. Healey.

It was pretty clear there was a later extension towards the rear of the property based on the smaller sized floorboards that are indicative of 20th century building materials. Image: M. Healey.

This was a surprise that managed to slip under that radar, a previously unrecognized building phase at the north of the house. The extension was probably added during the early 20th century, in the years of Arnold Wall’s ownership, and shows the use of metal fastenings. Image: M. Healey.

Preliminary plan of the building fabric, showing the original extents of the building in purple. Image: M. Healey.

So far, so good, and all this before one has had a chance to look at the foundations to get a clear picture of the building’s development phases. It was at this stage that something rather interesting happened – the barrels!

Concrete barrels used as piles in this room! Image: M. Healey.

Concrete filled barrel discovered with the removal of the floor. Image: M. Healey.

Barrel form after the mould had been discarded. Image: M. Healey.

What begs explanation is why were the barrels only used in a small portion of the original foundation? Box formed foundations can be seen to the left of the image. Image: M. Healey.

Ground Level showing the barrels in purple. Image: M. Healey.

There were nine barrel shaped piles in total, two of which still had their wooden casings intact. Each barrel was approximately 750 mm x 450 mm wide and was used as the foundations for Room 4. It is typical for most 19th century houses in Christchurch to employ stone footings as foundations, with these usually basalt or ‘bluestone’ sourced from Halswell Quarry. Larger 19th century houses will often have concrete foundations or composite concrete with stone piles in the centre, but it is quite unusual to see a concrete barrel employed as a pile in a large house. This is typically only seen in the early 20th century with concrete filled kerosene or paint tins used as piles.

There are two interesting questions about these barrels:

  • Why were they employed in a high-status building, instead of the consistent use of formwork concrete foundation that is seen elsewhere?
  • Where did they come from?

The first question is difficult to answer. We can take it for granted that the form work foundation and the concrete barrels were poured together during the first phase of the building’s development, as evidenced by the same rough aggregate and use of scoria rock as a filler. The barrel is of a fixed height that matches the formwork foundation. Could there have been problems in procuring enough barrels to complete the foundation? Or was this a stop-gap measure to speed up the construction of the foundation? This will warrant some further thought, though I feel the evidence is inconclusive either way.

The second question is more intriguing, though less relevant to the construction of the villa. It was first necessary to work out what kind of cask we have here. The ‘cask system’ was heavily codified by the late 19th century and resembles champagne bottles in their novel nomenclature. At the time of recording, I could remember very few cask types. One was a faint recollection of a Robert Frost poem from an English class called Directive, from which I figured it was just about large enough for a small child to put their head into:

Nor need you mind the serial ordeal.

Of being watched from forty cellar holes,

As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.

And of course, who could forget the famous feats of the beer barrel bombers and their beer runs to supply our boys much need respite during the days of the Normandy invasion in WWII.

RAF fighter with beer barrels attached to wings, judging by the size likely a Rundlet or a Tierce. Image: G. Marie.

We have a few interesting characters in our line-up. There were at least 14 standard types of cask, ranging from the diminutive Firkin to largest capacity Tun cask, and taking a cursory look over the list one cannot fail to note such appellations as the hefty sized ‘Hogshead’ and the salaciously named ‘Butt cask’.

Cask types common in the colonial period. Image: Cognacdailynews.

Given the dimensions of the cask and the use of (Area=length x π r2) what we appear to have here is a 53.1 L, object close enough to the 50L Quarter cask.

The next task was to investigate the likely provenance of the Quarter casks imported into New Zealand. Besides alcohol, casks had a variety of possible contents. From meat and gunpowder to paint, nails and tallow. A brief overview of the Lyttleton Times’ shipping news between the periods of 1860-80 indicated that the “qr.-cask” was used exclusively for alcohol,  including wine, whisky, gin, brandy, port, rum, and sherry. So ubiquitous was this association that by the 1880s shipping news simply referred to “qr.-cask” as a synonym for a barrel of booze.

So, how did these casks get under the house of the Fendalton nouvelle riche? Being the hardworking, and presumably dour, Scots that the Stoddart family was, I would be surprised if they they had reason to keep nine casks, and there seems to be little evidence of imports being their line of business. So perhaps this was simply a cost and time saving measure by the builders. Unfortunately, we don’t have the surviving contract of works to clear this issue up, so it will remain a mystery for now, but the most simple solution is that the barrels were surplus from a local hotel or commercial business that were sold to the contractors. Nonetheless, it remains a unique find in the context of building foundations in colonial era Christchurch.

Michael Healey

Early Christchurch women, breaking the rules: the exhibition.

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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.