15
COROMANDEL LIFE
SUMMER 2014
M
r. Robert Wigmore was born in Ireland
and came to New Zealand from
Canada in 1841
[we know now it was 1840
– Robert was in NZ before the shipwreck
of the HMS Buffalo]
. He was supposed to
be the biggest man in the country at that
time, being six foot eight and a half inches
– heavily built. He came from a very good
family background – ‘Calgary Castle’ was
the name of the family home, I believe.
[It has been confirmed that Robert came
from a family of means at Kilbarry House in
Castlelyons Parrish. Easy to see how the
details were lost in translation.]
He was very well educated and had talent
as a painter, some of his pictures having
been hung in America, but drink was his
problem. He was also an excellent cabinet
maker and made all the furniture for his big
house here at Hahei including his own bed,
which I later cut down to normal size, it
being about eight feet long.
When he first arrived, he landed at
Auckland but later travelled through the
country surveying right down to Wellington,
with the help of Maori canoes over rivers
and bays. Passing across the Thames area
he saw Hahei, which he never forgot.
After a short time he left New Zealand for
America and Canada, also working in Peru
and Chile with timber mills, but some years
later returned to Auckland where he and his
life-long friend Sir John Logan Campbell
had purchased sections in Queen Street.
Reselling his, he obtained the land title
for the Hahei property and over 100 years
ago took his family there, building a small
cottage near the beach and close to the
site where he and his wife are buried.
Later he built the big house, which is really
a marvel of workmanship –every strut and
joist is morticed – all nailed with square
nails. The price for first class kauri was
5/- a 100 ft. then. The old house is still
as good as the day it was built. He would
not allow a chimney in the home, but had
an enormous stove in the centre of the
kitchen with a metal pipe through the roof.
The kitchen was very big and there are still
hooks in the ceiling for hanging bacon.
Mr. Wigmore was the magistrate for the
district, all Court business being done
in the house itself. If a peninsula couple
wanted to get married, they had to come
here by boat, horse, or if needs be, by foot,
there being no roads whatsoever.
The Wigmores had no horses but the
whole family would start digging acres
of ground for growing wheat, maize and
vegetables. They had a small hand mill and
Right: Wigmore’s
cairn as seen today.
Left: Death and
funeral notices from
Auckland Star,
September 1890.
Legal notice from the Auckland Star, 7 October, 1873
noting one of Wigmore’s Hahei land purchases.
Continued on next page
The WIGMORES of HAHEI
by Horace Harsant
Ohinemuri Regional History / Journal 9, May 1968
“I arrived a few days ago, after a
passage of 44 days... The emigrants
who came in this vessel are very
much dissatisfied, and they wish
they were back in New Zealand,
which is upon the the whole, the
best country I have seen yet.”
Excerpt written by Wigmore as it appeared in
Southern Cross Newspaper 4th Nov, 1843 after
sailing from from South America to England.
ground their flour. Their vegetables were
taken round by rowing boat to Gumtown
(Coroglen) and Whitianga and sold to the
bush camps. The Wigmore girls rowed
the boat, over 50 miles there and back.
He would steer it, the daughters doing the
pulling, but they were big strong women
and did not mind.
Later they obtained one horse and a
bullock and did the ploughing with them.
The yoke they used to harness the animals
is still here. Eventually they bought another
horse, the bullock probably being eaten.
In addition to cropping, the Wigmores
hand-milked cows, set the milk in large
jars for 24 hours, skimmed the cream and
made butter for which they got 6d a pound.
Cheese was also made, some of the hand
presses being here still. They kept pigs,
fattened them on maize and potatoes,
slaughtered them and made bacon for sale.
Of interest in the surrounding area is that
there was a small quantity of kauri gum
on Mahurangi Island. On Hahei beach for
some unforeseen reason, first in Wigmore’s
time, then in ours, a portion of the beach
was uncovered leaving clay and rocks
and also gum. We went down and dug
two sacks before the tides came in and
covered the clay again. There is only one
solution in that Mahurangi Island must have
been part of the mainland and under the
clay of the beach at about 5 feet, there are
bogs and swamp formation, the same as
the mainland of Hahei. We have tried to dig
for gum since, but it is impossible to dig in
Make this a
polaroid??
Arthur Blanchard and memoir author Horace
Harsant built Robert and Fanny Wigmore’s burial
cairn at the end of Hahai Beach Rd.
