Bearing up well

An unusual piece of Devonport's history has been crumbling away for decades. Sophie Bond discovers the peculiar story behind the Bear Garden Wall and about plans to save it.

The concrete and scoria wall is at least 1.8m high in places, and was built more than a century ago to enclose a public attraction that never took off. Where we stand on Garden Tce, half a dozen holes pockmark the wall, one large enough for a ginger cat to curl up in.
Devonport resident Rod Cornelius flaps copies of old photographs in the air and describes the original boundary of the Bear Garden Wall. The heritage enthusiast and founder of the local museum has been reading up on its history. "It was probably going to be used as a picnic ground and gardens - and to house bears."
He's thrilled one of the outgoing North Shore City Council's final acts was to grant $20,000 for repairs to the wall. "It really is a part of Devonport. There's a massive history here and the area has retained its character because a lot of people fought to save it."
He says that in the many years after the failure of the Bear Garden, the walled space was used as a park, an auction site and as a shipbuilding yard. The remaining sections of it run through private properties.
But were bears ever kept here? A plaque on Clarence St states brown bears were once housed in the enclosure. Mr Cornelius grins and says: "There were never any bears put in there. The plaque is wrong. That's the difficulty of casual historians. You've got to be damned sure you don't make a mistake because it will end up as part of history."
He produces a 2008 thesis which studied the garden's history in detail and rules out bears.
Nevertheless, he says the wall is remarkable for its age.
The $20,000 for repairing the wall was given to North Shore Heritage Trust on top of the $50,000 it receives annually in council funding.
Auckland Council's principal specialist in built heritage, Leslie Vyfhuis, says the trust received a request from a property owner for assistance to make the repairs.
Several properties abut the wall and all the owners can ask for funding. Ms Vyfhuis says the trust is working with heritage consultants to decide how best the wall can be repaired.
She says the wall is the property of the landowners but repairs have to be done to the trust's satisfaction.
Barely there
In 1881, Devonport businessmen Robert Stark and George Quick bought an area of land bordering Queens Parade. The walls were built and it is thought the pair wanted to create a garden - perhaps with a menagerie - to attract visitors to the area. Newspaper reports from the period are scathing of the barely there gardens, and it appears they never progressed beyond the wall and a gatehouse.