Michael Fowler: The changing history of Joll Rd, Havelock North

William and John Henry Joll’s blacksmith Forge on Middle Road, Havelock North in the mid-1890s. John Joll is in the white shirt and braces in the foreground. Photo / Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank Tonks Collection

OPINION

The announcement in Hawke’s Bay Today (18/10/23) of a multi-storey hotel on Joll Rd, Havelock North, progresses a series of multi-storey developments approved in recent years in the area that some long-time residents may struggle now to call “The Village”.

Joll Rd was named for an early resident of Havelock, John Joll.

This road was one of six which met in what is now the roundabout, but on Havelock’s formation in 1860, was unnamed.

John Joll had come to Hawke’s Bay in the late 1850s, and married Fanny Harrison in 1865.

Around 1865 he built a house at 19 Napier Rd. It was moved to make room for the Porter Drive ring-road in 1979.

He farmed at Pukahu on Te Aute Rd (near Havelock) with his cattle and sheep supplying butcher shops he had established in Havelock and Clive. When their family expanded, he built a house on the farm in January 1870.

At age 40, after a “long and painful illness” John Joll died in November 1878. Two years earlier he had been gored in the back by one of his bulls, from which he would never recover.

Fanny tried to keep the farm going, but struggled and sold some of the Pukahu farmland, and leased the rest. She moved back to Havelock to a house with her five sons, in what is now Joll Rd. To supplement her income, she nursed, and taught Māori. Fanny, it was said in her obituary, was “one of the few who could really interpret the Māori mind”.

When her boys were old enough, they moved back to farm at Pukahu.

She retired to live in a house on Joll Rd, where she passed away in 1929 aged 83.

Two of Fanny’s sons, John Henry and William, in the early 1890s established a blacksmith business at the beginning of Middle Rd, Havelock.

John lived with his wife Lily in the former Presbyterian Manse on Middle Rd (now the car park) but shifted in 1902 when he built at 21 Joll Rd. Apparently, a builder had owed John money, so the house was built to settle a debt. (The property at 21 Joll Rd stayed in the Joll family for 93 years when it was sold in 1995 when son Sidney Joll died. The house was shifted to Maraekakaho in 1999 to make way for a property development.)

Before this he had bought the former Presbyterian church site and manse, which was destroyed by fire in 1907, with John still owning the property.

His brother William left for the Australian gold fields, so John carried on and later leased the forge to H J Unwin in 1903. Unwin advertised that Havelock was experiencing growth – “In the last few weeks no less that four new houses have been arranged for in Havelock North. This will indicate how the district is going ahead. The Horses kept there will all want Shoeing.”

After H J Unwin, the following blacksmiths worked at the forge: Millar and Muir, Rutherford and Miller (James Rutherford was joined by his son, Bob).

In 1927, Bob Given bought the forge, and would operate it for 33 years, before retiring aged 83 in 1960, and the building was demolished soon after. Given St is named for him. Bob would work stripped to the waist – and so the story goes – making a concession to the colder winter weather by pulling his braces over his shoulders.

To recognise the long history of blacksmiths in Havelock North (the last one was operated by Mr R Svenson on Te Mata Rd and ended in 1979 when he shifted to Waimarama) the Havelock North Rotary Club commissioned in 1990 a Terry Stringer sculpture of a blacksmith for the Village centre, opposite near the site of John H Joll’s original blacksmith forge.

Coming soon by Michael Fowler, a history of Westerman & Co. Hastings: Famous for Low Prices. The Story of Westerman & Co.

Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a Hawke’s Bay historian.