Napier Prison started a new ghost tour in 2020. Photo / NZME
Napier Prison started a new ghost tour in 2020. Photo / NZME
The designation of the complete site of the Old Napier Prison as a Category 1 Historic Place was celebrated at a Friday afternoon gathering at the jail, now a tourist attraction.
The prison opened in 1862 and closed in 1993 with the advent of the new Hawke's Bay Regional Prisonnear Hastings and has since 2002 been a nostalgic and mysterious stopping place for thousands of visitors prepared to pay to get into a complex where for many years the confined would have been prepared to pay to get out.
Heritage New Zealand, which announced the listing last year, also honoured the work of Toro and Marion Waaka, who brought the jail back to life after taking the tourism-inspired punt in 2002.
Among those present for the occasion were twin-city Mayors Kirsten Wise, of Napier, and Sandra Hazlehurst, of Hastings.
Marion Waaka said the announcement was a high point in a very difficult year, after the tourist operation was hit particularly hard by the closing of the border because of Covid-19.
The prison as it started welcoming some of its first voluntary guests in 2002, with Toro and Marion Waaka. Photo / File
But it provided a chance to pivot the business, adding more functionality to their Escape Room experiences – a response revealing the resilience behind the couple's success.
A popular feature is the front wall which was the work of the inmates, using stone quarried from what is now Centennial Garden.
It is considered one of the best examples of stonemasonry in New Zealand.
Many stones are personalised with inscriptions by individual prisoners.
"The site has outstanding historic significance as the most complete example of a provincial government prison still extant in New Zealand," said Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga senior heritage assessment advisor Joanna Barnes-Wylie, who wrote the listing report. "It also provides an unsettling sense of life in an ageing prison."
Hukarere (Bluff Hill), at the north-eastern end of Mataruahou (the wider Napier hill), where the prison would one day be built, was the site of Tūhinapō, "the most sacred spot in the district" where the first fruits of the season were offered by the tohunga. A number of whare wānanga were also established on Mataruahou, including one at Hukarere.
The prison has had more than one unusual ease of life, having been first recommended for closure in 1909, when the Inspector of Prisons described it as the worst prison in New Zealand.
It remained open many more years, suffering overcrowding in the 1970s and 1980s when the stench and heat was unimaginable over summer and "potties" were still used in some cells. The last prisoners were transferred in 1993, marking 131 years of operation.
A recent visitor to the site, conservation architect and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Board and Māori Heritage Council member Chris Cochran, can attest to the excellent work Marion and Toro have done, down to the last detail.
"There is a deep social history embedded in the graffiti on the cell walls, and Marion has an encyclopaedic knowledge of who the people were and what the often strange symbols mean. There are amazing stories to be told."
