The rock with a small plaque marking the site of the Rutland Stockade is easily overlooked.
The rock with a small plaque marking the site of the Rutland Stockade is easily overlooked.
COMMENT
This month marks 150 years since the last British troops left Whanganui. Unrest in the fledgling town resulted in the arrival of the 58th (Rutlandshire) Regiment in late 1846. They built the Rutland Stockade, New Zealand's largest, on Pukenamu Queen's Park.
The structure was 60m by 30m and enclosedtwo blockhouses, the larger for 80 soldiers and the other 20 soldiers.
In both, the upper storey projected a metre over the lower and both storeys were loop-holed for rifle fire. The stockade was designed as a retreat and not used as living quarters.
A settler, Dr Peter Wilson, described it in his diary: "Our fort on the hill has been completed and the troops are now moving into it, for which thank goodness! Soldiers are all very well in their place but at best are a necessary evil."
Other townspeople were kinder in their criticism and one referred to the stockade as the Acropolis. Maori who had sold the timber for its erection disparagingly named it Te Whare Waakataata — the peep house.
The stockade was occupied in April 1847 and for the next 23 years a series of British regiments were based in Whanganui, contributing much to the life of the growing town.
A school was started near the stockade for the families of the troops which settlers' children also attended.
Soldiers had their own hospital, helped fight fires in the town, played sport, formed lodges, drank in the pubs and the regimental bands gave public recitals.
The first cricket game recorded in the Chronicle on the racecourse in 1857 involved at least 15 soldiers from the garrison, including three officers.
By 1865 when General Cameron assembled 2000 troops to march up the coast, the garrison, plus their wives and children, outnumbered the civilian population.
The last regiment, the 18th Royal Irish Regiment, departed in October 1869, apart from a rear guard. This remaining Royal Irish company marched out on January 21, 1870, marking the end of an era of Whanganui as a garrison town.
In all the years it was manned by troops the stockade was never seriously threatened. Tension was highest in 1847.
After four members of the settler Gilfillan family were killed and four Maori later hanged near the stockade, three months of unrest climaxed in the so-called Battle of St John's Wood. This was an all-day but indecisive skirmish over swampy land with a handful of casualties on both sides.
Rutland Stockade with a view inside the fence and Shakespeare Cliff visible on the far side of the Whanganui River, 1870s.
By the time of the troops' departure the stockade was in a rundown state. Maintenance by the Royal Engineers did not prevent slow deterioration and from 1865, when the British and Colonial Governments agreed on gradual withdrawal of the British troops, little, if anything was done to the buildings.
When the last troops left there were two stockades, 23 houses and sheds, two stables and a rifle range abandoned by the Imperial Government. All other equipment was sold.
The stockade was later used as a jail. In 1887 town councillors debated whether to save it — one idea was to turn it into a museum — but later that year it was sold by auction after which it was demolished.
Apart from various memorials to soldiers including the Veterans' Steps, names embedded in our community which recall this military era include the Rutland Hotel, Rutland St and the Captain Laye Flats.
As well, streets are named after soldiers who settled here including Kells Ave, Russell St, Campbell St and Brassey Rd.
The 150th anniversary is an opportunity to consider something more imaginative to mark the site of the stockade and the economic and social impact of the imperial troops. We can surely do better than a rock with a small plaque.
Footnote: More background on the stockade will be provided by historian Kyle Dalton when he takes a Whanganui Summer Programme three-hour walking tour of the Pukenamu Queen's Park Reserve on Thursday 30 January. He has researched the role of the military in the development of Whanganui.
Rutland Stockade fast facts
• The first New Zealand-born VC, Henry Cecil D'Arcy, was born in the stockade in 1850.
• In 1860 Alf Caines supplied 17,000 totara shingles to re-roof stockade buildings.
• A colour sergeant shot dead an ensign in the stockade's orderly room in 1861.
• Soldiers used bayonets to fend off a bull which attacked a parade in 1865.
• Among the last troops to depart in 1870 was the white goat mascot of the Royal Irish.
• The stockade appears on the Whanganui coat of arms.
• A smaller fortification, the York stockade, stood in Cooks Gardens from 1847 to 1870.
