Taranaki maps on show at Fenton Street Arts Collective

The maps are on show at Fenton Street Arts Collective. Photo / Supplied

A set of detailed maps of Taranaki out of the public eye for 100 years is on show in Stratford.

Early in 1920, a group of surveyors in Taranaki, under the leadership of Bernard Charles Alton McCabe and Mr A V Adams, set out to make detailed measurements of and record locations of farms, railway lines, roads (tar, metalled, clay and simple tracks), fences, coastlines, lakes and rivers and streams and even some agricultural buildings.

They had some earlier maps of the region to go on, as well as the location of installed “trig points” on many of the high points, but the contours of the land had also to be measured.

Once their basic drawings were completed, they returned to New Plymouth, where cartographers added further detail of names of landowners, Māori names and special Māori sites, sketches from the surveyors’ Field Books, the extent of native bush, cemeteries, quarries, plantations and orchards, gardens, schools and then made them as attractive to the eye as possible.

A set of 105 maps was completed, with a scale of 22 yards to an inch and printed in colour, with an original size of 15 by 15 inches.

Maria Luque, a surveyor from Patagonia living in New Plymouth, has been working on maps for more than 30 years.

She has been able to clean them digitally, convert them so that parts look three-dimensional and add her own artistic flourishes.

The results are currently on show at the Fenton Street Arts Collective. Jo Stallard, who co-owns Fenton Street Arts Collective with Stuart Greenhill, says the exhibition will be a fascinating look at the area that established and supported the growth of Stratford as a township.

“Topographical maps may not seem like art to everyone but the history of the land and the skill of the early topographers is venerated in these intriguing and strangely beautiful works.”