Alfred Wallis Hardy

Alfred Hardy was born at Dairy Flat on 11 September 1871. He was the third child born to Charles and Alice Hardy. Very sadly Alfred only lived for 5 months, passing away on 22 February 1872.

The name Wallis reflects the maiden surname of Charles' maternal grandmother Elizabeth Wallis. Similarly Charles and Alice's first born son Charles Lingham Hardy was given the maiden surname name of Alice's mother Emma Lingham.

Alfred was buried in a local cemetery that had been established by well known entity Maurice Kelly alongside the catholic church he built on his property at the Wade. The photo below shows Alfred's headstone at what we believe to be his original burial site.

Charles and Alice had settled on their land grant in Dairy Flat by 1868 having arrived in Auckland on 26 October 1865. Their first son Charles Lingham Hardy was born in Freemans Bay Auckland on 12 March 1866 and their second son George Harry Hardy was born at Dairy Flat on 17 October 1868. The land grant was formally transferred to their ownership on 27th December 1869.

It is reasonable to assume that Alfred came to be buried at Kelly's cemetery because Charles new Maurice Kelly well. Charles did business with him including buying 63 acres of land from him in the Horse Shoe Bush area in March 1881.

Kelly ran a large timber mill business, among many other ventures, so it is likely Charles sent him logs from his property for milling. Kelly had settled in the Silverdale area around 1848 on purchasing 500 acres at Lucas Creek from the Government. Ultimately he is said to have expanded his landholding to around 1200 acres. He built a hotel as well as his own large house and private Catholic Church and carried on an extensive timber trade. He was described as a man with a great force of character, jolly and boisterous. Kelly claimed to have been aged over 104 shortly before his death on 24 June 1888.

From the evidence I have so far seen of other headstones from this burial site Alfred was probably one of the earliest to have been placed in this cemetery.

Unfortunately as might be expected with a cemetery on a private rural property the chances are high that headstones will be damaged over a long period of time.

Below is a commentary on the historic cemetery that I have extracted from the Auckland City Council study of December 2017. Note the image in this article shows some broken sections of Alfred's headstone. This was the state of repair in which I first saw Alfred's headstone.

Jill and John Hardy had visited the Pine Vally Road site in 1994. Below are some photos they took at the time. These photos show the extent to which the headstones in the cemetery had become scattered across the field on the farm. It is thought that much of the damage to the headstones arose from horses and cattle roaming amongst them. John tells me he gathered up the pieces of Alfred's headstone and placed them together in order to take the photo immediately below.

In the the photo below Alfred's headstone is visible in the background just left of centre.

From discussion with the current owner of the pine Vally Road property I have learned that the owner prior to her took action to protect the damaged headstones. He created a fenced- off area close to the original location and moved the remains of the headstones into this protected space. Unfortunately this does mean we do not know exactly where the remains of the people buried in the cemetery lie. Some may be within the protected area. We cannot be certain.

The photo below shows the fenced off area containing the headstones. You may note the electric fence to keep curious animals away. No headstones can be seen in this photo because of the overgrown bush and long grass

This plaque which can be seen attached to the fence provides the names of those buried in the cemetery.

The image below of Alfred's headstone was taken by me after very carefully gathering up the pieces and balancing them on the base, in a similar fashion to John's effort in 1994.

Below is the headstone after its restoration. This involved many hours of polishing away all the accumulated grime, carefully piecing back together the broken sections and making a piece to replace the large missing section. There is still broken section missing from the right hand side.

At present the headstone is sitting in a wooden frame to keep it upright. The original plinth is sitting just behind the restored stone. It is my intention to see if we can successfully bond these two sections together.

Thanks to some great work by a member of the Foley family the cemetery is now clear of most of the overgrown bush and grass and many other headstones have also been restored.

Location of the Pine Valley Rd cemetery

Below is a map on which I have labelled the approximate locations of the cemetery at Pine Valley Rd, the original Hardy land grant on Blackbridge Rd (lot 271) and the land subsequently bought by Charles further along Blackbridge Rd (lot 42) in the area of Horseshoe Bush.

The map below more accurately shows the locations of lots 271 and 42 on Blackbridge Rd. You will see that on Lot 42 the location of the Horse Shoe Bush School built by Charles and Alice is labelled. The lots purchased by Charles and Alice were W40 , part of 42 (this was the 63 acres purchased from Maurice Kelly), 43 and 53 with a total area of 203 acres.

I recently visited the very good Silverdale Historical Society Museum. I was able to view their archival material and found some interesting newspaper articles about the cemetery. The images below provide some more background on the changes in ownership of the land and efforts to protect the graves.

Further research is required in order to establish with more accuracy the original location of the cemetery. I hope to find out what legal protections are in place to ensure that future changes in the ownership of the land at Pine Valley Rd do not result in the disturbance of the mortal remains buried there.