Charles and Alice Hardy's land at the Horseshoe Bush

The Horseshoe Bush is an area in the hills that are to the west of Dairy Flat. It formed part of what was known as the Pukeatua Parish. Pukeatua translated from Maori to English means "Hill of God".

As early settlers in New Zealand Charles and Alice were given a land grant on arrival. This was 79 acres being Lot 271 on the above map. The photo below is of the page of the book held at the Archives in Auckland that records the grant. Access to Lot 271 would have been from Blackbridge Road which was most likely little more than a rough track at that time.

The 79 acre grant was the beginning of a period of some 30 years of living in the Horseshoe Bush area during which Charles and Alice had their family and became well established as members of this early community. By the 1880s the total Hardy land holding was 203 acres.

The grant land at Lot 271 was sold in November 1874. It appears that Charles had by then determined he needed land that provided a better opportunity to make a living from timber. It is not clear what he and Alice did immediately after selling Lot 271 but in the Electoral role for 1880/81 Charles is shown as having the freehold of Lots 40 and 53 with a total of 40 acres. This looks to be what appears on the map as W40 (31 acres) plus a small adjoining part of M53 which is 9.53 acres. So far we have not been able to locate a record of this land purchase.

In 1880 Charles entered into a land deal that was to become contentious. This was Lot 43 covering 100 acres. It had been owned by Johanna Coleman. On her death Charles entered into a 20 year lease agreement with her husband Peter Coleman under which he could among other things cut down any timber on the land. It was subsequently established that Johanna's Will was invalid and Peter had no right to enter into any sale or lease deal. Charles received legal advice that he could retain possession of the land until it was claimed by a lawful heir to Johanna Coleman's estate. It seems this never occurred.

Charles proceeded to fence the land, build a 2 roomed hut, a buggy house and stockyard and to cultivate the land. He asserted that this land had few trees of any value on it.

On 24th March 1881 Charles purchased from Maurice Kelly part of Lot 42 being an area of some 63 acres. He paid 400 pounds for this land. This compares with a sale price of only 50 pounds for the 79 acres of grant land.

The deed of purchase included an agreement between Charles, Maurice Kelly, James and John Griffith for mutual access and de-pasturing rights over lots 41, 42 and 51 including an agreement not to fence them. Charles was also given floating rights in the Horseshoe Bush Creek which included the right to erect beams and dams. The agreement will have made it easier for each of them to log timber from their respective land holdings. It was the practice at the time to remove the large kauri logs using a mix of bullock teams and floating logs down streams and rivers. Logs from the Horseshoe Bush would usually end up at the Wade where Maurice Kelly had a substantial timber milling business.

Maurice Kelly was the single largest landholder in the district of Silverdale. He had arrived in the area in the early 1850s and had grown total land holdings of around 1200 acres. By the 1870s he was starting to sell down these holdings having subdivided his land. Maurice and his wife Mary had built a private Catholic Church with an associated cemetery on their own land near Dairy Flat Road. It is in this cemetery that sadly Charles and Alice buried their son Alfred who died 22nd February 1872 aged only 5 months.

It was on Lot 42 that Charles and Alice in 1890 provided a building to be used as a school for the children of the Horseshoe Bush. In 1892 a portion of lot 42 was formally subdivided and given by Charles and Alice to the Education Board so that a new school building could be erected to cater for the growing number of school children. The school was opened 18th May 1893.

The Horseshoe Bush School remained on this site until 1923 when it was relocated to Waitoki. The building at Waitoki is shown in this photograph. Unfortunately it fell into disrepair and has since been demolished.

More about the school will be covered in a later blog.