Historic home demolished
The historic Bostock house on the corner of Glen Terrace and Moehau Street has been demolished.
Built around 1927 for Frank and Sophia Bostock (nee Vercoe), it originally stood on 4ha (10 acres) and was known as Glencoe.
Between Moehau St and Beatty Ave runs a large gully which was known locally as Bostock’s Gully.
Te Puke children used the gully as a short-cut from school to town and eventually the Bostocks were approached to sell some land to form a road from Glen Terrace through to Beatty Ave, but instead Frank gave them land behind his property to form a road which is now known as Tui St.
The Bostocks originally farmed on No 3 Rd on a property known as Tixall which was named after Frank’s home in Stone, Staffordshire.
The Bostocks were wealthy shoe manufacturers, but in New Zealand Frank milked cows and introduced the first milking machine to the Bay of Plenty.
He also built a concrete pad in front of the cowshed so it could be washed down after milking — a very revolutionary idea at the time.
In 1916, he and his brother-in-law Philip Walter Vercoe established Bostock & Vercoe on the corner of Boucher Ave and Jellicoe St.
They were agents for Ford as well as Fordson tractors and Harley Davidson motorbikes. In 1927 they installed the first petrol bowsers in Te Puke.
The Bostocks had two children. Their son Ian who went to England to train in the shoe making industry and later became a director of R Hannah & Co in New Zealand. Their daughter Alice was adopted from Arthur Molony after the death of his wife Gertrude (nee Tanner). For many years Alice was a hairdresser in Te Puke and died in 2004.