Memory box
The opening ceremony of the Ohaupo Memorial Town Hall was held on Friday, October 20, 1923. Doing the honours was Waikato electorate MP Frederick Lye (1881-1949).
Among those also present was Stewart Reid, the chairman of the Waipa County Council who was to unseat Lye in the 1925 election. Local ratepayers had raised a loan of £2000 to build the hall.
According to the
‘‘this sum was supplemented by the ladies of the district, who found the purchase money for the site.
‘‘Mrs Turnwald, chairwoman of the ladies’ committee, presented the chairman of the Town Board with the title deeds of the land’’ at the opening
October 20, 1923, P13). The new hall replaced Turnwald’s hall (c.1874?), which had previously hosted war memorial fund-raising events. On November 8, 1921 the
reported that the turnout for the weekly euchre tournament in the old hall had been poor.
The writer went on to upbraid Ohaupo residents for ‘‘not doing their best to erect a lasting memorial to those boys who did not return’’ from the war
November 8, 1921, P6). Evidently it was felt, in some quarters at least, that the fact that Paterangi was about to unveil its monument cast a poor light on Ohaupo’s memorial efforts.
As the hall approached completion the Ohaupo Town Board called tenders in September 1923 for the ‘‘sole right to exhibit pictures’’ in the ‘‘large, up-todate concrete building’’.
Cinema proprietors reading the tender notice were also advised they would be serving a ‘‘good district’’.
A Roll of Honour was unveiled on the wall of the hall’s entrance porch on August 2, 1925.
Frederick Lye was once again on hand to unveil the roll in front of an audience of around 150 ‘‘settlers’’ from the Ohaupo and Kaipaki districts. The roll lists 65 names within a decorative mount inscribed with the words ‘‘Lest We Forget’’ and ‘‘The Great War, 1914-1918’’.
Of the 65 men recorded on the panel, ten had died during the war, their names marked with an asterisk. As has been noted before, the memorials erected after World War I in New Zealand are typically ornamental in character. Ohaupo’s hall is therefore an atypical war memorial for its era, but one that evidently addressed a local need for a new public hall.
Hamilton architects Messrs Chitty and Cray designed the building; having called tenders for a structure using a concrete block system in March 1923.
Chitty later designed the Mission Sisters’ convent chapel in Hamilton East (1926) and the Frankton Hotel (1929).
Ohaupo’s memorial town hall is scheduled on the Waipa district plan but with local efforts now focused on redeveloping the combined sports’ clubrooms on the other side of Ohaupo Road the future of the hertiage building may be in doubt.
Times change and community aspirations find other foci; one wonders however whether the ‘‘settlers’’ who attended the hall’s opening and the Roll of Honour’s unveiling anticipated that their efforts might one day be turned to rubble.