Factory a heritage survivor
First things first; there’s no such thing as a ‘sky-jump buttress’. Observant readers will have noticed that I described St Paul’s Anglican Church at Tokaanu as having ‘sky-jump buttresses’ last Saturday. I’d like to blame my spell checker for the error, but it could have just been a slip of the finger when what I wanted to say was the buttresses reminded me of ski-jumps. Nicholas Pevsner, the most renowned European architectural historian of the 20th century, may not have recognised ‘ski-jump buttresses’ either, but at least I would have been clearer in my description, if not as evocative.
As for this week’s Memory Box, a recent stroll along the walkway between Cambridge and Karapiro provided a momentary excuse for a breather in the form of a historic building and heritage signage.
The latter identified the site as one of the stops along Te Ara Wai, Waipa District Council’s excellent self-guided heritage trail.
Taken together a history board, Te Ara Wai marker and a stone pou bearing a commemorative plaque tell the story of the site’s association with the foundation of the Anchor brand of butter; they say nothing however about the building standing close by.
As is quite well known, Henry Reynolds was a pioneer of factory-made butter production in the Waikato and New Zealand.
Reynolds opened a creamery at Pukekura, to the east of Cambridge, in the spring of 1886 and so began a hugely successful export enterprise that is continued today by Fonterra.
But what of the building standing alongside the heritage interpretation, which does not look as if it was built in the mid-1880s?
The first factory at Pukekura was a simple structure, partly built from concrete, with a rectangular footprint and gabled roof. By the early 20th century this building had been superseded by a larger factory with an L-shaped footprint and a gabled vent on the ridge of one of the wings.
In late January 1924 a new casein factory opened on the site; the original creamery building was now to be used for storage while the second factory was dismantled.
At the opening it was mentioned by Frederick Lye, the local Member of Parliament, that a memorial to the first dairy factory on the site had been suggested. Such a commemorative plaque was eventually unveiled on the site by Sir Alfred Hayward on November 3, 1961.
The new factory produced casein solids and also housed a skimming station, which processed milk or cream from Pukekura, Maungatautari and Horahora suppliers; the resulting cream was then trucked to the Frankton butter factory. Tenders for alterations and additions to the building were called by architect EE Gillman in May 1939. Although I have been unable to confirm this, it seems almost certain that Gillman also designed the 1924 building, given that he specialised in dairy factory design work throughout the Waikato from the 1910s through the 1930s.
In August 1943 it was reported that the Pukekura factory was producing the highest grade of cheese of all 25 factories then operated by the New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Company. Consequently local suppliers were awarded a premium in addition to the basic guaranteed price paid by the company. This news item suggests to me that Gillman’s 1939 alts and adds may have been connected to converting the factory to cheese production.
The factory was closed in 1975 and the southern wing demolished in the 1980s; since that time the remaining structure has been sensitively converted for residential use. The six sculptural vents on the ridgeline of the building are a dead giveaway of its dairy factory origins, something that an eventual refresh of the heritage signage at the site might usefully address. After all, heritage signage in tandem with a surviving historic building is always preferable to a sign alone marking the place at which something once occurred.