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Daniells’ house and store at Waiwhero Road, Ngatimoti, near the present War Memorial Hall, with the Mt Arthur range behind, sometime between 1905-1910. |
At centre is Alf Daniell’s new home with attached store, a shed/storeroom (with wide doors front and back so a loaded wagon could drive right through) and recently cleared farmland. Hard to believe this area would become Ngatimoti’s central hub for many years! Across the road to the left is blacksmith Lawrence (Tod) Heath’s smithy. This was situated next to the Orinoco Stream on land belonging to the Haycock family, whose home at the mouth of the Orinoco can be seen further back, directly above the Daniells’ house. The black square up on the slope behind the smithy is likely to be a raspberry crop. Raspberries, along with hops, were widely grown in the Ngatimoti area before tobacco took over as the cash crop of choice. The further clump of trees and shed closer to the hills left of the store are on the Peninsula farm bought from Christopher Remnant Snr by brothers Guthrie & George Beatson in 1903 and still in the Beatson family today.
The youngest surviving child of Henry Cooper Daniell & Anna (nee Lollis), Alfred Daniell was
born in Nelson on 21 August 1855 and grew up at his father’s estate on Brook Street.
Henry Cooper Daniell (1817-1895) came out from England with his wife on the ship “Mandarin” in 1841, their first child, Ann Randall Daniell, being born on board (Ann Daniell, who never married, ran a successful private school on Hardy Street for several decades). Henry was employed as an accountant and administrator by the NZ Company in Wellington, but following the Wairau Incident in 1843, he was sent by Colonel William Wakefield to Nelson to deal with the Company’s accounts there – the death of Nelson’s NZ Company agent, Captain Arthur Wakefield at Tuamarina had left Nelson’s affairs in disarray. A well-regarded and god-fearing man – he was one of the first Baptists to settle in Nelson, later joining the Plymouth Brethren - H.C. Daniell became an Auditor of the Nelson Trust Funds and for many years was Nelson’s Commissioner of Crown Lands. He was appointed a Governor of the first Nelson College Board in 1858.
Alfred’s next-oldest brother George ventured into the hinterlands in the 1870s, when he set up a store in a room at John Taylor’s Hotel at the Baton during the goldrush days. During this time he based himself around Ngatimoti, where he made the acquaintance of various local residents and he and Alfred, like their father members of the Plymouth Brethren, would preach at Dovedale on Sundays. One resident who became a good friend was John Cornwall McGaveston, also a member of the Plymouth Brethren, who farmed at Pokororo, and in 1877 married as his second wife Penelope Dean Wallis. Penelope was the oldest daughter of Richard & Mary Ann Wallis who had set up orphanages, first at “The Gables” on Thorp Street in Motueka, and later at “Hulmers’' on Chamberlain Street, Lower Moutere. George Daniell married Penelope’s younger sister Eliza Wallis in 1880.
Meanwhile, Alfred also became a storekeeper when he bought Herbert Edwin Hall’s general store and property at Brightwater in 1886. It’s notable that among other things, he had the agency for the products – wooden buckets, barrels, casks & churns etc - made by cooper Benjamin Strachan, whose “Manawatane” farm was at the top of Strachan Road in the Orinoco Valley.
In 1889 Alfred married another of the Wallis sisters, Frances Thornton Wallis, the wedding taking place at the bride’s Lower Moutere home, with the Rev. Mr Robert Young officiating. In June 1891 their first child was born at Brightwater but died the next day. Further misfortune followed when later that year Alfred’s business was subject to a mortgagee sale. It appears that his brother George, who may well have already been involved with the Brightwater business, bailed Alfred out and took it over. George’s wife Eliza then ran the store while he himself travelled around the district with a cart selling goods. George & Eliza had 2 children, Edward George, born 1881, who settled in Napier, and Anna Beatrice, born 1888, who never married. George died in 1929 and Eliza the following year. Both are buried at the Waimea West Cemetery.
With George now in charge of the Brightwater store, Alfred & Frances Daniell moved to Ngatimoti. They leased a piece of land at Greenhill from the large Woodstock Estate, owned at that time by Dr Johansen, who had a medical practice in Motueka. There was an existing old house which they made their home and Alfred built a mud (cob) store nearby, set back from the road. This was almost directly opposite the aerial cage on wires leading to the McGavestons’ farm on the west bank of the Motueka River.
Among his customers were a number of “hatters” - the diehard old diggers who came down from the Mt Arthur Tableland and crossed the Motueka River by either canoe or the McGavestons’ cage. Some would also spend the winters working the Motueka River shores at places like “Tin Pot”. They carried gold in little chamois bags which they used to pay for their purchases, including many bottles of the diggers’ perennial favourite, Perry Davis’ Patented Painkiller, a potent brew of opiate-laced alcohol, touted as a “purely vegetable medicine.” These rough-and-ready chaps made Frances Daniell nervous, and when her husband was away she kept her young son at hand whenever they traded with her.
Alfred & Frances Daniell had two more children - Mary Louisa (Louie), born 1892, and Alfred Henry (Harry), born 1894
Dr Johansen died in 1895 and his Woodstock estate was gradually broken up, When the Greenhill block was subdivided and sections auctioned off in 1906, the piece leased by the Daniells became part of the land sold to Matilda Whelan and her son William. This upcoming subdivision prompted the Daniells’ move around 1905 to the site near the intersection of Waiwhero Road and the Motueka Valley Highway, a 39 acre block (Pt Section 22, Block X, Motueka Survey District) taking in the land right down to the current Memorial Hall site, bought from Guy Beatson (a cousin of the Peninsula Beatsons), who then bought one of the Greenhill sections for himself.
Alfred had a demanding weekly schedule. He would leave home first thing in the morning with a list of orders from local customers, travelling with his covered express drawn by two horses through Orinoco and Rosedale, along the way collecting butter and eggs and lists of orders from the large purpose-built boxes placed at farm gates. At Upper Moutere he stopped to rest his horses and have a cup of tea, reaching Nelson in the evening. He would stay a night or two at the family home in the Brook – three unmarried sisters lived on there after their parents died - while he sold the farm products in Nelson and stocked up with the groceries and other supplies requested by his customers. He would then drop these off at the appropriate farm gate boxes on his way back home.
Daughter Louie, who never married, took over the shop as she grew older, while son Harry worked on the farm, and they carried on after Alfred’s death on 21 January 1920. He was buried at the Waiwhero Cemetery.
Around 1923 the Ngatimoti School, at that time up on the hill just past St James Church, was looking for a more central site. Some land was purchased from Mrs Daniell and a new school was built near the later Memorial Hall site. This school ran from 1924 till 1954, when the Ngatimoti School moved to its present site at Greenhill, formerly the 5 acre retirement block known as “Rathgar” belonging to Daniell in-laws John & Penelope McGaveston, and just a short distance from Alf Daniell’s first store at Ngatimoti.
Frances Daniell advertised the rest of the Daniell property for sale in April 1924 – farm and general store with house, shop and storeroom on 36½ acres of land– but it seems there were no takers.
After the second Ngatimoti School opened next-door, Daniells’ store housed the local library (previously kept at the first Ngatimoti school) and also the Ngatimoti Post Office, which operated from a small room attached to the house, next to the store. Louie Daniell took on an extra role at this stage as postmistress. Mother and daughter were a local institution - Louie presiding with due dignity over the Post Office or miraculously conjuring up required items from the jumble of miscellaneous goods stacked on the store’s shelves, while Frances, increasingly crippled by arthritis, sat in her accustomed place on the verandah, where she could see what was happening along the road and chat to customers as they came in. Tod Heath moved his home and business to the site of the current WWII Memorial Hall, then a corner of the school grounds, which would be situated to the extreme right in the above photo. He leased land nearby where he grew tobacco and had two tobacco kilns behind his forge. With cars growing in popularity, he had a couple of bowsers dispensing “Big Tree” benzene set up outside his smithy.
Harry Daniell, who married Beatrice Marker in 1924, had moved to a farm in the Lloyd Valley by 1928. Frances Daniell died in 1937 and was buried at the Waiwhero Cemetery with her husband, Alfred.
Louie Daniell retired as postmistress the following year and retired to Nelson. Her brother moved back to the family home and the post office carried on regardless at the Daniells’ old store, with a succession of local women serving as postmistress.
A further part of the Daniells’ property then passed to local carrier Percy Tomlinson and his wife Grace (nee Mytton). In 1941 Percy built a separate new store just a few metres further up Waiwhero Road, next to the yard from which he operated his freight company, “P.N. Tomlinson”. The Ngatimoti Post ffice then moved to the new store, where it ran from its own small, attached room, Percy was appopinted postmaster, with an assistant, Jack Harris, who when the Tomlinsons moved on took over as postmaster from 1948-1973. A telephone exchange was added nearby, a telephone box set up outside and a couple of petrol pumps put out front. In 1957 the Tomlinsons sold their business to Transport Nelson Ltd, who established their Ngatimoti depot at Percy’s yard. TNL then had their own depot office attached to the store, which carried on under the management of Harrie & Carol Peters.
All these services gradually dropped away. Tod Heath retired to Motueka in 1941 and the Memorial Hall took the place of his former home and smithy in 1954, the same year that the Ngatimoti School made its third move to its current site at Greenhill. The Ngatimoti store closed in 1966, as locals were by then driving into Motueka to do their shopping, TNL shut its Ngatimoti depot in 1970, and the Post Office, the last to go, closed up in 1978. All that remains now are the former telephone exchange building (latterly the Ngatimoti Bowling Club rooms) and Perce Tomlinson’s old store, still on its original site. It has over the years been used for various purposes including a woodturner’s workshop and in 2009 a briefly revived general store, but more often than not has stood empty, a lonely testament to a once busy past.
And for those wondering, the Daniells' house became a private home after Harry Daniell left Ngatimoti - it wasn't part of the property bought by Percy Tomlinson. Situated at what is now 1016 Waiwhero Road, it is still in use 114 years after it was built, despite having been swamped during a major flood in 1957. It has been through a number of owners since the Daniells departed, including Laurence (Laurie) Barnes and his son, Alan & Veronica Hall, who raised it up just in time to avoid being swamped by a later flood in 1983, and latterly by Norman Carrington & Linda Sillery.
Acknowledgement
Photo courtesy of Mr E. Stevens, ex T.B. Beatson Collection, Motueka & District Historical Association.
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