Fixing graves a growing trend

By BRIDGET CARTER

Old graves in remote tiny cemeteries are getting expensive and elaborate makeovers worth thousands of dollars.

People from New Zealand and overseas are searching out their family history, then travelling to near-forgotten settlements in Northland or the East Cape to find ancestors' graves.

Some pay up to $18,000 to restore what they discover - crumbling or hard-to-read headstones.

Monumental masons talk about years of demand overseas for headstone restoration because of a global surge of interest in genealogy.

But the trend is only just beginning to show up here, as relatives find that early settlers' gravestones are deteriorating.

Olive Harris, 72, of Mt Maunganui, a genealogy enthusiast for eight years, paid $4000 to restore her great-grandfather's crumbling headstone at the old public cemetery at Kohukohu on the northern side of the Hokianga Harbour.

The gravestone was made of faulty concrete and urgently needed fixing, she said.

"If we hadn't done it, it was all going to disintegrate and fall down the hill into a pile of rubble."

Her forebear, Thomas Bratt Hawkins, who died in 1924, was a native school teacher (Maori School teacher) in the northern Hokianga.

The grave's failing concrete was removed, the settling plot's foundation work was strengthened and new foundations were formed.

A new base was poured and the headstone removed, restored and replaced.

Mrs Harris said the work was quite plain and was finished this week. She took over the two-month project after her uncle, who wanted to get the gravestone restored, struck health problems.

After funds were raised among the family, the work went ahead.

Stonemasons say most of the graves they restore date back to the 1800s.

The collapsed structures usually are the graves of grandparents of people living out of town, says Brian Shepherd, who runs Gisborne Monumental Masons.

The people most likely to arrange restoration are women aged over 70.

"Most are old folks with no one left in the family," he said.

"They are worried there will be nothing left to remember that generation of the family."

In Gisborne, one restoration job cost $18,000.

Mr Shepherd says the main cemetery in Taruheru, 5km northwest of Gisborne, has marble angels on graves from almost 100 years ago worth nearly $100,000.

Many of the most beautiful headstones are tucked away in the "backblocks" and in river beds and "are just awesome".

"People don't know they are there."

Shane Clark, who runs Clarks Monumental Masons in Kaikohe and Whangarei, says his restoration work has grown fivefold over in the past five years.

In Oamaru, Carwyn Williams, of Williams Bros Monumental Masons, has had 15 restoration work inquiries in the past six months. Ten years ago, inquiries came at the rate of one a year.

In many instances, the stones just need cleaning.

Mr Clark says Italian white Carrara marble was used on most headstones in New Zealand during the 19th century.

Marble subjected to high rainfall becomes porous. After about 100 years, the stones resemble old concrete and are unreadable.

Stonemasons apply an acid to the stone, then neutralise it with an alkali.

They polish the stones, using polishing pads made of diamond grindings in resin, and the fee can range from $200 to $15,000.

Just as expensive is fixing graves made of crumbling concrete, usually a legacy of the horse-and-cart era, when some was made of unweathered sand from a beach.

The president of the New Zealand Society of Genealogy, Heather Webber, says the membership of 9500 is nearly double that of 10 years ago.

She estimates that about 100,000 people nationwide are following up on their family histories, some because they now have an effective tool for the task - the internet.

People are upgrading headstones because of a growing sense of a need to leave a trail of their origins, especially in a country based on immigration.

Dr Eleanor Rimoldi, a Massey University senior lecturer in social anthropology, says New Zealanders search out their roots in reaction to a culture of individualism.

Mixed marriages often cut ties to extended families and film and television chokes family storytelling.

"The fact that people have gone on these individual searches shows that the stories aren't being told at home."