Part-time historian and past editor of the Stratford Press, Ray Cleaver, reports on some demolition work.
Mangatoki has been reverberating to the sound of destruction over the past few weeks as the local 83-year-old local dairy factory was demolished.
The building has been a fertiliser store for around 30 years and had a long history in the dairy industry, but now a 50 tonne digger has returned the site to bare land again.
The factory has quite a history, going back 137 years. The original wooden factory building on the banks of the Mangatoki Stream was erected by young Eltham entrepreneur C A Wilkinson who purchased the land and built in 1892.
These were the days when a stagecoach with four horses took people from Eltham to Opunake and there was a toll gate on the Mangatoki bridge to help pay for roading.