Circular brick lined well which is about 1.7 deep from top of the bricks, location Tregarth St. Photograph by Bevan Conley.
Circular brick lined well which is about 1.7 deep from top of the bricks, location Tregarth St. Photograph by Bevan Conley.
When an almost two-metre deep well, dating back more than 120 years, was uncovered under their Whanganui driveway this week, Chris and Mary Kofoed were not that surprised.
For they already knew their Tregarth Street home had a rich history.
It belonged to prominent early citizen Emily White, noted for her extensive 19th century garden.
The buried treasures of Tregarth St first came to light in November when a ditch for a new water main was being dug.
Contractors found a brick drain and other items that dated from before 1900 and, because the remains were so early, work had to be stopped while the site was assessed and Whanganui District Council applied to Heritage New Zealand for an archaeological authority.
Archaeologist Annetta Sutton uncovers the brick drain from a former garden. Photograph by Bevan Conley.
Mrs White gardened 5.6 hectares on the edge of St John's Hill between 1882 and about 1903, and she wrote a book about it. Called My New Zealand Garden, it was first published in 1902, with black and white photographs and "a good turn of phrase".
Kerry Carman added to the story in 1990, producing Emily's Garden: The Colonial New Zealand Garden of a Suffolk Lady.
Heritage NZ allowed the drainage work to resume this month, with Archaeology North on site to see what was uncovered and to record it.
On Monday Archaeology North's Annetta Sutton was carefully uncovering a brick drain. In the back of her car were other objects she had found - broken crockery, jars and bottles and the rusted remains of a metal matchbox.
She had previously found pits Mrs White excavated in the clay subsoil, to make room for trees that need free drainage. On Tuesday, she discovered the brick-lined well on the council berm, hiding under Mr and Mrs Kofoed's driveway.
The Kofoeds - who live in Mrs White's second house on the property, called The Bungalow - have been keenly following the discoveries.
When they bought the house 18 months ago, a copy of Mrs White's book came with it, and they have downloaded another copy.
There's probably only one tree from Mrs White's original garden left on the property, Mr Kofoed said, an Illawarra flame tree mentioned in the book. They have removed Mrs White's original coal range from the house, but still have the claw foot bath and leadlight windows.
When the well was found it had water in it, and a decaying timber cover. The water was pumped out, enough bricks were removed to put the water main through and it has now been backfilled with sand and covered over.
The Kofoeds have kept photographs of it, and of the pits Mrs White dug for trees, found on their neighbour's property.
"She must have been a very hardworking woman," Mrs Kofoed said.
Mrs White would have been a memorable person in her day. She was "blessed with a craze for gardening" and could "work like a man and play like a boy".
Her garden was large and formal, with rare, exotic and native plants. It had an orchard, a house cow and croquet court. She was a woman of independent means and her Grove House had 14 rooms.
She was active in a lot of organisations, including being a leading member of Whanganui's horticultural society. She won a lot of prizes and once gave 50 pounds of strawberries to Whanganui's hospital.
She was also a friend of Premier John Ballance's wife, and the mother of a Wanganui Collegiate School headmaster, a chaplain and a geologist.
Mrs White had her own "personal city beautification crusade". It was she who planted scarlet flowering gums and pohutukawas on Whanganui streets - some of the town's earliest street trees.
