Taihape luminaries celebrated on main street

Visitors can get acquainted with surgeon Dame Cecily Pickerill while shopping on Taihape's main street.

Taihape’s main thoroughfare is home to a number of interesting retailers and now visitors can discover stories of the town’s past residents while they shop.

Businesses on Hautapu St are supporting the Taihape People project by displaying a number of biographical plaques in their windows and one is dedicated to Dame Cecily Mary Wise Pickerill.

Born Cecily Clarkson in Taihape in 1903, Pickerill became New Zealand’s first female plastic surgeon and with her husband Henry Pickerill, she pioneered plastic surgery for children and established Bassam Hospital in Lower Hutt.

The surgeries were primarily for cleft lips and palates.

“Taihape has been the birthplace of a significant number of notable people,” said Heritage Taihape member Peter Kipling-Arthur.

“A lot of care has gone into the research and selection of names. The key factors are that the subject must have achieved at a very high level over time and that their information should be publicly available or provided with family approval.”

Taihape librarian Lynda McKnight-Wilson remembers Dame Cecily as the surgeon who operated on her when she was a small child.

“I remember the kind, elderly woman who performed my surgery but I didn’t know she was so significant or that she was from Taihape,” she said.

For the past month, McKnight-Wilson’s attention has been focused on another Taihape-born luminary.

Douglas MacDiarmid (1922-2020) was the local doctor’s son who would grow up to become one of New Zealand’s most colourful and successful expatriate artists.

McKnight-Wilson has curated a MacDiarmid memorabilia display at the library and i-Site on Hautapu St in consultation with biographer Anna Cahill for the Centenary Art Trail.

Cahill who is also MacDiarmid’s niece produced Colours of A Life: The Life and Times of Douglas MacDiarmid published in 2018 and has been on a national tour that included Taihape and Whanganui.

Lynda McKnight-Wilson with the Douglas MacDiarmid centenary display.

An exhibition of MacDiarmid’s works in the Sarjeant Gallery Collection is open at Sarjeant on the Quay until Sunday, December 11.

MacDiarmid was the son of Doctor Douglas and Mary McDiarmid and his boyhood home was also his father’s surgery in Huia St.

The beautiful white weatherboard house still stands and is now a bed and breakfast named Magpie Manor. Guests can stay in Douglas’ former bedroom where he made some of his earliest paintings.

One of the works featured in McKnight-Wilson’s display is a painting of the view from the window.

Kipling-Arthur said it is believed that Doctor MacDiarmid lived at the Gretna Hotel and held his consultations in rooms there while the house was being built.

“Regular patients and people from out of town knew that the doctor could be found at the Gretna.

“Doctor Allan White who came after MacDiarmid was a pilot who served in World War II and in Vietnam. He would fly patients to a hospital if they needed that level of care.”

White died in 2019 aged 99 and although he was not Taihape-born, he could be a worthy candidate for a plaque in the future said, Kipling-Arthur.

“Magpie Manor has a very interesting history.”

Douglas MacDiarmid's boyhood home now provides bed and breakfast accommodation as Magpie Manor.

Other Taihape luminaries featured on the current set of plaques include Martin Roestenburg - master painter, sculptor, and leadlight artist.

He most famously sculpted the Our Lady of Lourdes statue at Paraparaumu.

There’s also Dominion Breweries founder Morton Coutts who was also a well-known broadcaster and pilot Porokoru Patapu (Johnny) Pohe, the first Māori RNZAF pilot who performed heroic feats in Europe and was murdered by Nazis during WWII.

Pohe was born in Whanganui but grew up at Turangarere north of Taihape. Biographer and art historian Eric Hall McCormick and principal Treasury adviser Ivan Kwok round off the list.

“The Kwok family owned the fruiterers and greengrocers in Hautapu St for many years,” said Kipling-Arthur.

“Ivan was respected by Māori, Crown ministers, and Treasury alumni for his treaty settlement work. He was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for his incredible service.”

McCormick, born in 1906, was the son of a Taihape bootmaker and attained his Master of Literature degree at Cambridge University in the 1930s.

He notably wrote a biography of New Zealand painter Frances Hodgkins and completed a number of major works from the 1950s to the 1990s.

“He retained a strong affection for Taihape and provided advice from afar when the Taihape Museum was founded,” said Kipling-Arthur.

Visitors can discover Taihape's trailblazing history in Hautapu St shop windows.

McCormick was not alone in maintaining a fondness for his birthplace - MacDiarmid is said to have recalled the colours of his Rangitīkei childhood after years of living in Paris. Pickerill donated a stained glass window in her parents’ memory to St Margarets Church in 1988.

Kipling-Arthur said the plaques were vehicles to honour the subjects and they are also intended to inspire younger generations.

“All of these people had humble beginnings in a small town but they excelled in the world,” he said.

The Taihape People project was funded by a COGs grant from Rangitīkei District Council and managed by the Taihape Community Development Trust.

Taihape residents who worked on the plaques had been meticulous in their research said Kipling-Arthur and the aim would be to broaden the ethnic and gender diversity for future plaques.

“The whakataukī [proverb] we have quoted seems really appropriate when you think about the subjects and the impacts they made.”

Kotahi te kākano, he nui ngā hua o te rākau. A tree comes from one seed but bears many fruit.