Wheel deals: The Chavannes' garage in early 20th century Whanganui was one of the biggest car importers in the country.
Wheel deals: The Chavannes' garage in early 20th century Whanganui was one of the biggest car importers in the country.
Archaeological insights have revealed much about a family who shaped modern Whanganui, as Whanganui Science Forum member Frank Gibson tells.
AT DUNADD in Scotland, a footprint carved into rock marks the coronation place of Pictish kings, including possibly the original MacBeth. It is eerie to place your foot where he stood.
Before construction began in Whanganui on the Farmers mall in Victoria Ave, the site was investigated by archaeologists and -- as part of her PhD research -- Naomi Woods has been working on artefacts recovered from the site.
The old bicycles and broken crockery may not be as romantic as the Dunadd footprint, but they are no less eerie because of their immediacy. They are recognisable as being just beyond living memory.
In her first talk, Ms Woods described the hard life and sad death of Mary Burne, who lived on the corner of St Hill St and Maria Place, pretty much where the men's clothing racks now stand in Farmers.
After the military left town, the local economy went into decline. The main subject of Ms Woods' second talk -- presented by Heritage New Zealand and the Whanganui Science Forum this month -- was the Chavannes family, who did a lot to bring Whanganui into the 20th century and lay foundations for our present metropolis.
The name Chavannes came to Whanganui with Pierre "Peter" Chavannes from Jamaica. He married Mary Huddle (later changed to Huddell) who had escaped an abusive marriage in Australia and came with her daughter, Margaret, to Whanganui in 1859.
An interesting sideline here is the power the various religious groups had in our town at that time. Mary was a devout member of the Wesleyan church, which had strict rules against divorce and remarriage.
Seemingly to avoid local scandal, Mary and Peter travelled to Dunedin, got married in a Presbyterian church and immediately returned to Whanganui where they opened a successful pub and became pillars of the local community.
The influence of religion in the family continued when their son, Charles, met Emily Davidson, a devout Catholic.
Charles had, in fact, shown little interest in the Wesleyan devotions of his mother and sister and converted to Catholicism and married Emily. Sadly, Emily died after only four years of marriage, although the marriage did bring daughter Hilda into the world.
Four years later, Charles met and married Catholic Mary Rapley, whose family also ran a pub. The fruit of this union was another Charles.
By the late 1880s, almost the whole living Chavannes family was born in Aotearoa and Whanganui was changing from a settler town, whose non-Maori population was mostly born in other parts of the world, to a growing city, many of whose population could claim two generations in New Zealand.
We now move forward to the 1890s when the Chavannes Hotel occupied the corner of Victoria Ave and Maria Place (now ANZ Bank). Mary Burne's cottage was gone and the site now held a larger villa-style house and a well-built stable and well-tended vegetable garden.
Children make excellent archaeologists. On the Chavannes site in a layer dated to the 1890s, a small fragment of a plate used by the 57th regiment was found. This army group left Whanganui almost 50 years earlier but was billeted on Cooks Gardens. No other fragments of the plate were found.
Ms Woods' suggested explanation was that the Chavannes children had been playing on what was then the open space of Cooks Gardens and had found this piece of pottery with its interesting markings. The children brought it home and, after a history lesson from their parents, lost interest and the fragment was thrown in the rubbish to be brought back into daylight over 100 years later.
Discoveries: Archaeologists work at the dig in 2010 on the site where Farmers store now stands.
She went on to describe Charles Chavannes, a man of great energy who excelled at the many things he did. These included starting the Wanganui Cycling Club, while his talents as a clay pigeon shooter and billiards player gave him a reputation as possibly the best in the Southern hemisphere. At one time, there was a 1000-pounds prize offered for anybody who could beat him in a combined clay pigeon shooting and billiards competition.
Shooting and billiards were pursuits of the upper classes in England at the time, and the Chavannes look every inch the nouveau riche.
They were the Whanganui fashionista, used the most modern houseware and threw out or gave away things as they became unfashionable. Finds in dumps on the site included two almost complete dinner sets in patterns that were expensive but only fleetingly in vogue.
A set of wooden rosary beads which should have rotted away long ago testified to the religious devotion of one of the family, their survival thanks to infusion of oils from the hands of the owner from constant use.
The adult Chavannes took no more than a passing interest in the church. However, their daughter, Hilda, attended a Catholic school so is a candidate for the owner of the rosary.
A major interest of the Chavannes in the late 19th century was horses, through racing, trotting and occasionally as jockeys.
What made them slightly unusual at the time was their great interest in horse welfare. Horseshoes from the site show their horses were shod regularly before the shoes wore out. Harsh bits and spurs were found before the Chavannes but these pretty much disappear at the time the Chavannes took over. They hosted exhibitions at the hotel promoting humane equine equipment.
Then cars came to Whanganui and Charles, being at heart a pioneer, demolished the buildings on the corner of St Hill St and Maria Place and built a garage. By 1904, his company was one of the largest importers and sellers of cars in New Zealand.
