In 1916 a new constitution was issued to the Stella Matutina, and the Order’s Chiefs immigrated to New Zealand, settling in the pastoral village of Havelock North, in the Provincial District of Hawke’s Bay on the central East Coast of the North Island.
The village lay on the gentle west facing foothills below the locally iconic Te Mata Peak, with views across the Heretaunga Plains and the town of Hastings some 4km away.
This was their second time in Havelock North, the first, in 1912, was for a short period of a few months, time enough to Initiate a group of Candidates and Aspirants, to see the design and initial construction of a purpose built Temple, and to appoint Temple Chiefs to continue after they returned to England.
The 1916 Census for this period shows the village to have had only 870 souls, albeit this count excludes the number of Maori in the area.
Hastings at the time had a population of around 6,000, and Napier, which would have been a more lengthy trip across the plains (22km), had 10,000 Pakeha, as the predominately white settlers were called by the Maori.
The surrounding area was fertile, and the Pakeha landowners wealthy and religious.
Stepping forward some 100 years, modern day Havelock North’s peri-urban boundary now virtually overlaps that of Hastings. The strip of productive agricultural land is narrowing as subdivisions spread their presence like fungal mycelium out from both centres.
The 2023 Census has Havelock North with a population of 15,200. It has three distinct areas – The old part of Havelock North, with many houses built during the days when the Felkin’s immigrated, through to perhaps the 1930’s, but also peppered with modern housing filling in the once large properties; the upper slopes of the hills reaching up to Te Mata Peak, which once was (and possibly still is) farmed by the Chambers family, patrons of the Order and the Felkins. These days a few score houses are scattered over these slopes, often large architectural and unaffordable mansions, and on rural-residential titles most likely subdivided as the Chambers family land inheritance passed down through the generations; and lastly the flat areas, where modern tightly packed subdivision is housing the majority of the growing population.
The Anglicans and Quakers now share the population with the Roman Catholics and the Presbyterians. There is a decent Anthroposophical presence remaining also, and the Order of the Table Round remains active. But by-and-large gone is the solid arts and cultural centre that emanated out of the Havelock Work of Reginald Gardiner and collaborators, including the Felkins, unless it be high street fashion worn by the wealthy which has concentrated further in Havelock North since those times, and the population still remains very white.
Whare Ra, the building, and its 5 acre garden has been engulfed in more modern housing, and can hardly be seen now from Tanner Street or Tauroa Road. Reginald Gardiner’s house, across Tanner Street from Whare Ra, is still clearly visible, designed as Whare Ra was, albeit more humbly in the Arts and Crafts style by Order member and celebrated architect James Walter Chapman-Taylor. Both would be highly sought after (and very expensive) if they were to come onto the market today, much as Chapman-Taylor’s hand made and often adzed furniture is in antique furniture circles.
On a sunny day (and there are many in the Hawke’s Bay) the sun still rises in the east behind Te Mata Peak and its surrounding hills, and sets across the plains and its bountiful produce. Blossom fills the many orchards with flower and scent in the spring, and their produce burdens the trees in summer and early autumn, as vineyards put on their autumnal display. It is overall, still a beautiful rural scene that Havelock North settles in to.
Some things change, some things don’t.
Note: The photo is of St Lukes Church – the centre of the Havelock North community for at least a century, including during Whare Ra’s hay days. Located above the pulpit in the church is a 16th or 17th Century ivory crucifix donated by Father Fitzgerald (8=3), a Chief in the English Stella Matutina, as a reminder of his mission to the Hawke’s Bay in 1911. It was during this trip that the connection was made between the Havelock Work and the Felkins, culminating in their permanent move to New Zealand.
Kasmillos
P.S. I borrowed the title from the rather excellent paper on the early history of the Order in New Zealand by D.P., and published in Volume I of The Lantern.
