On the mysteries of doors

I know, I know: doors, on the face of it, are not the least bit mysterious. They’re quite solid and stable and kind of unassuming. I mean, they might feature in the odd drama – door slammed! – or serve as a tightly guarded boundary by a child – keep out! – but these are (hopefully) occasional roles. And for the most part, I’m guessing you don’t think too much about them – unless they start squeaking, of course… Before we get to the mysterious aspects of doors, let’s start by considering their function of a door. Which probably seems barely worthy of consideration, but bear with me.

A particularly fabulous late Victorian internal door. Image: F. Bradley.

At their most basic, doors provide access to a room. In so doing, they can also serve to keep heat in, or dust and dirt out. They can also keep noise and smells in (or out). Doors, then, are also a means of control – they help control the climate and environment of a room. They also control access: a closed door effectively means knock before entering, while an open door invites entry freely. Thus, they become part of a boundary, between spaces, or between people. In this way, doors can be used to control social interactions, essentially establishing boundaries between those in the room and those outside. In Victorian homes where servants were employed, such a mechanism could have been used to separate servants from family members and their activities.

If these were the function of a door, what of its appearance? Well, by far the most common internal door form in 19th century Christchurch was a four-panel door with a low lockrail (internal doors are my focus here today). In these doors, which you’re probably familiar with, the panels are set into bed mouldings. The position of the lockrail is important – this is where the handle and, perhaps more obviously, the lock were set, and a low lockrail was at about hand-height for most adults. But here’s the thing. The position of the lockrail changes in the early 20th century and becomes high – still perfectly reachable for an adult, but not so for a child. This has long intrigued me, because it’s the Victorian era that we think of as being that of children being seen and not heard. But a child could easily have opened a door in a Victorian era house. Not so much an Edwardian era one.

A typical Victorian era internal door, with four panels and a low lock rail. Image: K. Webb.

A typical Edwardian era internal door, also with four panels, but with a high lock rail. Image: K Webb.

Why, then, this change? I wish I knew. The simplest answer is fashion, but there is always a reason why fashions change – this is the whole point of material culture studies: nothing happens just because. There is a bigger shift that’s going on in New Zealand at around this time, with society becoming less formal. This sees a number of changes in houses, and the way space in them is used, but increasing the height of the door handle doesn’t fit with this (Leach 2000: 84-85). It may simply have been that doors needed to change, to look different, to mark those broader changes that were taking place.

But here’s another thing about those 19th century internal doors: they all had locks, presumably for extra security. As someone who’s not particularly good at locking even external house doors, this one bemuses me – and the crime rate in 19th century Christchurch was not that high. But the crime rate in the cities and countries Christchurch’s colonial settlers had left behind may have been, and so people may simply have been used to locks on internal doors as a standard thing. Edwardian internal doors also all had locks – in fact, I’m fairly certain locks on internal doors were a thing until at least World War II, but I don’t know exactly when they ceased to be the norm (nor when they first became common). The fact, though, that doors continued to be made with locks suggests that this was functionality that people wanted. I am curious, though, about when these locks stopped being the norm, and why that might have happened.

Which brings me to my final door conundrum: the position of them and the way they opened. It was by no means always the case, but doors were typically positioned in the middle of a wall. I appreciate that this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but if you live in a modern house, well, for starters, there are probably far fewer doors per room than there were in a Victorian house. But, more pertinent to the current discussion, in a modern house the door is typically at one end of a wall, and it opens back against the adjoining wall (in some cases, this was the only option, thanks to the layout of the house). Which makes sense, right? This way, the door doesn’t obscure the room and nor does it take up unnecessary space. But in 19th century houses, even when the door was at one end of the wall, it typically opened into the room, rather than swinging back against the adjoining wall. And in rooms where the door was positioned more centrally, it often opened in such a way that it obscured the bulk of the room as you entered (if you had to open the door when you entered). Why might this have been the case?

A standard villa, Bassett Street, Christchurch, c.1898. Notice how the doors into Rooms 2 & 8 are positioned centrally in the walls, and the way they open essentially obscures the room as you enter. Meanwhile, the doors into the other rooms are positioned at one end of the wall (which is unusual), but the doors do not swing back against the adjoining wall, but instead swung into the room. Image: P. Mitchell and K. Watson.

It’s hard to know. Was it a concern for doors swinging back against the adjoining wall and damaging the latter that led to the angle of opening? Did a door opening into a room, and obscuring part of the room as it was opened, provide more of a sense of drama, more of a slow reveal of the contents of that room (remembering that Victorians had A LOT of things on display)? Or did it help to preserve the privacy of those in the room, particularly in a house where there were servants (and there were concerns about separating families and their servants; Leach 2000: 80, Macdonald 2000: 42)? Was that the door, with its moulded door surround, was more of a feature within a room if it were centrally positioned, and thus became part of the room’s display, as it were?

See? Doors are maybe not quite so immediately knowable as you thought. The mysteries they pose are not huge ones, but resolving them would help us to better understand human behaviours in the past, including people’s attitudes towards their house and the use of space in it, towards security and towards their relationships with other people, particularly other people with whom they shared their house. Human behaviours shift in response to and in line with broader changes in society, to changes in economic systems, morals and belief systems, amongst other things. These behaviours are not just reflected in our material culture – such as houses – but are negotiated through it.

 Katharine Watson

References

Leach, H., 2000. The European house and garden in New Zealand: a case for parallel development. In: B. Brookes, ed. At Home in New Zealand: Houses, History, People. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, pp.73-88.

Macdonald, C., 2000. Strangers at the hearth: the eclipse of domestic service in New Zealand homes c.1830s-1040s. In: B. Brookes, ed. At Home in New Zealand: Houses, History, People. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, pp.41-56.

On windows

These days, in Aotearoa, we expect a house to have windows. While this has by no means always been the case across cultures or throughout time, it was the expectation of the European colonial settlers who arrived in Christchurch in the 19th century. Conveniently for a buildings archaeologist (or anyone else wanting to work out when a house was built), not only were windows ubiquitous, they’re also quite useful for helping you work when a house might have been built. Caveat, though: all the dating information that follows is specific to Christchurch. These dates might be the same or similar for other parts of Aotearoa, but I don’t know that for sure. For other places, they might at least provide a useful starting point, or a rough indication. Which leads me to another caveat: I’d never recommend relying on just windows to date a house – I think of dating a house as a bit like a process of triangulation, as it relies on a range of sources.

Images of houses in Lyttelton and Christchurch from the 1850s and 1860s show that houses had either casement or sash windows, and at times, it’s quite hard to tell which. It’s also hard to know which type was more common in these decades – in the sample of 101 houses I analysed for my PhD, three of the four houses built during this period had casement windows. But, when you start looking at newspapers from the period, advertisements that mention sash windows were nearly ten times more common than those that mentioned casement or French windows (as they were also known).

A casement window. Casement windows (also known as French windows) hinged on the side.

A four-light sash window, formed from two sashes, one above the other, that slide up to open. Note the small horns or lugs at the base of the upper sash (& read on to find out more about them!).

By the 1870s, though, sash windows were the most common type of window used in Christchurch houses. In fact, they were pretty much the only type used in new builds, if the results of my analysis can be relied on (and I like to think they can). They would remain as such until the early years of the 20th century. Which brings me to my first dating tip.

Dating tip #1: if your house has (original) casement windows, it was built in the 1850s/1860s, or in the early 20th century – they come into vogue again c.1910.

Sash windows were available right from the outset of the colonial settlement of Lyttelton and Christchurch. More than that, sash windows were being made here from the 1850s. It’s perhaps more accurate to say that they were being assembled here from that time. As well as people advertising that they were making sash windows, there were advertisements in the paper for window glass (and glass putty), and people may have been making the frames here from scratch, or may have imported the frames/frame components and then added the glass. Why this would be, I’m not sure, but it may have reflected the potential for windows to break when shipped here.

R. C. Bealby, covering all the bases by selling glass, putty and sash windows in 1850s Lyttelton. Image: Lyttelton Times 22/2/1851: 1.

In the period between 1850 and 1900, sash windows changed in a couple of key ways. Firstly, there was the number of panes. The earliest sash windows had numerous small panes (or ‘lights’). I’m not sure at what point the four-light sash window (the sash window shown above is a four-light window, having two lights in each sash) becomes most common, as there weren’t enough pre-1880 houses in my sample to draw any firm conclusions about this. But I can tell you that standard-sized two-light sash windows begin to appear in the late 1870s (there’s a smaller type around earlier on), and were the predominant type by the early 1880s.

A two-light sash window, with just a single pane of glass in each sash. Unlike the four-light sash shown above, there are no horns on the upper sash in this example.

Dating tip #2: If your house has four-light sash windows, it was probably built before c.1885. If it has two-light sash windows, it could have been built any time from c.1875 and was almost certainly built after c.1885.

The other change in sash windows occurred at around the same time (although not always on the same windows). This was the appearance of horns (or lugs) on the upper sash. Most sources suggest that these horns fulfilled a structural purpose: as the glass panes in sash windows increased in size (which happened as the number of panes decreased), horns were added to the upper sash to improve the strength of the corner joint and better support the weight of the glass (Sash Window Restorations, 2023). Like two-light sash windows, sashes with horns first appeared in Christchurch in the late 1870s, but were not common until the early 1880s. Windows without horns did persist, however.

Dating tip #3: well, it’s much the same as #2 – if your house has sash windows without horns, it was probably built before c.1885. If it has windows with horns, it could have been built any time from c.1875 and was almost certainly built after c.1885.

Of course the adoption of technology never quite works in a nice, orderly chronological fashion (and, let’s face it, if it did, it would be so much less interesting – although easier): you will find sash windows with two-lights and no horns, and others with four-lights and horns (as in the examples shown here). You’ll also find houses from the 1890s with four-light windows, and houses from the 1860s with two-light sash windows (but these tended to be a narrower form, not the dimensions that were common by the late 19th century). Old forms persisted, building elements were reused, fashion worked in peculiar ways and there were always early adopters.

This house was built by Harriet and John Snell in c.1899, but had two-light sash windows (with horns). John was a dealer and in 1897 he was advertising the sale of building materials from the recently demolished Central Hotel, including sash windows (Star (Christchurch) 9/9/1897: 3, 17/11/1897: 3). The Central Hotel was extant by at least 1863 and would not have had two-light sash windows (Lyttelton Times 29/7/1863: 3, 20/4/1865: 6). It is possible that the sash windows in the house at 558 New Brighton Road came from that hotel. Image: K. Webb.

But wait, there’s more! Yes, there’s another way that windows can help us date when a house was built: the shape of the bay window. Think of bay windows as having three main forms: splayed, rectangular and octagonal. Photographs indicate that rectangular bay windows were not unusual in the 1850s and 1860s, particularly on houses built in the Gothic style (which often had the aforementioned narrow sash windows). In the 1860s and 70s, though, the splayed bay was the predominant type, with the rectangular bay appearing again in the early 1880s, and quickly becoming the most common form. In Christchurch, it seems as though it wasn’t until the late 1890s that the octagonal form was used (although I know this form was introduced earlier in the 19th century elsewhere in New Zealand).

Plan view of a splayed bay window.

Plan view of an octagonal bay window.

Plan view of a rectangular bay window.

Dating tip #4: Splayed bay windows? Probably built in 1860s or 1870s. Rectangular? Probably built in the 1880s or 1890s (but perhaps the 1850s or 1860s, although these are of a somewhat different shape than the later ones). Octagonal? Late 19th or early 20th century.

Before I finish, I want to squeeze in a couple more window titbits. No one, I am sure, will be surprised to learn that, the more windows a house had, the wealthier the occupant is likely to have been. There’s a certain irony to this because, also, the more windows, the colder the house no doubt was. Clearly, if you were wealthier, you probably had more fireplaces, but there were only so many you could have, and those 19th century fireplaces only put out a certain amount of heat – and that wasn’t much, regardless of how wealthy you were. Windows also came in varying sizes, at varying prices. But there’s another way that wealth came into play. Most rooms only had one set of windows. Of course, it was only possible for rooms on the corner of a house to have more than one set of windows, but it was only in the homes of the wealthy that this was likely to have been the case. The majority of corner rooms just had the one set.

The cost of sash windows in New Zealand, 1883. Source: Leys 1883: 724, 728, 730.

Windows, then, like halls, are one of the components of a house that can tell you more about a house than you might have first thought. They’re perhaps a little more ‘practical’ than halls in that regard, being able to help us work out when a house was built – although they also have insights to offer in terms of wealth and class. Stay tuned for a future post on doors…

Katharine Watson

References

Leys, T. W. Brett’s Colonists’ Guide and Cyclopedia of Useful Knowledge: Being a Compendium of Information by Practical Colonists. Auckland: H. Brett, 1883.

Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Sash Window Restorations, 2023. “History of the Sash Window: Part 3.” Sash Window Restorations. Accessed 7 September 2023. Available at: https://sashwindowrestorations.co.uk/history-of-the-sash-window-part-3/

Star (Christchurch). Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Underground Overground blog: The Christchurch Public Library

Libraries are wonderful institutions, providing so much more than books to read and consult (although that’s pretty important!) and I, personally, would be lost without our local Christchurch public libraries. This post from Underground Overground explores the history and architecture of the Christchurch Public Library, from its beginnings as the Christchurch Mechanics’ Institute, until its eventual demolition following the earthquakes.

If you’d like to learn a bit more about the library complex, check out the following blog posts about the archaeology and architecture of the librarian’s house, which stood immediately to the north of the old library until it, too, was demolished following the earthquakes.

Fan-tan raid! 32 Chinese arrested! Four Europeans arrested!

This wasn’t quite the headline in June 1899, but it was pretty close. This raid took place at the home of Chin Sing, in Tuam Street, a site we investigated a bit after the earthquakes. We didn’t find any evidence of Chin Sing’s occupation (we didn’t find much of anything) but it’s since provided me with an entry point for learning more about the Chinese presence in 19th century Christchurch, and the Chinese experience of life in the city. This 1899 raid was not the first on Chin Sing’s property (or on the Chinese in general), but what happened next was a little bit different. Before we get onto that, though, let’s look at Chin Sing himself in a little more detail. Or, at least, in as much detail as it’s possible to find out. Fair warning, there’s not a lot.

One of the few advertisements Chin Sing placed in the paper, indicating that he had sufficient custom without having to advertise. Image: Star (Christchurch) 4/3/1885: 2.

I don’t know where in China Chin Sing came from, when he came to New Zealand or how he ended up in Christchurch. Chances are that he had come from southern China to work on the goldfields in either Otago or on the West Coast, as a significant number of Chinese men did in the 1860s (Ip 2015). By 1883, he had taken up residence on Tuam Street, where he established himself as a cabinetmaker (Wises 1883-84: 92). His premises were on the north side of the street, just east of the corner with High Street, and they had previously been occupied by Yee Quong, another Chinese cabinetmaker (Wises 1878-79: 71). Chin Sing’s premises were demolished and replaced in the early 20th century, so I don’t know what they looked like, but I do know that he leased Part Town Sections 976 and 978, and so it’s possible that he lived in one or other of the buildings extant on those sections in 1877.

Chin Sing’s premises were on the rear of Town Sections 976 and 978 (Star (Christchurch) 12/6/1899: 2). Image: Strouts 1877.

Chin Sing operated his business in Tuam Street until c.1902, at which point it’s not clear what happened to him. It’s possible he went back to China – many of the Chinese men who came to New Zealand in the 19th century did so with the intention of making some money and then returning to China with it. For this reason, they were often described as ‘sojourners’ (Moloughney and Stenhouse 1999: 55). When anti-Chinese sentiment (i.e. racism) began to rear its head, this was one of the factors that white New Zealanders cited when stating why Chinese should be kept out of New Zealand (Moloughney and Stenhouse 1999: 48, Fairburn 2003: 77).

I know, also, that Chin Sing had two sons (Star (Christchurch) 21/5/1896: 3, Press 6/1/1898: 3). I found no mention of a wife, and it is possible that he had left his wife in China – most Chinese men who came to New Zealand did not bring wives (perhaps because their intention was always to return), and few married while here (although I did find an example of a Chinese man who married a white New Zealand woman; Fairburn 2003: 77, Lyttelton Times 23/4/1879: 4). The poll tax – established in 1881 and increased significantly in 1896 – made it less likely that men would bring their wives with them, due to the costs involved (Fairburn 2003: 77). Certainly, the sense I gained of the Chinese community in Christchurch through my research was that it was a masculine one, but that could just reflect the general difficulties of finding women in 19th century newspapers.

The first raid on Chin Sing’s premises for a fan-tan game came in 1891, but this was by no means the first raid during a fan-tan game in Christchurch (that seems to have been in 1882, in case you’re curious about dates; Globe 27/2/1882: 3, Press 21/5/1891: 3). Fan-tan was a Chinese gambling game (you read more about how it’s played) and thus was technically illegal under the Gaming and Lotteries Act of 1881. As newspaper correspondents noted after almost every raid on a Chinese fan-tan game, in reality it was little different from playing poker or betting on horse, and where were the prosecutions of people doing that? (Each fan-tan raid did seem to provoke a series of letters to the editor, some in support of the arrested Chinese men, others railing against them.) What’s of interest about this particular raid is that Chin Sing had been dobbed in by one Ah Quong, whom Chin Sing may or may not have refused credit for opium (it was a he said, he said kind of situation – but confirms that the Chinese living in Christchurch were smoking – and dealing in – opium; Press 30/7/1891: 2). In another raid on a fan-tan game, the police were also tipped off by concerned members of the public – well, concerned employers, actually, who were apparently worried that their employees were gambling away their wages (Lyttelton Times 17/3/1890: 6). Whether or not this is actually what they were concerned about remains lost in the mists of time. Anyway. In 1891, the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence and Ah Quong was ordered to pay the solicitor’s fee (Lyttelton Times 17/3/1890: 6). It’s a seemingly odd detail, but one of the details that emerged from this case was that Chin Sing had a boarding house on his section in Tuam Street (Press 17/3/1890: 3).

A letter to the editor noting the hypocrisy of arresting Chinese for gambling, given the gambling that Europeans indulged in. Image: Lyttelton Times 26/9/1888: 3.

In 1899, it wasn’t so much a tip-off that led to the raid, but more that the police knew that the following day was a Chinese feast day, and thus that the men would have gathered for gambling (there was some suggestion that they were gambling to raise money to pay for the feast, rather than for personal profit; Press 15/6/1899: 3). The arrested men – the 32 Chinese and four Europeans referred to at the start – were then taken to the lock-up and the Chinese men were refused bail, something that had not happened following previous raids (these raids seemed to happen at reasonably regular intervals). In this case, the excuse given was that bail couldn’t be allowed because how on earth would the (white) policemen recognise the arrested men once they had been released (Star (Christchurch) 12/6/1899: 2)? This meant that the men were kept in the police cells in fairly grim circumstances – it was the middle of winter, and they were given about one blanket between every four or five men. They were also barely fed enough for one person for the time period, let alone enough for 36 men (Lyttelton Times 17/6/1899: 8). Bail was in the end arranged, but not until the end of the following day. In the end, most of the men arrested were convicted and fined (Press 15/6/1899: 3).

What was different about what followed was the involvement of the Reverend J. J. Doke, the minister at the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church. Doke knew a number of the Chinese men involved, some of whom were learning about Christianity – in fact, there was a room in Chin Sing’s house that contained bibles and hymn books, in which Doke taught any who were interested (Press 15/6/1899: 3). While Doke was certainly concerned with converting these men, he was also instrumental in bringing the conditions in the cells at the police lock-up to light, and in providing further insight into the lives of the Chinese in late 19th century Christchurch. Following the raid, he preached a sermon on this very matter, which was reproduced in the Lyttelton Times. In particular, he noted that the Chinese found it hard to find accommodation anywhere in the city, because people were unwilling to rent rooms or buildings to them (thanks to racism, pure and simple, although the stated reasons were that Chinese people were dirty and immoral and carried diseases). I suspect that this is why Chin Sing and another of the local Chinese, James (Lee) Goon, ran boarding houses. Doke went on to state that there were few places for the Chinese to congregate and socialise, and thus Chin Sing’s house filled a valuable role in this regard (and that it was inevitable that they would play fan-tan). It was Doke who accused the police of deliberately targeting this particular night, and suggested that some of those arrested and charged may well have been innocent. He also accused the police of previously watching games of fan-tan at Chin Sing’s house, but doing nothing about them, beyond warning him not to let Europeans play (Lyttelton Times 19/6/1899: 6).

The Rev. J. J. Doke. Image: www.findingmatters.org.

Doke’s sermon provides an insight into the reality of Chinese lives in 19th century Christchurch and the ways in which racist attitudes played out. As Miles Fairburn has noted, little is known about this sort of everyday racism, because it so often went unreported and unrecorded (acknowledging that Manying Ip’s work has gone some way to address this; Fairburn 2003: 66). It is clear that the Chinese community here in the city kept to themselves, a situation in part forced on them by the effects of racism (i.e. white New Zealanders refusing to rent them property), and in part a response to the more physical effects of that racism. Few seem to have spoken English to any great extent, which may have added to the relative isolation of the community. A number ran businesses, although it is not clear to what extent these were patronised by Europeans, but the advertisements placed in newspapers suggest that Europeans were part of their target market. Others worked as gardeners or hawkers. There were clear examples of racists attacks targeting the community, including both vandalism and personal violence (while racism is never mentioned in the cases of the former, I’ve researched numerous Christchurch business owners and none have had this problem; Lyttelton Times 17/3/1884: 3, Star (Christchurch) 15/11/1887: 2). There were also a surprising number of examples of Chinese people taking other Chinese people to court, including for theft and the failure to pay wages (for example, Press 20/12/1883: 3, Lyttelton Times 17/3/1884: 3).

Although much everyday racism may have gone unreported, this article is clear evidence of it. Image: Star (Christchurch) 24/9/1888: 2.

The underlying causes of the racism against the Chinese community are hard to pin down (Fairburn 2003). Brian Moloughney and John Stenhouse (1999) have argued that it born of the growth in colonial nationalism witnessed in New Zealand in the late 19th century, and particularly a desire to keep New Zealand white and preserve the ‘integrity’ of this South Pacific paradise. Several things about Moloughney and Stenhouse’s article are striking, one being the parallels between the nationalist views expressed in 1890s New Zealand and those that have been heard in Trumpian America. The other is how these views were promoted by otherwise liberal thinkers, including both William Pember Reeves and Robert Stout (Gattey 2018, Stenhouse 2018). The anti-Chinese views of these men, and others like them, were widely published in newspapers in the late 19th century, and racism against Chinese people seems to have been tacitly accepted (although not always without protest). This would not have been an easy world for Chin Sing and his compatriots to occupy, and the on-going fan-tan raids (and the publicity around them) are just one example of the difficulties they would have faced, one that was both a result of the attitudes of the time and contributed to the continuation of those views in 19th century society.

Katharine Watson

References

Fairburn, Miles, 2003. “What best explains the discrimination against the Chinese in New Zealand, 1860s-1950s?” Journal of New Zealand Studies 2/3: 65-85.

Gattey, Emma M., 2018. “Sir Robert Stout as Freethinker and Eugenics Enthusiast.” In Paul, Diane B., Stenhouse, John and Spencer, Hamish G. (eds.), Eugenics at the Edges of Empire: New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa. Springer International Publishing. Pp. 195-218.

Globe. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.

Ip, Manying, 2015, “Chinese – the first immigrants”, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/chinese/page-2 (accessed 10 August 2023).

Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.

Moloughney, Brian and Stenhouse, John, 1999. “‘Drug-besotten, sin-begotten fiends of filth’: New Zealanders and the Oriental other, 1850-1920.” New Zealand Journal of History 33(1): 43-64.

Press. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.

Star (Christchurch). Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.

Stenhouse, John, 2018. “Undesirable Bill’s undesirable bill: William Pember Reeves and Eugenics in Late-Victorian New Zealand.” In Paul, Diane B., Stenhouse, John and Spencer, Hamish G. (eds.), Eugenics at the Edges of Empire: New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa. Springer International Publishing. Pp. 129-152.

Wises New Zealand Post Office Directories. Available via ancestry.com.

Underground Overground blog: shoes!

Got a thing for shoes? Well, head on over to the blog run by our excellent friends at Underground Overground to learn a bit more about shoes - and the shoe industry - in 19th century Christchurch.

Underground Overground blog: all about the tramway hearse...

Over on the Underground Overground blog this week, the surprising tale of Christchurch’s tramway hearse. Click here to read all about it!

Shelter from the storm

Shelter. It’s one of the most basic of human needs, but there wasn’t a lot of it around for those colonial settlers arriving in Whakaraupō/Lyttelton Harbour in the late 1840s and early 1850s. In fact, when organised settlement commenced in December 1850, there was largely nothing: you couldn’t rent or buy a house and, quite frankly, you’d struggle to find someone to build you one. But it didn’t take long for this situation to change: there were houses for sale or rent by late January 1851 (Lyttelton Times 25/1/1851: 1), which is pretty impressive. While this early development of the housing market is pretty interesting and is an idea worth examining, today I’m going to explore what these 1850s houses looked like.

The first advertisement found for a house for sale or rent in Christchurch or Lyttelton, which dates from January 1851. Bear in mind that the first Canterbury Association colonial settlers arrived in December 1850. Image: Lyttelton Times, 25 January 1851: 1.

For those who arrived in this very earliest wave of colonial settlement, the first housing options were fairly basic. For two weeks, you could stay in the immigration barracks, which had been built by the Canterbury Association in anticipation of the housing shortage (Innes 1879: 11). After that, you were on your own. Some settlers lived in tents made from blankets, others in iron stores and some in turf cabins (Lyttelton Times 11/1/1851: 4). Dr Barker, of course, had his famous studding-sail tent. And then there was what seems to have been a particularly Canterbury ‘thing’: the V-hut. Which was basically a house with a roof but no walls. Or you could think of it as an antecedent of the A-frame house. Some settlers enlisted the labour of Māori, and had raupō whare built for them (and they were described as whare by the settlers of the day; Innes 1879: 22). And some had ‘portable houses’ – that is, prefabricated dwellings, although these do not seem to have been common (Hancock 1996).

V-huts in Christchurch. Image: Dr Alfred Charles Barker, Canterbury Museum, Accession no. 1958.81.372.

But soon more substantial dwellings were being built, with the first reference to a weatherboard house dating to February 1851 (Lyttelton Times 15/2/1851: 1). Only a handful of houses – or even buildings – from this era survive in and around Ōtautahi Christchurch, including the Deans cottage, Englefield Lodge, the former Middleton homestead, Chokebore Lodge, Tiptree cottage, and Stoddart cottage. Englefield, Middleton, Chokebore and Tiptree were cob buildings, while the Deans and Stoddart cottages were clad in weatherboards. The latter is likely to have been the more common building material, given that it was quicker to build in and more readily available. It is certainly what is most visible in photographs of the day, such as Dr A. C. Barker’s photographs of Christchurch from the early 1860s (see below).

Looking west down Armagh Street, c.1859-60, with Riccarton Bush in the distance, showing the predominant type of house at the time. Image: Dr Alfred Charles Barker, Canterbury Museum, Accession no. 1944.78.122.

The houses in Barker’s photographs were small cottages, sometimes one storey, sometimes two, clad in weatherboard, with a shingled gable roof and at least one fireplace (with an external chimney). And when I say small, I mean small. Helpfully, in 1851, house size (in feet) was a key metric in real estate advertisements, and so I can tell you that the largest advertised for sale or rent was 66 m2 (Lyttelton Times 5/4/1851: 4). Most were in the 20-30 m2 range, but one was just 11.1 m2 (Lyttelton Times 17/5/1851: 8). These houses typically had between one and four rooms, although one was advertised as having nine, and, if Charlotte Godley’s reminiscences are anything to go by, would not have offered full protection from the elements (Godley 1951: 170, 191; Lyttelton Times 13/9/1851: 1). By the end of the decade, real estate advertisements only used the number of rooms to quantify the size of houses, making it difficult to analyse how this changed over the period. But it’s clear that these later houses had more rooms, with most of those advertised having between four and nine rooms. Most would have looked like those in Barker’s photographs, but some were able to add a bay and street-facing gable to their house (creating the bay cottage form), or dormer windows (Watson 2022: 47).

Māori who were living or staying in or around Christchurch in the 1850s are recorded as having whare, but there is no written description of what these looked like (Taylor 1952: 48, 58). It’s possible that these were akin to wharepuni, a house or sleeping house, built of raupō, ponga (although possibly not here in Canterbury) and kiri (bark), with a thatched gable roof. Wharepuni typically had a low door and may or may not have had a porch or window. Prior to European arrival, wharepuni often had earthed-up walls, but this became less common in the 19th century (Schrader 2013). The raupō whare Europeans employed Māori to build may have been quite similar in appearance to this.

But here’s the thing. Most people might have been building houses like those shown in the picture above, but the elite were not. It’s perhaps naïve of me, but I remain surprised at how quickly the wealthy sought to distinguish themselves from everyone else through their housing. So, by 1857, Joseph and Sophia Brittan had built a brick Regency ‘pile’ (see below). To be fair, it wasn’t their first house in Christchurch, but still (Watson 2022: 118-119). The use of brick would have been enough to distinguish the house from others of the period, but it was also large, visually impressive and built in a recognisable architectural style. It was a very long way removed from the wooden cottages in which most of the colonial settlers were living, and was very much an expression of status, wealth and power – or the aspiration to these things (Watson 2022: 127-128). And then there were the Wilsons, who I’ve talked about previously over here. Actually, I only talked about John Cracroft Wilson, which was entirely remiss of me.* The point about the Wilsons is not so much that their house looked impressive, it was the size of it. (see also below) Built in c.1855, it had at least 10 rooms (Watson 2022: 103, 108). I don’t have a square metreage for it, but it was a long way from 11 or even 66 m2. These houses both survived until the Ōtautahi Christchurch earthquakes and, like most of the other houses of this period that remain standing, were atypical of 1850s dwellings.

Linwood House, 2003. Built c.1857 by Joseph and Sophia Brittan. Image: Jackie Snowdon - given to me by the photographer, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16775188

Jane and John Cracroft Wilson’s 13 room house, built in c.1853-54. Image: supplied.

There are two things that stand out for me in this very brief survey of Christchurch’s domestic architecture in the 1850s. The first is how quickly the real estate market in the city developed and the second is the aforementioned speed with which – and extent to which – the wealthy were able to distinguish themselves. These observations are both indicative of the fact that while, on the one hand, houses are very much about shelter from the elements, they are also about far more than that. To state the obvious, they are an object that can be bought, sold or rented for profit and personal gain. But they  can also be used for personal advancement in another way, as a means of achieving a certain status in society or a way of displaying the status you either have or aspire to. All of this is, of course, much easier if you are wealthy.

Katharine Watson 

*Fortunately I have a chance to redress that balance and you can all join in. On 26 July, I am giving an online seminar about women and houses in Victorian Christchurch, and Jane Cracroft Wilson is one of those who I will talking about. Come along, it’ll be fun! Details here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/asha-seminar-series-women-and-their-houses-in-victorian-new-zealand-tickets-671344237687

References

Godley, Charlotte, 1951. Letters from Early New Zealand. Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd, Christchurch.

Hancock, Lynne, 1996. Settler housing in New Zealand. Journal of Architecture 1(4): 313-334.

Innes, C. L., 1879. Canterbury Sketches; or, Life from the Early Days. Lyttelton Times, Christchurch.

Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Schrader, Ben, 2013. “Māori housing – te noho whare - Wharepuni to European house.” Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand [online]. Available at: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/maori-housing-te-noho-whare/page-1 [accessed 13 July 2023].

Taylor, W. A., 1952. Lore and History of the South Island Maori. Bascands, Christchurch.

Watson, Katharine, 2022. 101 Demolitions: how a disaster shed light on life in nineteenth century Christchurch. PhD thesis, University of Canterbury.

Underground Overground Archaeology blog post

Our friends at Underground Overground Archaeology have been alternating blog posts with us each week and we’ll be highlighting their posts here along with our own as we go forward.

This week’s post, on controversial figure Theo Schoon and the interdisciplinary connections between archaeology and art, is available here: https://blog.underoverarch.co.nz/2023/07/theo-schoon-the-matter-of-interpretation/

A colourful compendium

One of the features of nineteenth century ceramics in New Zealand is how colourful many of them can be. Transferware - that is, ceramic vessels decorated with underglaze transfer prints, designs quite literally transferred onto the unglazed pottery with a sheet of paper - are easily the most common household ceramic type found on nineteenth century sites in Christchurch. While much of the transferware produced in the first half of the nineteenth century was the traditional blue and white, referencing blue and white Chinese porcelain, by the second half of the nineteenth century an array of colours were available in transfer printed vessels. The colourful nature of the ceramics found in New Zealand and its fellow commonwealth colonies of Australia, South Africa and Canada has actually been considered a characteristic of British colonial material culture in the mid-late nineteenth century - particularly because it contrasts with the popularity of undecorated or moulded (but not printed or painted) white ceramics among Anglo-Americans in the latter half of the nineteenth century (Lawrence 2003: 26-27).

This is the kind of material culture analysis and patterning that I find fascinating, because it makes us ask why. In the study cited, the American trends are discussed in terms of things like class preferences and the effects of particular trade choices, while there is an obvious shared British-ness between the colonial Australian, Canadian and South African examples. It makes me think about the patterns in our household ceramics today as much as it makes me want to ask more questions of the Christchurch dataset in terms of pottery preference and socio-cultural contexts. Would you describe your household ceramics today as colourful? How many people still have a ‘good’ dinner set that’s entirely white and undecorated? Why is that the good one and - maybe - the colourful set the everyday one? Is it about the aesthetic of food + dish at the table, or is it about a sense of what constitutes ‘refined’ in table wares? What are we buying into when we purchase these items? Something to think about, that’s for sure.

Here, then, are a selection of transfer wares from the Christchurch collection. Although they’re isolated items in these photographs, it’s worth imagining them within their household setting - carrying food, at a table with decorated table cloths, particular wallpaper, a certain type of furnishing. As a result of my own aesthetic choices in presenting this blog, these examples do veer more towards complete artefacts from the 1850s-1870s period.

This gorgeous pattern is called British Birds and is an example of the classic blue and white transferware most commonly found in the nineteenth century. The shade of blue varied across different transfer prints - sometimes it’s dark enough to be called navy, while other prints are more of a soft sky blue in colour. This saucer was made by Samuel Alcock and Co. and dates to c. 1855-1959. Image: J. Garland.

Green was a popular choice for transfer prints, often found in association with floral/foliage prints and geometric style motifs, including Greek key borders. The maker of this saucer is unknown, as is the pattern name, but it likely dates to the 1850-1870s period. Image: J. Garland.

Brown might seem like an odd aesthetic choice for household table wares, but while not as common as the blues and green, it turns up more than you might think. This pattern is the Dresden pattern (one of several with this name) and the platter was made by Ralph Malkin between 1863 and 1881. Image: J. Garland.

This is a colour referred to as ‘mulberry’ by archaeologists and collectors, a sort of reddish purple or purple-ish maroon. Mulberry was a popular colour in the mid-nineteenth century (c. 1840s and 1850s), although it was produced throughout (Samford 1997). This is the Mycene pattern, but the maker is unknown. It was found in an 1860s-1870s context. Image: J. Garland.

Green again! This matching cup and saucer are decorated with the Napier pattern and were made by William Brownfield between 1850 and 1871. Image: J. Garland.

This one’s a bit fancy, with gold highlights applied over the top of the transfer print to add a bit of decadence to the design. This technique - the application of paint over the top of an underglaze transfer print is sometimes referred to as ‘clobbering’, which I find very funny. The name of this pattern is unidentified, but it was made by William Taylor Copeland c. 1847-1867. This would have been a higher end vessel than some of the others depicted here. Image: C. Watson.

Red is sometimes subsumed into the mulberry category, but this bowl is a bit brighter and more vibrant than the other mulberry example above, so I’m just going to call it red. This pattern is the Ravenna pattern, made by William Emberton c. 1851-1871. Image: J. Garland.

I just think this one’s quite pretty. Another classic blue and white pattern, this time featuring branches and leaf sprays alongside stylised flowers and scrolls. Neither the pattern name nor the maker are known for this cup. Image: C. Watson.

Another clobbered example, albeit one that’s a little more garish and a little less fancy than the previous one shown. It’s the green, I think, contrasting so much with the purple. This is the Andalusia pattern, made by John Thomson at some point before 1865. Image: C. Dickson.

And lastly, an old favourite. This idyllic pattern has the somewhat odd name “Duncan’s Rural Scenes”, referencing a series of transfer prints based on watercolours by Edward Duncan, featuring rural landscapes and scenes. It’s actually a combination of two pattern series - the central motif of the sheep is part of the Duncan Scenes, while the bramble border is part of what’s known as the Rural Scenes border pattern. This plate was made by William Taylor Copeland and dates to c. 1850-1867. Image: J. Garland.

-Jessie

References

Lawrence, S., 2003. Exporting Culture: Archaeology and the Nineteenth-Century British Empire. In Historical Archaeology, Vol. 37(1): 20-33.

Samford, P., 1997. Response to a Market: Dating English Underglaze Transfer-Printed Wares. In Historical Archaeology, Vol. 31(2): 1-30.

American artefacts

As one of our project members is currently undertaking a research trip to the US (and UK), I thought that for this week’s blog, I might pull out some of my favourite American artefacts from the Christchurch collection. While British products and British-made materials (like glass and ceramic) are most common on nineteenth century European sites, we do find some items from the USA. Almost all of these are pharmaceutical products and remedies, a result of the thriving - and global - patent medicine and cosmetic industry in nineteenth century America.

First up, Gouraud’s Oriental Cream. Despite the name and the advertising, this was an American product, created by Dr F. Felix Gouraud, a.k.a Englishman Joseph W. Trust, an immigrant to the US in the 1830s. Trust was a bit of a hustler, who went into the patent medicine business and reinvented himself a few times, eventually landing on “Trust Felix Gouraud” or “the Doctor”. He died in 1877 and his business was continued by his third wife, Martha, and, eventually, her second husband, Ferdinand T. Hopkins. Surprisingly, the most interesting thing about Gouraud’s Oriental Cream was not the somewhat chaotic life-story of its creator, but the fact that the cream contained mercury. Used as a skin cream - and advertised as a ‘safe’ remedy for brightening the complexion - the product contained enough mercury to actually cause poisoning in some users, defying the marketing claims that it was “so harmless we taste it to be sure it is properly made”. Despite this, it continued to be made and sold into the 1930s, long after the harmful effects of mercury were known. Image: J. Garland; New Zelaand Herald 11/04/1927: 7.

Barry’s Tricopherous has long been one of my favourite artefacts, due to the completely outlandish claims made about its effects and the actual contents of the product. Alexander Barry of New York was another purveyor of patent remedies, although his success was more in the realm of haircare. His Tricopherous, first sold in the US in the mid-19th century, was marketed as a hair restorative with the extraordinary power to also “cure eruptions and diseases of the skin” and “heal cuts, burns, bruises and sprains”. The remedy was actually mostly alcohol, making it unlikely it would do even half of what it promised. Despite this, Barry’s Tricopherous - and other Barry’s products (including hair dye) - remained very popular. Barry’s Tricopherous is one of the most common haircare products found on 19th century sites in Christchurch. Image: J. Garland; Otago Daily Times 23/11/1871: 4).

Murray and Lanman’s Florida Water is another fairly common 19th century product, a perfume or “eau de toilette”, which sounds so much better than the English translation “toilet water”. Murray and Lanman were also based in New York and their Florida Water, an American alternative to the European ‘Eau de cologne’, became famous around the globe during the 19th century, to the point that the company was involved in several court cases to protect their trademark. The name came from an early 19th century mythical association of Florida with the fabled “Fountain of Youth”. The fragrance is still sold today and, as a side note, is mentioned in Gone With the Wind, perhaps an indication that it was one of those products whose ubiquity sees them absorbed into the cultural landscape of their time. Image: J. Garland; New Zealand Times 20/12/1884: 4.

Weston’s Wizard Oil is easily a contender for the best patent medicine name of the 19th century, although it is maybe not a name that inspires trust in its efficacy. Marketed as the “Great American Medicine”, Weston’s Wizard Oil was one of those “cure-all” patent medicines that claimed to fix everything with its combination of “healing gums, balsams, vegetable oils and rare medicinal herbs”. My favourite is the promise to “raise the bedridden”. Weston’s Wizard Oil was the brainchild of Frank Weston, a showman (he briefly ran an Opera House) who combined entertainment with marketing his patent medicines. Weston was American by birth, but spent a great deal of time in Australia, touring his Wizard Oil and Magic Pills, as well as his other ventures (see Foxhall 2017 for an interesting discussion of Weston’s career and attitudes in context of race and quarantine in Australia).

Finally, to prove that not all of the American artefacts in the collection are patent medicines, perfumes or cosmetics, here is an example of one of the most famous American brands of the last 200 years - Heinz. This olive jar, which still has a little bit of the label remaining, is a 20th century artefact, dating to the 1920s, but Heinz has its origins in the 1860s with Henry J. Heinz of Pennsylvania (Lockhart et al.). They famously marketed their “57 varieties” of pickles and sauces from the 1890s onwards, including the stuffed olives represented by this jar. Image: J. Garland; Evening Star 10/09/1935: 14.

Jessie Garland