Chris Cochrane talks about his book “Woolsheds of the Wairarapa.”
Two years ago, The Star featured an article looking at research being carried out by local conservation architect, Chris Cochran, for his book “Woolsheds of the Wairarapa”. I recently visited him in the barn at the back of his 1870’s cottage in New York Street to find out what stage he has reached with his project.
I was impressed with the way Chris had created a very warm, comfortable office in one part of the barn. The walls are covered in detailed plans and beautiful drawings of woolsheds throughout the Wairarapa. Neatly ordered and labelled folders fill the shelves above his old wooden desk. This is where he spends a lot of his time now, compiling documents and forming the words for his forthcoming book. He tells me that he has reached a good stage with 150 woolsheds visited and a system set up to collate them and slot in each new one visited. He wants to look at another 50 sheds and then select 60 or 70 that represent a range of styles and building dates.
One very local woolshed that Chris has a strong attachment to is Puruatanga. It stands just across the Huangarua River where it passes the north-eastern outskirts of Martinborough.
It was built in 1886 when John Martin, after establishing Martinborough in 1879, split up the remainder of his huge Huangarua Station property to give the western portion to his son William and the eastern portion, Puruatanga, to his son John. The woolshed is very large and is based on the Huangarua one built 15 years earlier. The designer for both was John King, a little- known architect who nevertheless designed a number of the large blade-shearing woolsheds in the Wairarapa. This imposing two-story building, with distinctive raised ventilators on the roof, has only six stands for shearing. There have been alterations over the years and while it is still part of an efficient farming operation, it has occasionally been the setting for a special wedding or birthday party. Chris considers this as one of the ‘anchor’ sheds of the Wairarapa.
Chris points out that this cottage where we are now talking, pre-dates the forming of Martinborough and would have been one of numerous buildings scattered around the original Huangarua Station. He takes me outside to proudly show me a huge totara fence
post with the remains of seven strands of wire through it. It sits on its own in the centre of the property as a sentinel to the farm that was here before the town existed.
Chris still has puzzles to solve in his research.
For example, there are six major blade-shearing woolsheds built in the Wairarapa over the years by members of the Riddiford family, but despite extensive searching, he has been unable to find plans or drawings for any of them, or even any evidence of who the designers were. Family tradition has it that E J (King) Riddiford, being a highly successful and progressive farmer, originated the design of these sheds himself and would not have called on the services of an architect such as John King. But there must still have been plans for the builders to work to and these have not yet been traced.
The book is on track to be published this time next year but there is still more research to be done and sheds to be found. If anyone has information on interesting woolsheds in the Wairarapa, Chris would love to hear from you by email at chris@thewedge.co.nz or on 021 1606 526.
