Living on Denniston – the early years up to 1910

The first settlement on the Rochfort Plateau developed at what was called “The Camp” as it was where the first men set up their tents. It was on a rocky ledge, yet somehow the people fitted in houses, a sizeable school, a large hall, shops, sheds and engineering rooms, the ropeway and a road. The first houses were two-roomed dwellings with corrugated iron chimneys. They were wired to the cliffs to prevent them from being blown away.

This was probably the setting of Jenny Pattrick’s novel, The Denniston Rose, set in Denniston in the 1880s.

There was no running water and rain water was collected in household tanks. Dealing with sewage was always a problem on the plateau. It was impossible to dig a hole and build a long drop. The sewage was often thrown over the cliff. If it was thrown into the stream then the only clean water found in it was upstream of the settlement.

At first there was no hotel and liquid refreshments were brought up the Incline in small amounts. Then it was found that the Westport Coal Company had no legal grounds for prohibiting it and a hotel was opened called “The Sons of Freedom”. The miners had proved that they were free to open a hotel, but once they had wives and families to support they were bound by rules to work for the Westport Coal Company and had to stay on the Hill, as the Denniston area was called.

When there was plenty of work the miners earned good money from their dangerous job, but if the bar at the Westport Harbour silted up with floods in the Buller River there would be no work. A buzzer sounding in the afternoon meant that there would be no work the following day. Strikes in 1890 and in 1913 caused great suffering in the town, and there was little for the idle men to do. They hadn’t the money to drink in the hotel and they had no gardens to tend as the rocky ground made it impossible to develop gardens.

The town of Denniston Higher on the hill than The Camp the town of Denniston grew steadily and two miles further along a new settlement began at Burnetts Face, sited up a valley and built on each side of a stream. The attraction of living there was that it was closer to work for the miners employed in the Burnetts Face mine.

Information in “The Cyclopaedia of New Zealand” 1906 The 1906 edition of “The Cyclopaedia of New Zealand” printed by Horace J. Weeks Ltd in Christchurch, New Zealand gives the following information about Denniston and Burnetts Face.

Denniston The population was 793 in the 1901 census, and 1,500 in the 1905 census. The Westport Coal Company operated the Incline over a distance of 1.5 miles to forward coal and bring back stores and take occasional passengers. There were four hotels, two stores, two drapers, a bootmaker, a butcher, three fancy goods shops, and a fruiterer. The Post Office provided two mail deliveries a day. The town also had a Working Men’s Club, a public library with a billiards room and a reading room, a Masonic Lodge (Aorangi No 89 New Zealand Constitution) and a brass band. The school of 200 pupils was staffed by a head teacher, two assistant teachers and two pupil teachers, but there was no grass and no playground at the school. The Denniston Volunteer Rifle Corps had its own drill hall.

There were mines at Denniston and at Burnetts Face 1.5 miles away. Coal was conveyed by an endless rope system over a main haulage road of 1.5 miles. There was a Denniston Collieries Accident and Relief Fund Association which was to cover

• medical attendance to men, wives and families of all in the employment of the Westport Coal Company
• payment of 25 shillings a week if an accident disabled men from working
• fifty pounds for total disablement through an accident at work
• forty five pounds to a widow in the event of death through an accident
• the salary of the resident medical officer.

Burnetts Face The” Cyclopaedia” states that the settlement at Burnetts Face was founded in 1886. The 1901 census states that the population was 212. There were two hotels, a bakery, three stores, a butchery, and fancy goods store and a public school. Post Office and telephone bureau services were available at one store.

Dependence on the Incline For many years the community was totally dependent on the Incline. It took down the coal to be sold to earn their wages. It brought up supplies, mail and sometimes people. It was even able to bring up a grand piano and more than one full-sized billiard table.

No burials on Denniston The Incline also took from Denniston the coffins of the deceased. No one was ever buried in Denniston as the hard rocky ground made digging graves impossible. There would be a service in one of the Denniston churches and then while the coffin went down the Incline the men would walk down to Waimangaroa to the cemetery for the burial.

Working hours The mines worked six days a week with three shifts every 24 hours. Every second Saturday there was a half holiday and the men would be paid on the Saturday afternoon. For many people Sunday was a family day for church going or afternoon walks in best clothes.

Leisure activities In their free time the men went to the hotel to share drinks with their workmates, or to play billiards.

Reminiscences in The Hill In The Hill the author Cecilia Adams who lived on the Hill for twenty years gives fascinating glimpses into life “ON Denniston”. She tells us that you could say that something had happened IN or AT Burnetts Face, but the correct phrase was always “ON Denniston”.

She interviewed many people and recorded their memories. The Brakehead she describes as being popular because it was close to the summit of the Incline. There the Westport Coal Company built “The Quarters”, a well-equipped building to accommodate visiting staff and directors of the company. Soil was brought up the hill so that there could be a lawn in front of the building. The Brakehead, like the Camp, was a very cramped settlement as there was so little area available for building.

Daily life for the men and women Work in the mines was dangerous and physically demanding, and the miners often saw few hours of daylight in the week.

Life for the women too was filled with hard work. There was no hot water over the sink and dishes were washed with hot water from a kettle on the stove. At least there was an ample supply of coal.

There was a huge amount of washing to be done in the washhouse which was a tin shed with a copper. Washing would be boiled in the copper. Scrubbing boards and soap, often home made, were used to clean the dirt off other dirty washing. Clothes worn by the miners would often have coal, tar and oil stains. After scrubbing, the clothes would be put through a hand-operated wringer. There would seldom be suitable weather to dry the clothes outside so the clothes were hung on lines attached to a pulley which would lift them to the kichen ceiling where they would dry with the heat of the stove.

Clothes were smoothed by being put through the mangle. Ironing was done with flat irons heated on the stove.

Transport Until a road up the hill was opened in 1902 the only transport to Denniston was by the Incline. Otherwise people walked up the steep hill by the foot track established in 1884. In Denniston in the early years the only vehicles using the poor roads in the town were the horse and dray which delivered goods, the butcher’s cart and the baker’s cart.

Social life For social occasions like weddings or dances or the more formal balls people had to walk, carrying their wedding or dancing shoes. or to ride in the cart or dray. There was frequently wet weather or drenching fog, so they covered their finery with mackintoshes. Umbrellas were of no use in the winds of Denniston.

The main social life for the women was at the dances and the whole family would attend and put the babies and children to sleep with a blanket at the building where the dance was held.

The Lodges ran dances – formal dress affairs with the men in dark suits and white gloves and the women in formal ball dresses. On Denniston the great occasion of the year was the Druids Ball and the fabrics, patterns and even dresses were imported from as far away as Australia.

Life continued to involve hours of work for all the adults and many of the children on Denniston, but they got more access to the outside world in the remaining years.

For further reading The Hill by Cecilia Adams and The Spirit of Denniston Hill by Dai Hayward both make very interesting reading. However, one problem in using these books for historical research is that neither book has an index and few of the events described give the date – an unavoidable problem when much of the source material is people’s memories.

Another article to come in this series “Denniston – the later years”.