Interview: Sarah Ell talks about The Spirit of a Place: A New History of The Elms Te Papa Tauranga

The Elms Te Papa Tauranga, a place steeped in more than 600 years of rich and at times turbulent history, is the subject of a compelling and beautifully illustrated book by acclaimed author and historian Sarah Ell.

Published on August 16, The Spirit of a Place: A New History of The Elms Te Papa Tauranga offers readers an unprecedented portrait of the site and the people who shaped its remarkable story – Māori, missionaries, women and children, builders and gardeners – and the kaitiaki who have protected The Elms’ legacy.

The Spirit of a Place has been developed in full collaboration with mana whenua, including Ngāi Tamarāwaho and Ngāti Tapu, ensuring that Māori voices are authentically represented throughout. A mihi from Puhirake Ihaka ONZM of the Ōtamataha Trust further affirms the cultural importance of the project.

Sarah Ell was born and lives on Auckland’s North Shore. She trained as a newspaper journalist before working in magazines and book publishing and has a Bachelor of Arts in New Zealand history from Massey University, and a Master of Creative Writing from the University of Auckland. Sarah is the author of 13 books for children and adults, including popular histories Ocean: Tales of Voyaging and Encounter that Defined New Zealand (2018) and Lost Wonders: Vanished Creatures of Aotearoa (2020).

You have a strong track record as a children’s author and writer of popular histories. What drew you to write a social history of The Elms Te Papa Tauranga?

One of my favourite things to do as a child (and even today) is visiting historic houses and imagining the lives of the people who once lived there. In the 1970s and 80s in and around Auckland there were a number of newly opened Historic Place Trust properties and other social history museums my parents took me to, including Highwic and Alberton, the ‘pioneer’ villages at MOTAT and Howick, and the mission houses of the Bay of Islands. When the opportunity came up to research and share the story of this incredible property and the people who had lived there it was like a dream come true. It combined my passions for both New Zealand history and storytelling, plus I got to go ‘behind the ropes’ and even touch a few precious things!

The Elms is one of our most significant heritage sites. Why do you think so few people are aware of it when compared to, say, Pompallier House Mission and Printery in Russell?

I think it’s a bit like a prophet in its own country — perhaps unappreciated by the people in whose backyard it sits. Thousands of international visitors visit it every year, off cruise ships, as it is Tauranga’s most significant heritage destination. Hundreds of school children visit and learn about Aotearoa heritage, too. But a lot of people come to Tauranga to go to the Mount and lie on the beach! This is hopefully going to change in coming years once the new museum is built downtown.

You’ve written a ‘new’ history of The Elms. Please explain.

The Elms Trust wanted to update a history written in the 1980s which focused very much on the missionary period (1830s-60s) and on the life of the Reverend Alfred Brown, whose family was the first to live in the house. But there were so many other stories that needed to be told — of the tangata whenua who lived at Te Papa for hundreds of years, of the women, the children, the domestic servants who lived in the house over more than 150 years…all the people who had contributed to its story. We wanted to put them back in the picture and tell a broader story of this place, and how its history ties into and reflects a wider history of Aotearoa.

Do you see the history you’ve written as being something of a corrective?

I think expansion is probably a better word. Previous histories of this place were a product of their time, and we view things differently now. Attitudes have changed and I think people are ready to know more. As well as restoring the pre-European history of this place, I especially wanted to write women back into the story, because for most of the home’s history, they were running the place!

How important was it for you to capture the spirit of those who lived and worked at The Elms – the women, children, staff, Māori, missionary, whose stories are not widely known.

During the missionary period Alfred Brown was often away preaching, and his wife Charlotte ran a huge household, including other missionary women and children, and receiving lots of visitors, with the help of the wāhine of the mission school — in the 1850s, the house was nicknamed ‘The Convent’ because of all the young women living there. Then, from the mid-1870s onwards, for 70 years it was occupied by two generations of Maxwell women, again aided by domestic servants. These people might have left little on the formal historical record but their experiences are critical to the life of this place.

Are you hopeful that a major new history about The Elms will finally put it on our ‘heritage map?’

I hope this new book will throw much-deserved light on The Elms Te Papa Tauranga and all the stories it has to tell, about this place in particular and Aotearoa as a whole. It truly is a unique place to visit, like a magic island marooned in the sea of Tauranga city, and has a certain feeling or spirit about it — almost a sense of sanctuary from the outside world. I would love more New Zealanders and international visitors to experience that. I also hope it will make readers aware of the complex history of Tauranga Moana, of its original Māori inhabitants and the devastating and long-reaching effects of the wars of the 1860s.

The Elms was home to three generations of the Maxwell family. Please tell us more about them and why their legacy is so important.

One of the things which makes The Elms Te Papa Tauranga particularly special is that it was in the private ownership of one family for more than 150 years. When missionary Alfred Brown died in the 1870s, the property passed to his second wife, and she left it to her widowed sister — on the grounds that she and her two unmarried daughters came to live there. After their fashionable life in Wadestown in Wellington it was a bit of a shock for them to come to this relative backwater — Tauranga was a tiny township even by the 1870s — but they made the move and took on the stewardship of this special place, preserving both its physical fabric and contents but also its stories and cultural heritage.

Alice Maxwell in particular, one of the daughters, had learned many of the stories of its early history direct from Alfred Brown, and she made it her life’s work to record those stories and share them with visitors. Maintaining the house was often a hardship for them, but they viewed it as a sacred trust, a duty and a responsibility. This mantle was taken up by Alice’s nephew Duff Maxwell on her death in the 1940s and he also dedicated his life to preserving the property and making it accessible to the public.

How important was The Elms back in the day? What about now?

Te Papa was the major mission station in the Bay of Plenty in the late 1830s and early 1840s, and the house was the only substantial timber building for hundreds of miles around. In the 1830s and 40s Tauranga Moana was home to a thriving Māori community and a handful of Pākehā traders, with this little island of Englishness in the centre of it. Many travelling Europeans visited it, including dignitaries such as Bishop Selwyn (who camped in the peach orchard, before the house was completed). A copy of te Tiriti o Waitangi was sent to her for signatures to be gathered, although there was little interest among Tauranga Māori.

During the missionary period, up the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s, it was a significant site of learning, with local Māori being taught not only reading and writing but also practical skills such as carpentry and horticulture — the mission and local Māori had a large area of land in cultivation. The war changed all that, with local Māori being driven off their traditional lands by conflict and confiscation, and the positive relationships Alfred Brown and his mission had formed were destroyed. The house became a private home, and its occupants turned more inward.

Today the house is more important than ever, as a site New Zealanders and international visitors can visit and experience and reflect on that complex history that lives on into the present day.

How important is this site to local iwi, in the past and today?

The site of The Elms Te Papa Tauranga was once a pā, Ōtamataha, with a fortified area at the tip of the point (where the mission cemetery is today) and houses and gardens on the flat land which was home to hundreds of people. Early Pākehā visitors recorded seeing large, established settlements and large numbers of canoes — Tauranga Moana was a rich gathering place for kai moana of many types. During the Musket Wars of the 1810s-20 Tauranga Māori were attacked several times, and in 1828 the pā at Ōtamataha was raided and sacked by Hauraki tribes armed with muskets, and the CMS missionaries were given permission to establish their station there on what was considered a wahi tapu the following decade. Māori continued to live and work on the land, alongside the missionaries, up until the battles of Pukehinahina Gate Pā and Te Ranga in 1864.

Today the Elms Foundation has a close relationship with the Ōtamataha Trust, which administers property in Tauranga on behalf of Ngāti Tapu and Ngāi Tamarāwaho, who lost their land through confiscation, and Te Papa Tauranga is a place where that shared history can be remembered and talked about. The opening of the heritage garden at Te Papa in 2020 was a big step in telling this history at the site, and this book includes these stories too.

I hear there’s going to be a major launch for the book later in August and that you’ll be taking part in some speaking events. Please tell us more about these.

The book is going to be officially launched with a mihi whakatau at The Elms Te Papa Tauranga in mid-August. When I was writing this book, I took the responsibility of being entrusted with the stories of this place very seriously, so it is wonderful for it to be recognised and ‘welcomed’ in this way. There are so many people who have made a contribution to The Elms over the years, and I see the book as a way to honour them, restore some of its lost history to the light, and add to the mana of both people and place.

We’re also planning a speaking programme in local schools, so I can share these stories with the next generation, and I’ll be speaking at the Tauranga Arts Festival in October, too. I’m also having a launch event at my home library in Takapuna in mid-September — I do a lot of research and writing work there [I’m writing this at the library right now!] and it will be great to share the book with Auckland family and friends.

Published by The Elms Foundation in association with Sherlock & Co. Publishing