The Spirit of a Place: a New History of the Elms, Te Papa Tauranga by Sarah Ell, with photography by Amanda Aitken

What a superb evocation of a place! Sarah Ell has written a rich and delightful account of the house of Alfred and Charlotte Brown that marked the beginning of European Tauranga, and the book is lavishly illustrated with colour illustrations throughout. It is a coffee table book and much more.

Those who have never been to The Elms will wonder how they have overlooked a house which has some similarities with the Treaty House at Waitangi.

Those of us who know the house will be interested to read the history beyond the moment in history with which it is tragically associated, when on 28 April 1864, the British officers gathered at the house for a dinner with Archdeacon and the second Mrs Brown, just the night before the Battle of Gate Pa at which all of the guests bar one were killed. But the house is part of a longer although less traumatic history, beginning with the Church Missionary Society’s decision to extend its mission south of the Bay of Islands, the educational and religious functions of the settlement (which meant that the library was built before the house), and then the long subsequent history as the house was inherited by Alice and Edith Maxwell, and then in turn passed to Duff Maxwell, whom many of us will have met when we visited the house. All these phases of the long story, and the more recent restoration of the house are told with care and with the utmost respect.

But what I love about this book is that it drew me into the story, helped me to understand the lonely and yet exuberant life of the first missionaries (not just the Browns but many others who stayed on the station for a period), then explained how the little town of Tauranga grew up around the house. The illustrations, so carefully photographed by Amanda Aitken, evoke the ways in which different residents have left their mark on the house, and the way in which the Elms Trust has respected the various contributions they made. I loved the discussion about the pianos, the stairwell, the kitchen and the bell. The Māori traditions of Te Papa are central to the telling of the story, as they should be, for this was a house built on land with its own traditional significance, and the shadow of Gate Pa cannot be separated from the story.

May the Trust and its work flourish, and may every visitor come away with a copy of this precious memento and may the book draw more people to visit this place. Jeremy Sherlock must be commended for the very fine work of publication, and Sarah Ell for her thoughtful and well researched prose.

Reviewer: Peter Lineha, Professor Emeritus of History, Massey University

The Elms Foundation in association with Sherlock & Co Publishing