May 2018 Project Martha – Historical & Archaeological Background 54 mines, and this circumstance alone is a great inconvenience to those desirous of visiting our attractive neighbourhood.’188 Progress at Waihi continued during the early 1880s and a description of the fledgling settlement was provided in the Goldfields Report of 1882: ‘At the Waihi, near to the mines, a township has been laid off and several buildings have been erected, including a substantial hotel… The settling of a permanent population at Waihi would prove a great boon to the settlers at Katikati, affording them an excellent market for their farm produce. They appear fully alive to the importance of this, as, through their County Council, they are hard at work forming roads to connect the mines and settlement.’189 In 1885 Waihi became part of the newly created Ohinemuri County which comprised four ridings and included the townships of Paeroa, Waikino, Waitekauri, and Karangahake.190 The Ohinemuri County Council prioritised the formation and upgrading of roads throughout the county and Barber notes that ‘minutes [of the council] from 1885 until the turn of the century display a continuous concern over the need to meet mining company and settler demands for better road access from a limited budget.’191 Repairs to the Waihi main road were carried out and the erection of a new Waihi bridge in 1890 aided the development of the township.192 Developments in ore extraction methods from the early 1890s increased confidence in the economic viability of gold prospecting and attracted hundreds of new miners into the Waihi area. This growth invigorated the Waihi township, formerly described as ‘a village with a few houses’, and in 1892 the annual gold fields report stated ‘…this part of the field has a prosperous future before it; as it is, the population has increased very largely, the township that was laid off by the Government surveyor proving too small already; houses are going up, and this is general test of the progress of any district’ (Figure 40 and Figure 40)193 Essential services soon followed which included the opening of Waihi’s first school in 1890, and a Post Office Savings Bank (1892), along with several notable businesses: Thomas Vulgar, Butcher (1892), Archibald Clark, storekeeper and fruiterer (1892), Ernest McLeay, boot and shoe manufacturer (1893), Cullen and Co., drapers and importers (1893), Edwards and Tower, painters and decorators (1894), and William Robbins, chemist (1896).194 Places of worship were also constructed around the township and comprised the original St John’s Anglican Church (at the corner of Gilmour Street and Seddon Street) built in 1894, a Wesley Methodist Church erected in Haszard Street in 1898, and a Presbyterian Church Hall built in 1896.195 Expansion necessitated further surveying of the Waihi area and a plan of the Township of Waihi, dated July 1895, shows proposed subdivision over large central portions. Other unsurveyed areas are simply labelled ‘residence sites’ and a report from the Department of Lands and Survey, to the year ending March 1896, noted that ‘A start was made with the 188 Bay of Plenty Times, 13 October 1881, p.3. 189 AJHR 1892 H-19, p.10. 190 Barber 1985, pp.73-74. 191 Ibid., p.75. 192 Bay of Plenty Times, 7 August 1890, p.3. 193 Barber 1985, p.77; AJHR 1892 C-03A, p.6. 194 Climie 1962, pp.7-8 & 147. 195 Ibid., pp.118-119.
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