Invercargill’s oldest carved meeting house to be restored

Invercargill’s oldest carved meeting house is being returned to its former glory.

Invercargill City Council said the decorative wooden carvings at the 100-year-old Te Wharepuni o Anehana in Anderson Park would be removed and restored.

Council parks and recreation manager Caroline Rain said the project would also repair structural damage to the building.

“With the carvings safely removed, we can get stuck into re-piling the building and repairing the damage caused to the structure by borer and moisture over many decades,” she said.

Celebrated Rotorua carver and marae conservation expert Jim Schuster was leading the work to restore the carvings, which were created by his great-great-grandfather Tene Waitere.

Schuster said his nephew and grand-nephew were planning to work alongside him, bringing together three generations of the Waitere line.

“I’m really happy to see this historic building get some well-deserved attention so it can stand proud for another 100 years,” he said.

Invercargill City Council said the whare was acknowledged as a wāhi tūpuna – place of Māori cultural significance – by Heritage New Zealand and was gifted to the city alongside Anderson House as part of a bequest by Sir Robert Anderson’s family in 1951.

Schuster said it would take about 10 days of non-stop effort to clean, strip and repair the panels.

“There are a lot of intricate details to get into and clean,” he said.

“Some of the panels that have cracked have been repaired with tar – they didn’t have superglue or epoxy resin back then.”

Rain said the carved panels would be placed in storage until later in October, when Schuster and his team would return to undertake the restoration.

Repairs to the building were expected to take about six weeks.

Te Wharepuni o Anehana was considered the southernmost example of work by a tohunga whakairo, or master carver, in New Zealand.

rnz.co.nz