The heritage of popular culture

This week’s 30th anniversary of the television soap opera Shortland Street got me thinking about the extent to which we identify and protect heritage buildings that are associated with popular culture.

During the course of my working life ideas about what constitutes significant heritage value have changed considerably.

Whereas churches and government buildings, such as post offices and courthouses, have long been ascribed heritage status it has taken longer in some quarters for buildings such as cinemas and racecourse grandstands to be recognised for their value.

As a council heritage planner expressed to me many years ago, how can places that people go to for fun and entertainment be as important as the places they experience as part of worship or commerce.

To which I replied, surely entertainment is just as expressive of New Zealanders’ way of life?

Historic cinemas are now recognised for their heritage value around the country but they are not the only way that popular culture intersects with heritage.

Forty years ago the Thames Working Men’s Club was featured in The Scarecrow, one of a number of movies based on a novel by Ronald Hugh Morrieson (1922-72).

Born and resident in Hawera, Taranaki all his life, Morrieson has a place in the pantheon of New Zealand writers and yet his former home was demolished in 1993 to make way for a fast-food restaurant.

Before it was the home of the Thames Working Men’s Club, the hotel that appeared on movie posters for The Scarecrow went by another name. In keeping with the royal and aristocratic names given to many public houses in colonial New Zealand, the Cornwall Arms Hotel was likely named for the Duchy of Cornwall, an English peerage established in the 14th century and always conferred upon the eldest legitimate son of the reigning monarch.

Architect Robert J McFarland called tenders for additions to the Grahamstown hotel in 1874 and the licensee Edward

Brownlow did the same in November 1880. By April 1881 Brownlow’s additions and alterations were said to be progressing rapidly.

By 1905 the hotel was considered to be in poor condition, however, and its owners, the Campbell & Ehrenfried Company, committed to rebuilding after a local poll had been held on the matter of liquor licensing.

By September 1906 plans were in hand and tenders were about to be called.

Architect John Currie [c.1859-1921], who has been mentioned on this page a number of times, was an Irishman who emigrated to New Zealand in 1874 and designed hotels erected in Northland, Auckland and the Waikato.

Currie’s new Cornwall Arms was built at a cost of around £1100. Ownership of the hotel was transferred to NZ Breweries in 1971 and then to the Thames Workingmen’s Social Club Inc in 1978.

The former Cornwall Arms Hotel is scheduled on the Thames-Coromandel District Plan and listed by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga as a category 2 historic place. In this case, the hotel has been identified and protected as a significant historic heritage resource independently of its cinematic role.

By contrast, should the buildings and structures of Hobbiton ever be scheduled on the Matamata-Piako District Plan then the principal rationale for heritage recognition would undoubtedly be their association with a world-famous suite of movies. I wonder where and how we might identify and protect other types of TV and movie heritage in future?