Curios and convict bricks

A ceremonial trowel

I’ve been an avid user of the Alexander Turnbull Library for years — its collections of diaries, correspondence and photographs have enriched my history writing and the stories I’ve been able to tell about working people on the margins. So, it is a real privilege to take up the role of Research Librarian, Manuscripts and hop over to the other side of the research desk. Reams of unfamiliar and unpublished collections await!

Which is why a blog about objects rather than manuscripts might seem odd. Yet like most archives, the different parts of the collection speak to each other. They help connect the dots and flesh out a story in ways a single source can’t.

Take this object for example: a ceremonial trowel that was used to open Waikeria Reformatory Prison Farm on 24 November 1911.

Prison farms and reforms

Its diamond-engraved face reflects the pride of the Prison Branch, a sign of the reforming times. Before the First World War, farms like Waikeria were replacing Victorian gaols and agricultural work was fast becoming the norm for male prisoners in New Zealand. The number of male prisoners employed on prison farms soared from 8 per cent in 1910 to 70 per cent in 1923.

Yet while the foundation stone was laid by the Minister of Justice Sir John Findlay, it was prisoners who built the prison once the minister departed and the trowel donned its velvet cover. Marched to the nearby Mangatutu Stream, inmates unearthed the gravel needed to make the concrete blocks of their own enclosure. These blocks became Waikeria’s Top Jail, completed by prisoners in 1916 and torched by prisoners during the Waikeria Uprising in January 2021.

Which is why I wanted to see the trowel. I’ve been writing a book about prison labour and the making of New Zealand, including a chapter on the prison farms of the early twentieth century. Here was a tangible link to that agricultural turn, to Waikeria’s ceremonial opening and its less-than-ceremonial undoing a century later. It brought the newspapers, official reports and photographs about Waikeria Prison Farm alive in a way objects often do.

However, the reverse is equally true. Manuscripts can help explain the meaning of objects both small and large, whether in private hands or within the physical landscape. In my case, they helped to put some important doubts to rest.

Convict bricks

As I investigated the history of the prison brickworks on Pukeahu Mount Cook, I found references to the many Wellington buildings clad in convict brick. Which is unsurprising. The gaol averaged around 7,000 bricks a day – that’s over two million bricks per year.

The original Public Hospital at Newtown was made by prisoners using their own bricks, as was Mount View Mental Asylum (now Government House and part of Wellington College).

The Government Printing Office, the interior of the Parliamentary Library, the Public Trust Office, Mount Cook Police Barracks, the Defence Store on Old Buckle Street, the wall along Tasman Street, the Kelburn cable car tunnels, Terrace Gaol, Point Halswell Prison, various Miramar defence works – all these sites used convict brick.

Some have the tell-tale arrow of state property facing outwards, but most are turned inwards and tucked out of sight.

Turnbull House, Wellington

One building said to have been built using convict bricks was Turnbull House, home to Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull and his impressive collection of rare books, manuscripts and artworks.

Alexander Turnbull Library, Bowen Street, Wellington, circa 1930s. Ref: 1/2-023744-G. Alexander Turnbull Library.

Both his home and his collections became the Alexander Turnbull Library after his death in 1918.

Could this impressive building, designed in Queen Ann revivalist style akin to a “Jacobean grange”, contain prison-made bricks hidden from view? Did the Library I now work for make its start surrounded by the fruits of unfree labour?

Prison brickworks on Pukeahu Mount Cook

Convict bricks from Pukeahu Mount Cook were overwhelmingly used on public buildings: structures that were owned or built by the state. When Turnbull’s home on Bowen Street was built in 1916, he was a private individual. I was sceptical they were prison bricks. News about the build on Papers Past did not help. So, I turned to a manuscript in the Library’s collection, a Turnbull House Conservation plan that was prepared for Department of Conservation in 1991.

Conservation plan

The manuscript is extensive, noting every detail about the house, its materials, its architects. I learned that the architectural firm Thomas Turnbull and Son (no relation to Alexander) had also designed the Parliamentary Library, which had used convict bricks. At Turnbull House, the brickwork is unreinforced, three wythes thick to the first floor and was laid by the builders Campbell and Burke.

Despite the wealth of details about the build and later renovations, there was no mention of prison bricks and convict arrows in the conservation report, a detail too important not to mention. Nor could I confirm the use of prison bricks in other sources.

Prison labour benefited several Wellington buildings and the wider cityscape in visible ways. But as far as I can tell, from the manuscript and from the gaol’s history of supplying bricks for public builds, the Turnbull House is not among them.

At their most basic, archives are stories: whether transmitted through speech, written in text, woven within tāniko patterns or embodied in tā moko, performed as ritual or shared in everyday practices, or displayed in objects or within the land itself. Whether they take the form of a ceremonial trowel or conservation plan, I’m always thankful to share in these stories as part of my day job. And it is our job to ensure users of all stripes share in them too.