Williams House, Paihia

- a social history

Recently we began research for a social history on Paihia's historic Williams House. Steeped in cultural significance, Williams House links back to 1823 and the arrival in Paihia of Henry Williams who established an Anglican mission station on the waterfront.

The property was originally purchased by the Northland Harbour Board in 1967 on condition it would be preserved intact as an open-space reserve and that Miss Mary Temple Williams (great granddaughter of Henry Williams) had life tenancy. Until her death in 1993 Mary fiercely resisted alternative commercial proposals that might jeopardise the property's historic status or limit public access.

In 1995 Williams House was granted New Zealand Historic Places Trust registration but in the subsequent eight years it took for agreement to be reached on how best to utilise it, vandals executed a less than community spirited agenda: window panes were broken and the once elegant weather boards were scrawled with graffiti. Williams House looked so dilapidated, some wanted it demolished.

When finally the decision was made to relocate Paihia's public library from the back room of a hall to the old homestead a painstaking restoration began.

Friends of Williams House, who have commissioned the social history, are committed to maintaining the green oasis in the heart of Paihia's CBD as a centre of education, culture and history …

The excerpts above appear in an illustrated brochure we completed for Friends of Williams House last year.