Photo Essay – Pehiakura

View of the ancient pa site at Pehiakura, near Kohekohe, 1964. The Waiuku arm of the Manukau Harbour is visible in the distance. The photograph was taken near the site of the ‘lost’ Maori village of Pehiakura. Pehiakura had flourished under the leadership of the well-known Ngati Tamaoho chief Epiha Putini (aka Jabez Bunting) during the 1840s, but had later been abandoned because of endemic territorial disputes with the neighbouring Ngati Te Ata iwi. At its peak, the village had been a notable centre of Methodist missionary activity.
https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/collection/photos/id/39580

The writer Elsie Locke and the Methodist minister the Rev. C.T.J. Luxton photographed by Brian Muir on the site of the ‘lost’ Maori village of Pehiakura, near Kohekohe, August 1964.
The writer Elsie Locke and the Methodist minister the Rev. C.T.J. Luxton photographed by Brian Muir on the site of the ‘lost’ Maori village of Pehiakura, near Kohekohe, August 1964. Pehiakura had flourished under the leadership of the well-known Ngati Tamaoho chief Epiha Putini (aka Jabez Bunting) during the 1840s, but had later been abandoned because of endemic territorial disputes with the neighbouring Ngati Te Ata iwi. At its peak, the village had been a notable centre of Methodist missionary activity.
The Reverend Luxton, while serving as the minister of Wesley Methodist Church in Waiuku during the late 1950s, had attempted to locate the site of the historic village, but without success; as had the young Waiuku historian Brian Muir. However, one wet day in August 1964, Brian Muir, accompanied by the visiting writer Elsie Locke (who had grown up in Waiuku) finally rediscovered the site.
This photograph records a visit the pair made soon afterwards with the Reverend Luxton. In 1965 Elsie Locke wrote a radio documentary about the rediscovery of Pehiakura; in 1968 she also published an historical novel for children set in Waiuku, ‘The End of the Harbour’.
https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/collection/photos/id/41916

View taken in the vicinity of the site of the ‘lost’ Maori village of Pehiakura, near Lakes Pehiakura and Pokorua, Kohekohe, September 1964. Pehiakura had flourished under the leadership of the well-known Ngati Tamaoho chief Epiha Putini (aka Jabez Bunting) during the early to mid-19th century, but was later abandoned, in part because of endemic territorial disputes with the neighbouring Ngati Te Ata iwi. At its peak, the village was a notable centre of Methodism, and its buildings included a substantial raupo church. The exact site of the village was later almost lost to memory, but in August 1964 the young Waiuku historian Brian Muir, accompanied by the visiting writer Elsie Locke (who had grown up in Waiuku), finally rediscovered it.
https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/collection/photos/id/42126

Part of the former site of the 19th-century Maori settlement of Pehiakura, near Kohekohe, photographed in January 1964.
https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/collection/photos/id/37645