History – Main street fire damages deeds

Early in the morning on July 28, 1931, fire destroyed a block of shops in the main street of Warkworth. With no means available to fight the flames, nothing could be done to save five business premises from total destruction. The buildings were occupied by Elliot and Holden solicitors, Rodney and Otamatea Times, H. Roper radio dealer and electrician, Azzy’s tobacconist, hairdresser and bootmaker, and H Stubbs butcher.

The skipper of a launch making his way up the river was the first to notice the fire and raise the alarm. By the time spectators arrived flames were emerging from the printing office and Roper’s shop, and within a few minutes the solicitor’s premises were burning fiercely. The heat was so intense that paint blistered on the buildings across the road.

Willing hands saved stock from Stubbs and Azzy’s before the strong winds spread the fire, with the butcher’s shop making a huge blaze. When the flames began to moderate, three safes could be seen red hot among the falling debris. A hose was run from the hotel to put water on the safes and Captain Reg Collins from the scow Jane Gifford brought a wire rope ashore to loop around each safe, enabling them to be pulled clear by a motor lorry. One safe from the solicitor’s office was opened and the contents – valuable documents and deeds – were found to be in good order save for some charring around the edges. More severe damage was viewed when the second safe was opened the following day. But for the prompt action and cooling, all of the papers could have been charred to uselessness.

These fire-damaged deeds are now kept on the shelves of the museum archives department and are a constant source of interest to staff and visitors. The oldest documents are written on parchment and the names that can be deciphered are a ‘who’s who’ of colonial Warkworth. Some record land sales between John Anderson Brown and various purchasers, while others give details of the mortgage arrangements of early settlers. The deeds are more than a curiosity. The information they provide is valuable to researchers as it defines old boundaries and gives an exact location for properties, as well as the date of a sale or purchase. Some go further and include assets such as cows, listed by name, and whether the family owned a horse-drawn vehicle or a boat.

The deeds are likely to be the only articles to survive that disastrous fire. For the business owners it was a catastrophe but the town ultimately benefitted as the replacement buildings, in line with new bylaws, were built of brick or fire resistant materials.

Sources – Papers Past website and Warkworth Museum files