Timaru Civic Trust: Ashbury Park gates a symbol of different philosophies

​By Roselyn Fauth for Timaru Civic Trust

The Ashbury Park gates on Evans St are easy to pass without much thought.

Cars move along State Highway 1, people walk dogs, children head to and from kindergarten, sports play out on the grounds, and the playground provides some park side fun on swings and see-saws.

The entrance simply does its job, marking the street access. But pause for a moment, and the gates open to say something interesting: this place was noticed, valued, and deliberately marked by the people who lived nearby.

The plaque records that the gates were erected by the North End Ratepayers and Improvement Association in 1926. A neighbourhood was leaving its name at the entrance to a public place.

The gates are rendered piers and low walls frame red brick panels, while the black metal gates use circles, vertical bars and spearhead finials to give the entrance its formal rhythm. They may not be as grand as the Botanic Gardens park gates we wrote about last week, but they are carefully designed and considered for the park’s street appeal. They turn the edge of Ashbury Park into an invitation to enter.

Ashbury Park was not always the open recreational ground we know today. The wider landscape was once connected to Waimātaitai Lagoon and Creek, a wetland and hāpua environment remembered as a source of tuna and īnaka. For mana whenua, places like this were not empty or waiting to be improved. They were part of a living network of waterways, food gathering, movement and memory.

That makes the latter park story more layered. European settlers and later residents often looked at low-lying wet ground through the language of drainage, usefulness, recreation, and civic improvement. The area was prone to flooding, and the coastline changed rapidly as the harbour developed, which impacted wave action and the way sediment moved up the coast. Many genuinely believed they were doing something good for the neighbourhood by turning what they saw as difficult ground into a public park. But that public benefit also sat within a longer story of environmental change, altered waterways, and the loss or disruption of mahika kai.

Captain Belfield Woollcombe, who arrived in Timaru in 1857, later built his home here for his wife Frances and their children. The land they purchased was known for a time as Woollcombe’s Gully, and their home, Ashbury, looked over the Waimātaitai estuary and lagoon. The house has been demolished, but the name remains, and the landscape below it has been gradually reshaped into public parkland and sports fields.

By the 1920s, North End residents looked to improve the area. The association met at Waimātaitai School, set subscriptions, and formed committees for beautifying, ground work, finance, and suggestions. This was not just a few people complaining about what the council had not done. It was local people organising themselves to make things happen and be helpful.

Their contribution was physical as well as financial. In 1922, the association helped organise a tree planting ceremony at Ashbury Park. Reports stated the ground had been cultivated, cleaned, and drained, seven chains of pipe drains had been laid, and nearly 1000 trees had been planted, including oak, elm, ash, sycamore, English beech, New Zealand birch, Douglas pine, Pinus insignis, and cypress. Mayor F. J. Rolleston planted a scarlet oak, to be known as the “Rolleston oak”, schoolboys helped with the planting, and local women provided hospitality afterwards. Ashbury Park was being physically remade into a park.

By 1924, the association wanted to raise up to £500 to help complete the park scheme. That same year, GH Andrews argued that a “decent entrance” should be erected so people would know where the park was and appreciate what a pleasant place it had become. That was the method: subscriptions, volunteer labour, public pressure, council support and a strong belief that local effort could unlock wider investment. Two years later, the gates were formally handed over to the council.

There is a wider New Zealand story here, as suburbs grew across the nation in the early 1900s, parks became more important for recreation, health, and civic identity. Communities wanted land improved, planted, and recognised as belonging to everyone. Today, we can value that civic effort while also recognising that the land already held meaning before it became a park and what has been lost.

That is what makes the Ashbury Park gates so interesting. They mark the moment when North End residents volunteered together. They also invite us to look further back, to the Waimātaitai landscape beneath the park and to what was changed when wetland became a recreation ground.

Next time you pass them, look for the plaque, brick and iron, and the path beyond. The gates still welcome people in, and invite us to notice the layers of place: mahika kai, homestead, park, neighbourhood gift.

Brought to you by the Timaru Civic Trust, celebrating our built heritage and the people who keep it alive.