Panmure, New Zealand - History

History

One of the traditional portages between the Waitemata Harbour and the Manukau Harbour was near here. 4.6 km up the Tamaki River Maori would beach their waka (canoes)at the end of a small creek (that now passes under the southern motorway) and drag them overland (where Portage Road is now) to the Manukau harbour. During the Musket wars in late September 1821, Mokaia Pa was the scene of severe fighting and was sacked by 4000 musket carrying warriors such as Nga Puhi from the north led by Hongi Hika. The fighting devastated what had been the Ngati Paoa population centre of the Auckland Isthmus during pre-European times which had a population of about 7,000. 3000 men with up to 100 muskets took part in the defence of the Pa but after a close and bitter battle were defeated by the combined northern alliance who had between 500 and 1000 muskets.

Mokaia Pa, on the headland to the east of the Panmure lagoon, was visited in 1820 by the missionary Samuel Marsden. In 1848 80 Fencible families came here from Ireland and England on the ship Clifton and established a settlement with 99 raupo huts on the eastern shores of the lagoon. They called the area Maggotty Hollow. Located on the Tamaki River, Panmure was favoured by Felton Mathew to be the new capital of New Zealand. William Hobson, however, decided otherwise and the new town of Auckland arose further to the west along the shores of the Waitemata Harbour.

Panmure was then instead created as a fencible settlement, where soldiers were given land with the implied understanding that in wartime, they would be raised as units to defend it (however, the eventual fighting a decade later used professional soldiers instead).

Panmure was an important town and port as it was strategically placed near the narrowest part of the isthmus, and during the New Zealand land wars of the 1860s it became a very busy place. Even after the railway reached Auckland in 1908, Panmure somewhat continued as a transport hub — steamers from Auckland en route to the goldfields in the Coromandel and Firth of Thames would call in here.

Until about the middle of the 20th century, Panmure remained a prosperous but mostly pastoral setting, the smallest borough of Auckland, and described as "a quarter of a square mile of farmlets surrounding a sleepy village that boasted little more than a church, post office, a handful of shops and a two-storey hotel that was widely known from horse and buggy days".

It was only with the explosive growth of suburbia around it after World War II, and better bridges to Pakuranga that Panmure relatively suddenly started to grow significantly, and become a commercial centre.