Home again

WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES • IMAGERY: JASON DORDAY

The rear of what was the home's main building and water tower (centre), with staff and children's dining rooms and laundry rooms to the right, and senior boys' block to the left.

Memories of life in an orphanage offer personal perspectives on an Auckland historic place

For Raymond Bates, now in his mid-80s, helping to build the archive of a Category 1 historic place started at an early age.

It was around 1947, and Kodak was running a story competition among children at Auckland orphanages, offering one of its latest cameras as the prize. Raymond, a resident at the Wyllie Road Orphan Home in Papatoetoe, which at the time was home to 110 children, was the overall winner.

The prize came with a single roll of film, but the home’s Matron, Miss Wilbraham, made Raymond a deal.

“She’d long wanted to have a photographic record of the home itself – the kids and everything photos that I’d taken as a kid.”

That passion for photography ignited at the home continued, with Raymond going on to work as a professional photographer. The passion for recording life at the home also lingered.

Raymond has documented pages of memories of the years from 1937 to 1951 he spent at the home, covering everything from daily routines and friendships made to cleaning and personal hygiene regimens, plus his wider research into the historic place.

A desire to pass on the information led him last year to connect with the Auckland office of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, and in particular to administrator

else in the home. And every year they used to send a photographer out to take photographs of the kids and buildings and so forth for the archives, but she particularly wanted them taken of the kids just as they were,” recounted Raymond during an oral history interview carried out late last year.

“So she said to me, ‘I will buy the film once a month, you can have three or four photographs for yourself, [and] we’ll take the rest and put them in the archives for the orphan home, for future use.’ Which is what we did. Then years later, when I came to dig up all the information on the home, I got my hands on all the loose photos – a massive great box full. And what do I find? All these LOCATION

Papatoetoe sits northwest of Manukau, 18km southeast of Auckland.

Pauline Vela, who later undertook an oral history interview with him.

Listed as St John’s Home, reflecting a change of the building’s use and name in 1963, the home was built to replace an orphanage in Parnell that had been devastated by fire. It was designed by architect George Goldsbro, who offered his services for free in memory of his father who had been an honorary medical officer at the institution.

“I can go out there even now, even today, and I can walk through those gates and I’m home”

Informed by studies of similar institutions around the world, the building was configured to benefit the health and wellbeing of children. The historical background in a conservation plan for the building – carried out by Dave Pearson Architects in 2013 for the building’s owner, the Pacific Islanders Presbyterian Church – for example, notes how each dormitory was designed to accommodate 20 beds – 10 each side – with a window in between. This allowed for plenty of crossventilation and avoided the overcrowded sleeping conditions observed as leading to poor health in other homes.

The foundation stone for the orphanage was laid in December 1907, and it was during this time – before children moved in to the new home in April 1909 – that Raymond’s connections to the building first began: his paternal grandfather, William Bates, helped in the building’s first phase of construction, during which he served his apprenticeship as a bricklayer and brickmaker.

Further work and additions at the complex included the construction of St Saviour’s Chapel, opened and consecrated in 1919, and the administration block, where a stone that acknowledged its completion was laid in 1923.

The orphanage was located on a large parcel of land, which allowed it to be largely selfsufficient. It had a farm, which supplied milk and meat, an orchard supplying fruit, and its own bore for water.

Raymond’s notes on the health and cleaning routines at the home – featuring the liberal use of Jeyes Fluid – offer fascinating insights into the methods the home used to keep children and staff healthy. Raymond notes that, during years blighted by scarlet fever and polio epidemics, “it is quite clear that healthwise we had far better care than the average child who lived outside the orphanage in a private home”.

Pauline conducted her interview with Raymond at his home in December last year, and says it’s important that personal memories connected to our important historic places, such as Raymond’s, are captured. She reports that the information gathered from the interview will be stored with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, as well as the National Library, so it can be accessed by others.

Raymond’s recollections provided a great amount of detail on what life was actually like for a child living at the home, she says, and in his case it was a largely positive experience.

“It came across that he felt happy and secure there, even though the staff weren’t able to show particular affection and had to be very circumspect in their behaviour, with everyone treated the same,” she says.

“He was a very inspiring person to talk to because you could tell he had this attitude towards helping others ingrained in him. For example, as a photographer he had shared his experience with many others over the years, helping them develop their photographic skills.”

Raymond aptly summed up his sentiment about the place in his interview.

“I can go out there even now, even today, and I can walk through those gates and I’m home,” he says. “I’m happy.”