During construction of the tunnels for the Wellington and Manawatu Railway from 1884 to 1886 Pukerua had its own brickworks. The escarpment was so unstable a very large number of bricks were needed to strengthen the tunnels with brick lining. The sixth tunnel, through more stable rock, was concrete lined.

The No. 15 contract that Samuel Brown signed on 7 April 1884 to construct the Pukerua to Paekākāriki section of railway had the handwritten notation “Bricks made on site”. It also stated that “Bricks shall be of the best quality of hard-burned kiln bricks. Brickwork shall be laid to English bond; joints not to exceed ¼-inch in thickness; it shall be set in cement mortar and neatly pointed.”

Two weeks after he had won No.15 contract Samuel Brown advertised for “competent men to make and burn from one to two million bricks for tunnel work.” (Evening Post 16 April 1884 p4) Soon after this he was calling for tenders to cut and haul 800 to 1000 cords of firewood for “brick burning” at Pukerua. Some firewood was cut nearby but most of the timber used in Brown’s contract came from the Paiaka Mill near Shannon on the Manawatu River. At this time there was a regular shipping service from Foxton to Wellington and the first load of Paiaka timber was unloaded from the coastal steamship Tui at Pukerua in April 1884.

Robert Niedergesaess, a German born Newtown resident who had arrived in New Zealand in 1877, was one of the competent brickmakers Brown employed. He had successfully run his father’s brickmaking business in Silesia, (now in Poland) built a brick making machine and managed a large manufacturing business. In 1878 Niedergesaess had applied for a patent for a “Double-Acting, Anti-Friction Brick Machine” for making bricks. He believed that his machine-made bricks, because of their high quality and low price, would create a revolution in the building trade and wooden houses would no longer be built in Wellington.

Brickworks, capable of making 10,000 bricks every day, were built by Niedergesaess close to the line of the railway at Pukerua. Some newspaper reports mentioned a brickworks at Paekākāriki or Paikakariki as it was known then. However, there is no trace of brickworks at Paekākāriki and reporters may have been confused because the contract for the section of railway between Paremata and Pukerua was called “No.12 Pukerua Contract, Porirua Section” while the contract for the section from Pukerua to Paekākāriki was called “No.15 Contract – Paikakariki Section.”

Clay was mined a short distance from the brickworks and carried by wheelbarrows to a machine with rollers which crushed the clay and dropped it into a pug mill. The mill made the clay plastic after a pint of water was added for every barrow load. This clay was forced from the brick-shaped mouth of the mill onto a table with rollers where 10 bricks at a time were cut off.  All of these operations were powered by a 15 horsepower steam engine. Before firing, the bricks were dried in eight 140 foot long sheds. The brickworks were just above the line enabling bricks to be moved easily along to the tunnels.

There were three kilns, each holding 50,000 bricks, so while one kiln was firing bricks, another was being filled and the third being emptied. The chimney from the kilns was 60 feet high. Edward Banks was in charge of firing the bricks, the most critical part of the whole process. He was a very experienced brick maker having made bricks for the Lyttleton rail tunnel which opened in 1867 and later in 1849 for the English contractors working on the Paris to Rouen railway. In September 1884 it was noted that “first-class bricks” were being produced.

However, there were major problems for the brick makers as the quality of Pukerua clay was patchy and often only half a kiln load of bricks were good enough to be used. Robert Niedergesaess was declared bankrupt in April 1885 and Edward Banks, who also owned a boarding house at Pukerua, was bankrupt a year later.

William Neighbours, who began making bricks in Christchurch about 1858, took over supervising the Pukerua brickworks and made frequent journeys from Christchurch to Wellington between October 1885 and March 1886. Neighbours who, “had considerable experience in Canterbury with German kilns, appears confident that by making some alterations and additions he can turn out bricks of the best quality so another start has been made under his superintendence.” (New Zealand Times 12 January 1886 p2). Other types of brick kiln were tried at Pukerua including a Scotch kiln and downdraught or oven kilns but as the supply of coal was uncertain they were abandoned.

The large number of bricklayers employed needed between 40,000 and 50,000 bricks per week. The original specifications for the brick lining of the tunnels stated that it was to be 9 inches thick increasing to 14 inches thick in less stable sections. Once tunnelling started and the shattered nature of the rock was revealed the 14 inch sections were increased. This meant that an additional 640,000 extra bricks were needed. All five Wellington brickmakers were manufacturing at full capacity for Brown’s contract, and some even expanded their output, yet still more bricks were required. Brown managed to persuade the Government to allow him to buy 300,000 bricks made by prisoners at the Mount Cook Prison. These bricks, stamped with the broad arrow showing their government origin, were used in tunnels 11 and 12.

Even this was not enough and three shipments of bricks were brought up from Christchurch. Another 200,000 bricks made by the Auckland Brick and Tile Company were brought down in three sailing ships, the brigantines Gael, Seaward and Oamaru. It was impossible to land bricks at Pukerua from a ship: “To handle and re handle them, with the chance of breaking about 50 per cent, before they reached their destination, by means of an almost perpendicular tramway, was out of the question.” (New Zealand Times, 29 September, 1886 p3) Fortunately by the time the first shipment was unloaded at Wellington, the rails had been laid to Pukerua. In September 1885 the first batch of 24,000 Auckland bricks arrived at Brown’s contract by train.

The fact that bricks were being brought to Wellington was the subject of an editorial in the Evening Post in June 1886.

In Auckland full-sized bricks, of excellent quality, can be purchased for 30s per 1000. In Wellington smaller bricks are charged £3 per 1000. Surely there must be ample room here for extending a local industry of a very profitable character. As building goes on, the demand for bricks is sure to increase equally. To build in the business part of the city without bricks, is of course more difficult than the ancient task of having to make bricks without straw. The amount of capital required to establish a large brickyard would probably not be very large, and in addition to affording employment to a large number of people, it might, we think, be made the means of considerably increasing the benevolent funds of the city. (Evening Post, 30 June 1886, p2)

This prompted an 1,100-word letter to the editor from “G.M.V.D” who stated that it was a pity the editor had not consulted an authority with accurate figures as he had “inadvertently done the brickmakers of Wellington a wrong by the publication of the leader in question.” He went on to say that poor drying weather had led to the scarcity of bricks recently and in spite of poor clay, Wellington bricks were better than those brought in:

I must not omit to state there is one gentleman, and one only, in Wellington, who was charged at the rate of £3 per thousand (his initials are S.B.) [this refers to Samuel Brown], and the circumstances under which he has been charged are out of the ordinary; they are as follow:— The bricks were specially picked (the best out of the kilns) for him, as they had to pass a Government inspector. Bricks not passed we were responsible for; they had to be carted to the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Station, which is considered out of ordinary distance, we had also to carefully stow them in trucks. Under these circumstances no one will, I am sure, consider £3 a thousand exorbitant. (Evening Post, 10 July 1886, Supplement.)

Samuel Brown replied rather scathingly to this letter saying that the anonymous writer was clearly a Wellington brickmaker and concluding:

For the credit of Wellington, I am sorry to say that I have to get bricks both from Christchurch and Auckland; and whatever may be said of the clay, the average brick of Wellington is a very poor affair, as everything from a little above sun-dried to an unshapely clinker passes for brick; and in my own case, if I demur to that shrivelled-up, half-melted clinker, I am told they are “hard brick,” though it costs me three times the amount in cement to use them. (Evening Post, 14 July 1886, p4)

The standard of brick required for lining the tunnels was very high. Out of the 3,000,000 bricks made at Pukerua only 900,000 were used. Of the bricks brought up from Christchurch only three or four thousand were of high enough quality to use.

The actual number of bricks reported to have been used in the five tunnels varies but the New Zealand Times article in September 1886 gives the following number: No.8 tunnel 350,000 bricks used; No.9 560,000; No. 10 450,000; No.11 475,000; and No.12 530,000, a total of 2,385,000 bricks.

The end of the brickworks at Pukerua was signalled in September 1886 when Samuel Brown advertised in the Evening Post the sale of “the complete Brick Plant used at the Pukerua Tunnels, consisting of patent brickmaking machine, engine, boiler, barrows, &c, capable of making 8000 to 10,000 per day.” In October 1886 William Neighbours was advertising bricks for sale at Pukerua “cheap and good, at reduced prices, for quantities not less than 2000.”

Bricks from the Pukerua brickworks, rounded by the action of waves, can still sometimes be found today on the beach, distinguished from natural stones by their red and purple colour.

~~~~

• Robert Niedergesaess left for the United States in 1887 convinced that a better developed country would give him more scope for his progressive ideas. “Robert Niedergesaess arrived in the Northwest in 1887 from Wellington New Zealand. That country had proved too little developed at the time to take advantage of his inventions and improvements in the brick making trade.” https://wilsonmachineworksseattle.com/history.htm He became very successful and well known as a manager in the brick industry in Seattle with many patents to his name.
• William Neighbours moved to the West Coast where he established William Neighbours and Sons, a large pottery business. He died at Waimangaroa in 1915.
• Edward Banks became a brickmaker in Palmerston North where he died aged 87 in 1906.
• Samuel Brown, who began work as a labourer when he arrived from Ireland, went on to become a significant businessman and public figure, serving two terms as Mayor of Wellington. His company Samuel Brown & Co. was one of the largest wood, coal and grain merchants in the country. Among the many offices he held was the first President of the Wellington Industrial Association and President of the New Zealand Industrial Association as well as being prominent in labour relations.  He died at his home in Wellington in 1909.

by Ashley Blair