Hobsonville

Hobsonville is a suburb in West Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand. Historically a rural settlement, Hobsonville has now developed into a suburb of Auckland.

Hobsonville was one of the earliest European settlements in the area and became a large part of the early pottery industry in New Zealand. Hobsonville later served as a Royal New Zealand Air Force base from 1920 to 2001. Following the closure of the air base a plan for a large scale residential development was undertaken by the Housing Ministry.

Hobsonville is bounded by Whenuapai to the northwest, West Harbour to the west, with the rest of the area bounded by the Waitematā Harbour. The Upper Harbour Bridge connects Hobsonville with Greenhithe.

The boundaries of Hobsonville with the neighbouring Whenuapai and West Harbour are not defined. Early maps of the area show Hobsonville to cover the entire peninsula. The Hobsonville peninsula rises to less than 30 m (98 ft) above sea level. Most of the soil is allophanic.

Archaeological evidence points to periodic and seasonal occupation of the peninsula by Maori between the 17th and early 19th century. No evidence exists to suggest any permanent settlement of the Hobsonville area. The poor soil quality around the Wallace and Waiarohia inlets prevented permanent settlement until after European farming techniques were able to improve the soil quality.

Hobsonville was named after the first Governor of New Zealand, William Hobson. After landing by sea at the site, Hobson thought it suitable as the seat of Government for New Zealand but later rejected this on the advice of the Surveyor-General of New Zealand, Felton Matthew. Hobsonville was acquired by The Crown in 1853 as part of the Waipareira block. An 1854 hydrographical chart refers to it as being fern land. In 1886 Hobsonville had a post office open. By 1909 it had become a town district within the Waitemata County, but by 1913 it had been dissolved.

The first European settler of the area, Rice Owen Clark, bought land in 1854. As the ground was too moist for farming due to the poor permeability of the soil, Clark developed tiles from the clay to drain his property to enable farming. Other settlers paid Clark to make tiles for their properties and Clark moved from agriculture to pottery as this was more lucrative, later establishing a large pottery work at Limeburner's Bay. In 1867 there were two pottery works in Hobsonville. Steam power was first used at the Carder brothers' Waitemata Pottery at Scott Point. Under Clark's son, Rice Owen Clark II, the pottery works would expand and become the largest in the southern hemisphere through foreshore reclamation and introduction of steam power. Attempts to expand the market for ceramics resulted in the construction of Clark House, which was constructed with hollow ceramic blocks. Several other buildings were built with this method—mostly in Hobsonville—but it never became widely adopted and was eventually abandoned. Another attempt resulted in one of the earliest buildings to use concrete in the Auckland region: a duplex constructed from lime concrete that used pottery and clinker as an aggregate. The church cemetery also contains graves constructed with ceramics.

Other pottery works in the area include: Joshua Carder's, Carder was a potter from Staffordshire and set up works in late 1863; Robert Holland's, Holland set up at Limeburners Bay in c.1904 but was bought out by Clark 5 years later; and Ockleston's in 1903 at the Waiarohia inlet, Ockleston's was bought around the same time as Holland's by Clark and was the only pottery works not located around the southern part of the Hobsonville peninsula; Some good at Hobsonville were shipped as far as Napier, Thames, and Waipukerau district.