HARRY ELL’S SUMMIT ROAD

Press, Volume C, Issue 29477, 1 April 1961, Page 3

HARRY ELL’S SUMMIT ROAD

! Reviewed try R. C. LJ -ry EU and Ms Summit Raid. A Biography of Henry George EH. By Lenere Oakley. Caxton Frees. 112 pp. The Port Hills-Akaroa Summit road, with its scenic reserves and road houses, such as the Sign of the Takahe, has a history that is quite unknown to countless people who. from time to time, traverse it in the course of a day’s outing. In recounting that history, Mrs Oakley goes back to the year,l9oo and nates the efforts made then by H. G. Ell to prevent the closing of roads about the Port Hilts. The Port Victoria and Little River Road Boards had already taken steps (as explained in the text) to effect such road closures But, by this time, EIl had entered Parliament, where he was able to lend his support to the Public Works Amendment Act, which effectively put an eno to the closing of roads wherever such action was not in the public interest. The task which Ell then set himself—as this bock makes clear*-was nothnig less than that of “forming a road which would run along the top of the Port Hills from Godley Head lighthouse to Gebbie's Pass, and later on, be taken further, till eventually a hill road would link Christchurch with Akaroa.” A coloured map published over forty years ago by the Government Printer, depicts the road as then envisaged, and, the scenic reserves about it. It is interesting to compare this map with more recent ones published by the Lands and Survey Department, and to note now in the latter the road, after reaching a certain point, deviates from the course originally planned. As no maps are included in Mrs Oakley’s book, it is fitting to add that those just referred to may be seen at the Canterbury Public Library.

To return to the road's early history, by September 1906. largely through Ell’s exertions, enough money been had acquired to purchase—with the aid of a Government subsidy—fifty acres of Kennedy’s Bush, which was then declared a Crown reserve. In November 1908. at an official ceremony, the turning of the first sod marked the commencement of the road's formation. Then, in the following year, there was set up the Summit Road Association, with George Harper as its chairman. Another organisation, known as the Summit Road Scenic Reserves Board, controlled the considerable reserves and properties secured by Ell for the furtherance of this project.

Ell was not a man who could work amicably vHth a committee that had to watch expenditure. In fact, he went his own independent way, running up debts until he Was owing £4OOO “to guarantors, business houses and city tradesmen.” To put a stop to his prodigal spending, the Summit Road Association inserted advertisments in the daily papers, stating that-it would not be responsible for any depts contracted by him. And yet, despite his disconcerting habit of going his own way about things and stubbornly refusing to be ruled by committees. he was able, by April 1923. to report “very fair headway” with the Summit road scheme. The Sign of the Takahe was being erected, and the turnover at the Sign of the Kiwi had increased by £350 a year.

Two years later. Ell formed the Port Hills-Akaroa Summit Road Trust, and his relations with this body were as stormy as they had been with its predecessors. Like one who throws caution to the winds, he continued spending money without authority, and without keeping a proper record of expenditure. until he brought the Trust to the verge of bankruptcy. Such was the

precarious state of its fin- . ances in June 1928, that it , owed £9OO on outstanding r accounts and wages. Be the financial aspect of things bright or gloomy, however, Ell was determined that the i building of the Sign of the : Takahe should be gone on , with, and to this attitude he : Clung with an almost fani atical resolve. > In reading this account of > his life, one is reminded of : another New Zealander, i namely . Sir Truby . King i whose labours—though ■ directed towards a different ■ end—were not dissimilar to . Ell's. Sir Trilby King, work- ! ing in the grounds of his . Karitane Hospital on the > Melrose heights above WelI lington, was not unlike ; Henry Ell toiling at the Sign i of the Takahe, on the hills above Christchurch. Both men were visionaries, and a : trifle eccentric. Both impoverished themselves financial- ; ly in the service of their fellows; and both have found a lasting memorial in buildings remarkably alike for : the magnificence of the outlook and the tranquillity that i reigns within their precincts. : The Sign of the Takahe

which was but one of a dozen road houses that Ell had contemplated building, was little more than a shell at the time of his death in 1934, whereas the Sign of the Kiwi, the Sign of the Bellbird, and the Sign of the Pack Horse were by then virtually completed. In this biography is presented a sympathetic portrait of the man; and although it is concerned mainly with his work in connexion with the Summit road, it does not overlook his political life. For twenty years he was a member of Parliament, and there is evidence enough in his parliamentary speeches to support his biographer's contentton that he was always on the side of the common ipan. But is it trqg to say—is stated on page 29 ot this book, that he once strongly supported a bill for a 40-hour week? What he really gave his support z to, was the Factories Bill of 1901, which made provision for a -45-hour week. Ell was a radical in politics, but fell out with the more militant radicals towards the end of his parliamentary life. And, on one occasion, he took strong exception to remarks made by Robert Semple advocating the repeal of the Military Service Act. That was in February. 1919, when Semple, addressing a large Ghristchurch audience, made bold to say that were he living in Russia, he would side with Trotsky and Lenin, and that were he living in Ireland, he would be a Sinn

Feiner. This was more than ■ Ell could stand, and he said I so in a letter to the Christ- • church "Star.” The incident. ■ though fully reported in , contemporary Christchurch ' papers, is not mentioned in the book under review. During his lifetime, Ell ! wrote a number of pam- ■ phlets. some of which dealt with the Summit road, and others with such subjects as state banking, and the pro- ■ blem of consumption in New Zealand. Mrs Oakley has 1 naturally made use of these : pamphlets, quoting them 1 freely in her narrative; but she rarely gives a precise indication of the source of any of her quotations. (From which departmental report, for example, do the paragraphs quoted on page 30 derive?). Again, the sequence of events is often rather blurred in her writing, simply for want of a date to fasten them to, and this looseness in presentation detracts from the value of her book as a work of historical research.

It is strange that Mrs Oakley has nothing to say of the Tunnel Road League, in the formation of which—in 1919—E1l played such a conspicuous part. Over thirty years ago he predicted that, with the advent of the tunnel road, Christchurch warehouses and factories would gravitate towards the tunnel mouth, and that all round Lyttelton Harbour there would be opened up beautiful home sites—surely an interesting prediction, in the light of events now taking shape. This book, in its ninth chapter, takes the Heathcote County Council to task for the way it harried Ell in a number of ways, such as turning off the electricity at the Takahe, in 1931, because Ell’s accounts with the Council had not been paid. But what of the Council’s more amicable dealings with this man? They too. should have found a place in his biography, but it is silent with regard to them. In February. 1918. the same Council, at Ell’s request, decided to allow him £59 per annum, to keep in repair the part of Dyers Pass Road extending from the tram terminus to the summit. In June, 1923, it put in electrical extensions at the Sign of the Takahe; so that although the story of Ell's conflict with that Council makes interesting reading, it should not blind one to earlier evidence of a normal, harmonious relationship existing between the two parties. As mentioned above, the Sign of the Takahe was in an unfinished state at the time of Ell’s death, in 1934. To quote Mrs Oakley at this point, it was as though “his dream half formed became a challenge to his memory.” Might she not hawe given some indication of how the challenge was taken Up? There is not a word in this book, concerning the Takahe and Summit Road Citizens’ Committee which, in 1936, was formed under the chairmanship of T. J. Maling. Nor does it say anything about the vast amount of work done on the Summit road after 1934. In 1937, the Hori, Robert Semple, at that time Minister of Public Works, inspected this road and had it declared a main highway, and during the next two years, the Public Works Department spent over

'£40,000 on its develoment. Facts such as these were surely deserving of some notice in a book having as its theme Harry Ell and his Summit road.