Lyttelton’s ‘castle on the hill’ has been given new lease on life

Press, 30 November 1978, Page 17

Lyttelton’s ‘castle on the hill’ has been given new lease on life

By

JOHN WILSON

Lyttelton's “castle on the "hill” has long been a familiar sight tf visitors to the port and to travellers on the old interisland ferries. On Saturday, the building will have one of the most momentous days in its 102 years of life.

It is to be opened as a restored Timeball Station by the Governor-General. The occasion is significant for the Historic Places Trust because it marks the completion of its first major restoration project in the South Island. The station had its origin in the need of ships’ captains to keep accurate track of the time to be abl to calculate their longitude. This could be done only if those on board ship could compare the angle of the sun above the horizon with Greenwich time.

Ships’ chronometers, once this method of calculating longitude was discovered, became an important item of equipment for navigation. The problem was to ensure that the chronometers were keeping time accurately.

The timeball system was an ingenious Victorian solution to the problem of providing ships with an accurate check on the time in the days before radio signals were available.

The timeball did this by providing an obvious, visual check. The ball itself was hoisted up its mast to the cross-arm. Then, at an exact time, it was released to descend the mast. At Lyttelton, the drop of three metres took eight seconds. The crucial moment to watch for was when the ball left the top .•f the mast.

At Lyttelton, the signal was given at 1 p.m. every day from December, 1876, until 1916 when, for reasons unknown, the time was changed to 3.30 p.m. and the frequency was cut back to twice a week. The world’s first timeball station was built at Greenwich in 1833. In New Zealand. timeball equipment was also installed at Wellington, Auckland, and Dunedin, but none of these other N.Z. stations have survived. In the 1870 s, an energetic Provincial Council was busily improving the port of Lyttelton. Steps were put in motion to establish

a timeball station in 1870 and the equipment arrived in November, 1874.

There was some argument about where the equipment should be set up. In 1875, however, the borough council made the station’s present site available and the building was constructed by the Provincial Government.

The building itself was designed by the Provincial Architect, Thoms Cane, in 1875, and was built by a stonemason, William Brassington, helped by an assistant, John Kenning j ton, and labourers from the Lyttelton prison. Limestone from Oamaru was used for the quoins, door, and window frames. The rest of the walls were constructed in rubble fashion, using scoria from the nearby Sumner Road quarry.

This was an unfortanate choice, for although the brown volcanic stone looked well, it weathered poorly. By 1880 it had been' found necessary to cover the building with a cement stucco to keep the weather out.

As first built, the station consisted of tower, lookout room, clock room, and three residential rooms. A single storey kitchen block was added within a year or two. In 1912, further major additions were erected, in brick with Oamaru stone

facings. The brick was covered with stucco in keeping with the original building. Lyttelton was one of the verv few places in the world (Deal and Adelaide were others) where timeball equipment was installed in a building erected specifically for that purpose. The ball and its mast were more

sually mounted on top of existing buildings, such as observatories or customs houses.

The first official signal (after a test on November 29) was given from the Lyttelton building on December 23, 1876. The equipment remained in use until the end of 1934; a note recording its ceasing to operate bears the date January I, 1935. By then it was unreliable and had been superseded by radio time signals. It was, in 1934. the last station of its kind in use in New Zealand. Although its prime pur-

pose was to serve as a timebail station, the building was also used for flag signalling. From the lookout room on the second floor, the, signalman on duty had a clear view of the' inner and outer harbours right out to Adderley Head, where a lookout station had been built in J 867.

When the signalman at the heads spied a ship heading for Lyttelton he would signal to the station which would in turn hoist flags, which could be seen from the town, announcing the direction in which the ship was heading and, later, its name. There had been a flagstaff for signal flags on the promontory for some time before the Timeball Station was built, and for seven years after time signals were discontinued the flagstaff remained in use for signalling. These flag signals were not finally superseded by radio and radio-telephone messages until 1941. The kauri flagstaff which stands in front of the station today was erected in 1892, to replace an earlier mast. It. is still used on December 16, Canterbury’s Anniversary Day, when the flags which represent the code name of the Charlotte Jane, the

first of the First Four Ships to arrive, are hoisted for the day. After 1941, the army f ook over the bui'ding for the duration of the war. When the harbour board got it back it was used for a time for staff accommodation, but by the 1960 s it was standing vacant, with neither the harbour board nor the borough council eager to shoulder the expense of preserving it. The building was “saved” by a spirited public group which formed, in 1969, the Lyttelton Maritime Association, with a notable Lytteltonian, Captain A. R. Champion, as the association’s first president, and Mr A. C. Brassington, a descendant of the stonemason who built the station, as one of the patrons. The station was tenanted again and members of the society set to work both to clean up and repair the building itself and

to restore the mechanism to working order. But the task was clearly going to be beyond the resources of a voluntary association. In 1973, the Historic Places Trust agreed to take over responsibility for the restoration and two years later work began under

the supervision of a Ministry of Works architect, Mr A. P. Harper. On the building itself, the stucco was renewed and the limestone scraped back to its original whiteness. The mechanism was restored and the old clock was recovered from Wellington. The cost of the project was estimated at first to be $62,000. It has probably exceeded $lOO,OOO, including the landscaping and the building of a carpark on the side of the road below the station.

Custodians were appointed at the beginning of this year and took up residence in the station itself in February. They have had to wait nearly a year for work to be completed. but now are anxious to see crowds trooping through the station —- at 50 cents a head for adults and 15 cents for children — to help the trust recoup some of its considerable expenditure.