Ground slowly swallowing Rangiora museum building

Press, 29 June 1987, Page 16

Ground slowly swallowing Rangiora museum building

By DIANA HALES The Rangiora and Districts Early Record Society is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea over the future of the Rangiora Museum.

The museum building, just off Good Street, is slowly sinking into the ground and the irreplaceable items collected within are in serious danger of being damaged or having to be removed to the safety of another Canterbury museum. A past president and present committee member, Mr lan Tweedie, said that the museum building was originally the upper floor of the 1878 Bank of New Zealand building, on the corner of Ashley and High streets, saved from demolition and removed to the present site on Good Street in 1967. The Good Street site was originally a Borough Council pit from which metal was removed for roading and was later loosely filled with refuse, he said.

He said the bank’s top storey was exceedingly heavy and strong, and although it had between 10 and 12 rimu floor joists and several reinforced concrete foundations it was not set on piles. The combination of the weight of the building and the instability of the, site has resulted in parts of the floor sagging badly and upsetting some displays. The original building was tearing away from a newer room adjoining the west end of the museum. “The building should

never have been put here in the first place, but back then people were keen to get a home for the museum pieces — of course we can all be wise afterwards,” Mr Tweedie said.

One would have thought the solution was obvious — either fix the building or move the museum else where.

Mr Tweedie said neither solution was possible for the society and this was more worrying than the sinking building. He said the society had a little over 100 members, but none were young and male and, therefore, able to help in reconstructing the building.

The society’s main source of income was a "shop day” held every September, with stalls supervised by members, which raised on average about $750.

The Rangiora District Council also allocated an annual sum and applications were made and occasionally accepted for grants from the sports and recreation department. Mr Tweedie said the Society could not afford to pay tradesman the going rates to upgrade the building. A plumber was recently hired to check on the pipes and some seepage. “That cost the thick end of $2OO and that’s a lot of money for a society like ours,” he said. The society treasurer, Miss Joan McEwan, said even if the society had the money to do the renovations she saw little point in “throwing good money

after bad.” She said the museum needed more than a complete renovation.

The museum was cramped and overcrowded with valuable items and because the windows had to be boarded up to deter vandals the interior conditions were detrimental to many of the items on exhibition, especially the clothes and bedroom linen.

Some of the exhibits had had to be displayed on the floor because there was no room for proper display shelves or cabinets, and the storage space in the roof was filled to overflowing, she said.

The old weatherboard building is something of a fire risk. Mr Tweedie said every time he heard the town fire alarm he always rushed to the window to check if smoke was coming from the direction of the museum. Miss McEwan said the crucial difficulty lay in knowing what to do next. Suggestions of placing the really valuable items in sealed boxes or with the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch defeated the purpose of having the Rangiora museum. • “We don’t like looking into the future because our prospects look a bit grim really, but we can’t go on the way we are,” she said. Mr Tweedie said that local museums were a New Zealand institution and practically every town throughout North Canterbury had one.

All the years of building up a local museum with displays of items that were unique to the immediate Rangiora district should not be wasted. “I’ve lived in Rangiora for just over 70 years and I’d > hate to see the thing go.” Yet the society dared not force the situation, he said.

The society could not make people take an interest and help find a solution by threatening to close the doors “just in case no-one came to the party.”

He said he believed all that was needed was either a group or an organisation to donate a substantial sum or even a building and the society would find some way of recreating the museum.

Several members of the Rangiora District Council discussed the museum at the community and de-, velopment committee meeting recently. The Mayor, Mr Trevor Inch, said: “The museum is a collection of historical records of which a town this size can be justifiably proud, and if anything should happen to it through calamity or even just by being ingored we would only have ourselves to blame.”

Hopes had been raised at one stage that the museum could take over the present library on Victoria Street when the proposed new library was built, said Miss McEwan, but when plans for the new library were stalled the society’s hopes were dashed.