TRUST LANDS TRUST

Wairarapa Daily Times, 24 August 1936, Page 4

TRUST LANDS TRUST

AN OBJECT GAINED. (Contributed). My note on the doings of Trustees’ prompts R.I.P. (Reply in Person is it?) —to express an opinion—one ob ject gained —please accept thanks for information. To take two of his items—the Opera House embellishment and the Trust origin and foundation prompts further writing. The Opera House, built some forty years ago with walls largely in brick and cement with concrete cornices about the front, did, like other buildings in town, get a shaking. The Borough Inspector apparently on examination said to the Trustees, as he did to several property owners in Queen Street, that the earthquake had revealed a weakness there, pointing to a crack. That must be attended to and made safe. Instead of doing as the Queen Street folk did the Trustees set up the scientifically designed props now so prominent a feature for ridicule. Can we assume such action possible on the part of any one individual owner in Queen Street, following the example of our chosen nine Trustees —hardly—men accustomed to such work declare that the ornamental erection now so dominant cost practically as much money as would have- dealt effectively with the admitted Wdak point in front of the building. But is the work worth doing? Is the building wanted, and, if so, for what? Is there a body like minded to the Y.M.C.A. folk to lead the way?

Now to the correspondent’s other items —the history of the Trust: He states that the Government took the lands abandoned by settlers and formed a Trust to take charge for educational purposes. There is evidence that a group of men, probably three, led by one purposeful idealist, did it. Can we hope for another idealist, who having benefited educationally as the result of the first one’s doings, will search out and tell the challenging story of Masterton, including the Trust Lands Trust? It should make good reading.

For our general information could R.I.P. kindly tell us if it is true that in 1866 the Government paid £lO for half an acre of land on which to build the Masterton Post Office and that the half acre included- the land on which Messrs Carpenter and Evans premises and the Trust Lands Trust Office now .stand? Also please tell us where the forty-acre absentee section of land is situate and what the section cost the Trust in money, and yet another bearing on his statement —How did the Trust become possessed of the land in Bannister Street—the- piece where our loyal nine with the aid of the Borough Council recently spent some £SOO to make a street?