"A goodly heritage" : Queen's Gardens, Dunedin, 1800-1927 : an urban landscape biography

Abstract

This work is a landscape study of the Queen's Gardens Public Reserve in Dunedin from the early nineteenth century to the end of the First World War. Originally the 'gateway' to Dunedin, this historic precinct is a good example of urban cultural landscape, containing a historic and commemorative record of community and individual activities. The Queen's Gardens area has played a key role in the history and development of the city of Dunedin, and contains many excellent examples of built heritage, much of which remains intact and currently in use.

Urban landscapes are generally on a smaller scale than rural and regional-scale landscapes. However, their designs and histories also constitute a record of active and dynamic interaction between people and place. Whether representative of economic, industrial or political activities, domesticity, leisure, or the m1s, the material culture of urban landscapes conveys information concerning, community cultural values, civic infrastructure, significant events and activities, which can be traced through their various stylistic changes, modifications and successional uses, and interpreted within their historical social context.

The aim of this study has been to interpret the landscape of Queen's Gardens as a record of the establishment and evolution of cultural ideas, values, and notions of group identity, and to use this process to discover the heritage values that it has acquired, and the ways in which these are recognised. I build up a picture of the landscape in four chronological stages, looking at the relationships between material objects in these spaces, and the ideas and values that they represented. I trace the development of the Reserve and the creation of its cultural heritage through successive phases from the pre-land, pre-European period, early settlement, the land reclamation process, and the changing layouts and uses of space between the early nineteenth century and the end of the 1920s. By separating and examining each layer of landscape in chronological sequence, I uncover the cultural history of the landscape, and identify the traditions and aspirations of the people and groups who formed, manipulated and used it. The progressive series of significant and dynamic changes in form, function and ideology that this area underwent throughout it formative years contributed greatly to the growth and development of Dunedin, and reflected many of the social values and perspectives of colonial culture.

This work is an exercise in reading a cultural heritage landscape, not only through its material culture, documentary history, and progressions of form, but also its established traditions, and the variety of personalities, contrasting perspectives and stories that contributed to these. By synthesising the resulting data, interweaving the different strands of approach and materials of evidence into a holistic picture, I have shown how heritage meaning was progressively deposited and embedded in this urban landscape as it developed.

This study demonstrates that the landscape interpretive approach can be applied to an urban context with a shorter and more specific cultural sequence, and that a New Zealand urban landscape can provide a valuable insight to the social and cultural attitudes of the colonial past.