About Panmure

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The township of Panmure sits between two dramatic landforms; the Panmure Basin, also sometimes known as the Panmure Lagoon, a tidal inlet/estuary within a volcanic crater; and Maungarei/Mount Wellington which is a 135 metre volcanic peak.  Maungarei is the youngest onshore volcano in the Auckland volcanic field; ie: excluding Rangitoto, having been formed by an eruption around 10,000 years ago. It is the largest of Auckland's scoria cones and named by colonists after the Duke of Wellington. The mountain’s Maori name, Maungarei, is translated as ‘the watchful mountain’ or as ‘the mountain of Reipae’, a Tainui ancestor. She travelled to Northland in the form of a bird.

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Maungarei is a site of archaeological importance as it was used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD as a pa or hill fort. Evidence of terraces, storage pits and defensive trenches have been uncovered showing that Maori used this area over a considerable period of time. Other tribes also occupied the area from time to time.    Panmure’s proud heritage goes back to pre-European times when the Panmure area (or Mokoia as it was known) was home to the Ngati Paoa people, and was the largest Maori community in New Zealand due to the fertile soils and abundant fishing in the Tamaki Estuary and Panmure Basin.  Strategically placed for rapid access by canoe to the Waitematä Harbour, Hauraki Gulf and North Island east coast as well as 4km up the Tamaki Estuary was the portage that provided canoe access to the Manukau Harbour and the west coast. Settlement by the tribes in the area between the Tamaki River and Maungarei (Mokoia and Mauinaina Pa) became well established and was highly valued because of the easy access to good garden land, swamps and lakes, marine resources and many fresh water springs.

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The inhabitants of the two Pa were destroyed in 1821, by marauding warriors from the north. Led by the chieftain Hongi Hika, the invaders had the technological advantage of modern weapons acquired through earlier contact with Europeans and decimated the population. The Ngati Paoa never returned to the area, where a thousand of their number had been slain and the land slowly returned to be covered by fern and manuka.

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By 1838, a European settler, James Hamlin, established Waipuna Farm in the area and a community grew quickly over the following years. From 1848, many of the new settlers were Irish military pensioners who had been brought to New Zealand to establish a military base for defending Auckland. For many of the immigrant Pensioners, this was the best hope in providing for their families and after serving seven years in the Royal New Zealand Fencibles they would be given the cottage, land and household goods so they could settle down as a private citizen. Panmure, along with Howick, Otahuhu and Onehunga were the Fencible Settlements.    In 1848, the “Clifton” arrived in Auckland from Galway, Ireland with seventy five men, their wives and children and settled on the site that was once Mokoia / Mauinaina Pa. Life was tough for these early settlers who needed to build their own village, grow vegetables, breed livestock and build wells but they were fortunate as the land was fertile and close to some already established farms where some could obtain extra work and supplies.

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