Welcome to the Hobsonville Heritage Project!

What is The Hobsonville Heritage Project?

The Hobsonville Heritage Project is a collaboration between students at Hobsonville Point Secondary School (HPSS) and the Hobsonville Heritage Trust. It is designed, over a three to five year period, to find out about and then present to the wider community, the history of the Hobsonville area from the Māori pre-history to the developments which are happening now.

How does The Hobsonville Heritage Project work?

HPSS students have chosen to be involved in the Heritage Project through the Big Projects and Impact Projects strand of the school curriculum. They are actively engaged in different facets of the processes of research and presentation and have chosen particular aspects to focus on, to begin with. 

The Project itself began this year, in April 2016. At this stage there are four groups of students working on diverse aspects of the Projects. There is one group developing a website - this is where the findings of the other groups will be placed so that the information is available to the wider community. A second group is doing archaeology - they plan to find artefacts from the Brickworks based in Limeburners Bay and from the no-longer-existant Airforce base, and then reconstruct context around the artefacts. Another group is finding out about the street names in the Hobsonville and Hobsonville Point areas - many of these street names have been given based on the heritage of the area and so this group is finding out what they are based on and why it might be significant. The final group working in the Project this semester is called 'grave-robbing' although this is of course not what they are doing; in fact this group is basing themselves in the cemetery of the Hobsonville Settlers Church and researching the lives of the people whose graves are there.

Where to from here?

The Project has only just started, but it is anticipated that it will continue over a three to five year timeframe. In addition to the website, which will also include other focuses as we progress; we are planning a series of children's books as another medium of spreading information throughout the area, and we are also working on the idea of a physical museum space which could be available to collate all the different artefacts and information the students have collected.

How can you help?

If you know or have any connection with the history of the Hobsonville area, we would love to hear from you. We are especially keen to collect stories of your experiences or photos that you might have of events or places of significance. Please be in touch through the comments below, it would be excellent to hear from you.