Charles Kettle
Encyclopedia
Charles Henry Kettle surveyed the city of Dunedin
in New Zealand
, imposing a bold design on a challenging landscape. He was aiming to create a Romantic
effect and incidentally produced the world's steepest street, Baldwin Street
.
in England
, Charles Henry Kettle was the son of the impecunious Matthew Kettle. Charles was a teaching assistant at Queens Grammar School in Faversham
in Kent before sailing for New Zealand on the Oriental in 1839.
in 1840. He was a cadet in William Mein Smith
's survey corps, and was soon promoted on the strength of his abilities. In 1842, he led an exploration party up the Manawatu River
penetrating to the Wairarapa
district, helping to stimulate its pastoral development. In 1843, he returned to Britain and became a publicist for the projected New Edinburgh settlement in Otago
in New Zealand's South Island. He travelled widely for this purpose for two years and appeared before a House of Commons
Select Committee on New Zealand in June 1844 as an expert on the country. In September 1845, he was appointed to head the survey of the new Scottish settlement. He married Amelia Omer at St Peter's Sandwich
, Kent, 10 September 1845.
. He identified the land as suited for pastoralism and correctly saw that as the colony's future economic mainstay. By March 1848, when the first immigrant ships arrived, the surveys' outlines were virtually complete.
Kettle continued working on the project for the next two years but after the demise of the New Zealand Company
in 1850, his relations with William Cargill
, leader of the Otago settlement, deteriorated, partly because Kettle was English while Cargill was narrowly Scottish. By 1852, Kettle had been made the colonial government's surveyor at Otago, thus resolving some of the tensions. In 1854 he resigned.
He had already made tours of the pastoral districts and had himself taken up some land for sheep runs. By 1860, he was able to sell his pastoral licences and retire to Dunedin. In 1861, he became a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives
, the colonial parliament, the same year that saw the first gold rushes to the Otago hinterland. This greatly swelled the population of Dunedin. Many were camped in a place unprepared for such an influx. Sanitation broke down and Kettle died of typhoid fever on 5 June 1862, contracted, it is said, from a too-close examination of Dunedin's drains. His principal monument is the city that he surveyed and that many others built.
Kettle's instructions had been to reproduce, so far as possible, the characteristics of Edinburgh
in Scotland. (Hocken, 1898, p. 82.) He did not, as it is popularly supposed, simply impose that city's plan on Dunedin's site. He did not take Edinburgh's Old Town as his model, but the New Town
, by that time perhaps the most widely-admired urban development in Europe. Kettle set out to juxtapose formality, regularity, symmetry and proportion - relieved from monotony by some designed-in features - with a bold and rugged nature to make the design Romantic in the manner of Edinburgh and the fashion of the day. While Edinburgh's New Town is a modern agora on a ridge, Dunedin's central city is a low-lying harbourside parade, set among bold hills, with distant views of harbour steeps and bushclad ridges, a Claudian seaport, a park of orderly temples lapped by water, in a rugged terrain.
Kettle achieved this with a central grid oriented roughly north and south beside the harbour with designed-in features, such as The Octagon
, circled on the landward side by a reserved Town Belt to separate the city from its suburbs, the waters of the harbour forming its other margin. The modern central city is a Temple Plain. The carriageways descending the landward escarpment, such as High Street and Stuart Street, extraordinarily steep for the horse-drawn age, afford dramatic views of the town in its setting, as its author intended.
Kettle's town plan was the only nineteenth century one in New Zealand formed from a specific aesthetic instruction. While others such as those at Wellington and Auckland
combined similar elements of symmetry and regularity in a dramatic setting, Mein Smith's design for Wellington is considered dull and while Felton Matthew's for Auckland
is much better on paper, neither was more than partly realised.
In Dunedin, Presbyterian fortitude or perhaps the wealth suddenly afforded by the gold rushes resulted in Kettle's highly ambitious plan being mostly realised and extrapolated. There were (and still are) streets that tail off into flights of steps, and others, like Baldwin Street, that challenge the pedestrian. But by and large the vision was realised. The artist George O'Brien
has left a vivid record of the process and the result. Many of those works are in the Otago Settlers Museum
, Dunedin, which also holds paintings by Kettle. His papers are in the Hocken Collections, Dunedin.
, but was unsuccessful. Kettle and Thomas Gillies
were the only two candidates for the newly constituted two-member electorate of Bruce
in the 1861 general election. They were thus declared elected unopposed on 11 February 1861. After having attended only one session of the 3rd New Zealand Parliament
, he died of Typhoid fever
on 5 June 1862, and was buried in Dunedin Southern Cemetery
.
Dunedin
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...
in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, imposing a bold design on a challenging landscape. He was aiming to create a Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
effect and incidentally produced the world's steepest street, Baldwin Street
Baldwin Street, Dunedin
Baldwin Street in a suburban part of New Zealand's southern city of Dunedin, is considered the world's steepest residential street. It is located in the suburb of North East Valley, northeast of Dunedin's city centre....
.
Early life
Born in KentKent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Charles Henry Kettle was the son of the impecunious Matthew Kettle. Charles was a teaching assistant at Queens Grammar School in Faversham
Faversham
Faversham is a market town and civil parish in the Swale borough of Kent, England. The parish of Faversham grew up around an ancient sea port on Faversham Creek and was the birthplace of the explosives industry in England.-History:...
in Kent before sailing for New Zealand on the Oriental in 1839.
First New Zealand period
Kettle arrived at Port Nicholson, WellingtonWellington
Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...
in 1840. He was a cadet in William Mein Smith
William Mein Smith
William Mein Smith was a key actor in the early settlement of New Zealand's capital city, Wellington. As the Surveyor General for the Wakefield's New Zealand Company at Port Nicholson from 1840 to 1843, he and his team surveyed the town of Wellington, after finding the land on the Petone foreshore...
's survey corps, and was soon promoted on the strength of his abilities. In 1842, he led an exploration party up the Manawatu River
Manawatu River
The Manawatu River is a major river of the southern North Island of New Zealand.The river has its headwaters to the northwest of Norsewood in the Ruahine Ranges of southern Hawke's Bay. It flows initially eastward before turning south-west near Ormondville, flowing 40 km before turning...
penetrating to the Wairarapa
Wairarapa
Wairarapa is a geographical region of New Zealand. It occupies the south-eastern corner of the North Island, east of metropolitan Wellington and south-west of the Hawke's Bay region. It is lightly populated, having several rural service towns, with Masterton being the largest...
district, helping to stimulate its pastoral development. In 1843, he returned to Britain and became a publicist for the projected New Edinburgh settlement in Otago
Otago
Otago is a region of New Zealand in the south of the South Island. The region covers an area of approximately making it the country's second largest region. The population of Otago is...
in New Zealand's South Island. He travelled widely for this purpose for two years and appeared before a House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
Select Committee on New Zealand in June 1844 as an expert on the country. In September 1845, he was appointed to head the survey of the new Scottish settlement. He married Amelia Omer at St Peter's Sandwich
Sandwich
A sandwich is a food item, typically consisting of two or more slices of :bread with one or more fillings between them, or one slice of bread with a topping or toppings, commonly called an open sandwich. Sandwiches are a widely popular type of lunch food, typically taken to work or school, or...
, Kent, 10 September 1845.
Dunedin surveys
In his Otago surveys, Kettle made the first extensive use in New Zealand of trigonometrical methods and his urban and rural surveys have been described as 'painstaking'. He travelled extensively over the rugged Otago Block, whose daunting contours scarcely warrant a mention in his correspondence. He climbed Mount Maungatua on the Taieri Plain in 1847 and from there saw the interior of Central OtagoCentral Otago
Central Otago is the inland part of the New Zealand region of Otago in the South Island. The area commonly known as Central Otago includes both the Central Otago District and the Queenstown-Lakes District to the west....
. He identified the land as suited for pastoralism and correctly saw that as the colony's future economic mainstay. By March 1848, when the first immigrant ships arrived, the surveys' outlines were virtually complete.
Kettle continued working on the project for the next two years but after the demise of the New Zealand Company
New Zealand Company
The New Zealand Company originated in London in 1837 as the New Zealand Association with the aim of promoting the "systematic" colonisation of New Zealand. The association, and later the company, intended to follow the colonising principles of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of...
in 1850, his relations with William Cargill
William Cargill
William Walter Cargill was the founder of the Otago settlement in New Zealand, after serving as an officer in the British Army. He was a Member of Parliament and Otago's first Superintendent.-Early life:...
, leader of the Otago settlement, deteriorated, partly because Kettle was English while Cargill was narrowly Scottish. By 1852, Kettle had been made the colonial government's surveyor at Otago, thus resolving some of the tensions. In 1854 he resigned.
He had already made tours of the pastoral districts and had himself taken up some land for sheep runs. By 1860, he was able to sell his pastoral licences and retire to Dunedin. In 1861, he became a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives
New Zealand House of Representatives
The New Zealand House of Representatives is the sole chamber of the legislature of New Zealand. The House and the Queen of New Zealand form the New Zealand Parliament....
, the colonial parliament, the same year that saw the first gold rushes to the Otago hinterland. This greatly swelled the population of Dunedin. Many were camped in a place unprepared for such an influx. Sanitation broke down and Kettle died of typhoid fever on 5 June 1862, contracted, it is said, from a too-close examination of Dunedin's drains. His principal monument is the city that he surveyed and that many others built.
Kettle's instructions had been to reproduce, so far as possible, the characteristics of Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
in Scotland. (Hocken, 1898, p. 82.) He did not, as it is popularly supposed, simply impose that city's plan on Dunedin's site. He did not take Edinburgh's Old Town as his model, but the New Town
New Town, Edinburgh
The New Town is a central area of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It is often considered to be a masterpiece of city planning, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site...
, by that time perhaps the most widely-admired urban development in Europe. Kettle set out to juxtapose formality, regularity, symmetry and proportion - relieved from monotony by some designed-in features - with a bold and rugged nature to make the design Romantic in the manner of Edinburgh and the fashion of the day. While Edinburgh's New Town is a modern agora on a ridge, Dunedin's central city is a low-lying harbourside parade, set among bold hills, with distant views of harbour steeps and bushclad ridges, a Claudian seaport, a park of orderly temples lapped by water, in a rugged terrain.
Kettle achieved this with a central grid oriented roughly north and south beside the harbour with designed-in features, such as The Octagon
The Octagon, Dunedin
The Octagon is the city centre of Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand.-Features:The Octagon is an eight sided plaza bisected by the city's main street, which is called George Street to the northeast and Princes Street to the southwest...
, circled on the landward side by a reserved Town Belt to separate the city from its suburbs, the waters of the harbour forming its other margin. The modern central city is a Temple Plain. The carriageways descending the landward escarpment, such as High Street and Stuart Street, extraordinarily steep for the horse-drawn age, afford dramatic views of the town in its setting, as its author intended.
Kettle's town plan was the only nineteenth century one in New Zealand formed from a specific aesthetic instruction. While others such as those at Wellington and Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
combined similar elements of symmetry and regularity in a dramatic setting, Mein Smith's design for Wellington is considered dull and while Felton Matthew's for Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
is much better on paper, neither was more than partly realised.
In Dunedin, Presbyterian fortitude or perhaps the wealth suddenly afforded by the gold rushes resulted in Kettle's highly ambitious plan being mostly realised and extrapolated. There were (and still are) streets that tail off into flights of steps, and others, like Baldwin Street, that challenge the pedestrian. But by and large the vision was realised. The artist George O'Brien
George O'Brien (painter)
George O'Brien was an engineer of aristocratic background who turned to art in 19th century Australasia, dying in poverty but leaving a body of remarkable work.-Biography:...
has left a vivid record of the process and the result. Many of those works are in the Otago Settlers Museum
Otago Settlers Museum
The Otago Settlers Museum is a regional history museum in Dunedin, New Zealand. Its brief covers the territory of the old Otago Province, that is, New Zealand from the Waitaki River south. It is New Zealand's oldest and most extensive history museum...
, Dunedin, which also holds paintings by Kettle. His papers are in the Hocken Collections, Dunedin.
Member of Parliament
Kettle retired from surveying to Dunedin. He stood for election to the Provincial CouncilOtago Province
The Otago Province was a province of New Zealand until the abolition of provincial government in 1876.-Area:The capital of the province was Dunedin...
, but was unsuccessful. Kettle and Thomas Gillies
Thomas Gillies
Thomas Bannatyne Gillies was a 19th century New Zealand lawyer, judge and politician.-Early life:He was born at Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, on 17 January 1828...
were the only two candidates for the newly constituted two-member electorate of Bruce
Bruce (New Zealand electorate)
Bruce was a rural parliamentary electorate in the Otago region of New Zealand, from 1861 to 1922. For part of the 1860s with the influx to Otago of gold-miners it was a multi-member constituency with two members.-History:...
in the 1861 general election. They were thus declared elected unopposed on 11 February 1861. After having attended only one session of the 3rd New Zealand Parliament
3rd New Zealand Parliament
The 3rd New Zealand Parliament was a term of the Parliament of New Zealand. Elections for this term were held between 12 December 1860 and 28 March 1861 in 43 electorates to elect 53 MPs...
, he died of Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...
on 5 June 1862, and was buried in Dunedin Southern Cemetery
Dunedin Southern Cemetery
The Southern Cemetery in the New Zealand city of Dunedin was the first major cemetery to be opened in the city. The cemetery was opened in 1858, ten years after the founding of the city in an area known as "Little Paisley"...
.