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Kerikeri Mission Station

Two of New Zealand's oldest buildings are situated in the Kerikeri Basin. Kemp House and the Stone Store are the only survivors from the Church Missionary Society's second Anglican mission to New Zealand, founded in 1819 on land granted to the Reverend Samuel Marsden by the powerful Maori Nga Puhi chief, Hongi Hika.

Kemp House is the oldest surviving European building in New Zealand. The Stone Store is the country's oldest surviving stone building.

Kemp House was built by the Reverend John Gare Butler in 1821-22 as a mission house. From 1824-31 the house was occupied by the lay missionary George Clarke and from mid-1832 by blacksmith and lay missionary James Kemp and his family. The mission was closed in 1848, but the Kemps stayed on, eventually buying the house from the Missionary Society. Their descendants lived there until 1974 when Ernest Kemp presented the house and most of its contents to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. The garden, first dug in 1820 and cultivated ever since, recalls this mission period.

The nearby Stone Store was built in 1832-36 as a storehouse for the mission. After the mission's closure in 1848 it was taken over by the Kemp family and leased by a succession of storekeepers. In 1976 the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, which continued to operate it as a shop, bought it from the A.E. Kemp Estate. The building has had major conservation and renovation work and reopened for the public during 1998.

www.kerikeri.co.nz/feature