A whare for all
Sir James Henare Research Centre
This story begins with a 160-year old whare, sited in a vortex of overlapping histories. It becomes the tale of a city. The green and cream weatherboard cottage at 18 Wynyard Street is a rare survivor of the old houses that once lined the central Auckland street.
By a curious coincidence, the James Henare Research Centre is named after the great-grandson of Colonel Robert Henry Wynyard, the British leader Wynyard Street is named after.
Right now, it houses the James Henare Research Centre, a Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland research centre dedicated to empowering Māori in Te Tai Tokerau.
General Robert Henry Wynyard. Credit: Auckland Museum
General Robert Henry Wynyard. Credit: Auckland Museum
The cottage was built in the 1860s to provide housing for married British army officers during the land wars raging at that time. The street was named after Colonel Robert Henry Wynyard, above, the commanding officer of British armed forces in Aotearoa in the 1850s and acting Governor of New Zealand for a year. Colonel Wynyard lived among other colonial officers in Officials Bay visible from Wynyard Street then. The Māori name for Officials Bay is Te Hororoa, the slipping away.
It was a short stroll from Wynyard Street to Te Hororoa before extensive land reclamation occurred between the 1870s and 1920s. Now, the shoreline is covered in asphalt and named Beach Road. Despite massive changes in the area over the past 160 years, stories have surfaced from the earth beside the cottage on Wynyard Street.
Around 2007, when buildings to the south of the cottage were demolished to make way for the University’s Sir Owen G Glenn Business School, an archaeological team found a midden in the vicinity of today’s Fisher and Paykel Appliances Auditorium. The midden contained traces of Māori life on the whenua - obsidian flakes, chert and greywacke tools, and a bird-bone awl that may have been used to make dog-skin cloaks.
The earth under our feet is full of fragments.
The archaeologists noted that Te Reuroa Pā once stood at the top of Constitution Hill, near where Auckland High Court now stands. In Albert Park, there was also a significant settlement - the Ngāti Whātua kāinga, Rangipuke, and a fortified pā called Te Horotiu, in the northwestern corner of the park.
Māori valued the hilltop because the elevated site was good for growing crops and easy to defend, while two freshwater streams ran into the bays below.
In the 1840s, British military barracks were built at what is now Albert Park. Once a Māori pa, Albert Barracks became a nine-hectare military compound, which the early British used to secure their position against Māori. Part of the basalt wall that once circled Albert Barracks still snakes through the University grounds.
Before European histories begin, the whenua beside the cottage might have been used by Māori for preparing flax and food and making garments, say archeologists.
The earth under our feet is full of fragments. But it’s difficult to see the past because reclaiming the shoreline involved digging up the hills where Māori once lived and worked. Parts of Tāmaki Makaurau were flattened beyond recognition, then concreted over, in the process of becoming Auckland city.
The Wynyard Street cottage has also changed over the years. It was restructured in the 1920s by Malcolm Draffin, one of the architects who designed Auckland War Memorial Museum. The house glimpsed the limelight, during a brief season when it became a theatre. British star Vivien Leigh visited in 1962 and the venue was named in her honour.
But the owner and manager of Vivien Leigh Theatre was jailed for his homosexuality and the theatre doors were slammed shut before a single show was staged. Later in the 1960s, the University bought the building. Education and Anthropology departments took over the space, until it became a Māori research centre in 1993.
By a curious coincidence, the research centre is named after Sir James Henare, the great-grandson of Colonel Robert Henry Wynyard, the British leader Wynyard Street is named after.
Sir James was the son of Taurekareka Henare, who was the son of Hēnare Wynyard, the illicit son Colonel Robert Wynyard had fathered to a Maōri woman. Taurekareka was closely connected to great warriors, including Kāwiti and Hone Heke.
Taurekareka changed the family name from Wynyard to his father’s Christian name, Hēnare, as a means of aligning with a whakapapa that led to Kāwiti and Hone Heke, rather than a British bloodline that led to Wynyard.
In 1845, Colonel Robert Wynard fought in a British army that attached Ruapekapeka pā in Northland. The Māori defending the pā included Kāwiti and Hone Heke. That left Taurekareka looking back at a history in which his ancestors did battle – and he chose the Māori side and became a Henare.
Taurekareka’s son, Sir James Henare, was a Ngāti Hine rangatira born in the Bay of Islands. Sir James served as commanding officer of the Māori Battalion in World War Two and later became a champion for Māori education and the kōhanga reo movement.
A man of great mana, he helped Ngāti Whātua Orākei during their Waitangi Tribunal claim in the 1980s. After he died in 1989, Ngāti Whātua leaders asked if his name might be given to the new centre. The name Henare returned to claim ground on Wynyard Street.
Bernard Henare, chair of the James Henare Centre, a transdisciplinary research centre.
Bernard Henare, chair of the James Henare Centre, a transdisciplinary research centre.
The whare at 18 Wynyard St is shrouded in layers of the past that open to the future
Sir James’ son, Bernard Henare, is now chair of the transdisciplinary centre, which aims to improve the social, environmental, and economic wellbeing of Māori in Northland and Auckland. In the 1990s, Ngāti Porou master carver Pakaariki Harrison created two pou and a lintel for the entrance to the centre.
The whakairo physically and symbolically transformed the house into a whare for its official opening in 1994. Several years ago, the pou were removed, because they needed restoration. Pakaariki’s son, Fred Harrison, has breathed life into the whakairo again.
The carvings were returned to cloak the whare early in May 2026. The whare at 18 Wynyard Street – a road that has not yet been renamed – is shrouded in layers of the past that open to the future. Maybe one day, the whare will open its doors at Henare Street.
Article by Ahmed Uzair Aziz, PhD candidate in Māori Studies, researcher and administrator James Henare Research Centre. This article is from Mātātaki|The Challenge, a continuing series about research and innovation at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.
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