His love of plants lives on in city streets
Contact columnist, The Ordinary Bloke, recently wondered in print about whose beneficence provided the Denton Bequest which has done so much for the beautification of Wellington. Clearly it is time to introduce this generation of Wellingtonians to William Henry Denton (1867-1954). Story by Anthony Dreaver.
The shabby old planter box at Perrett's Corner is blossoming. Rob
Pryor, landscape architect for the council's Parks and Reserves Department, has devised a fresh idea to lift the spirit … like the landscaping round the town hall … or… Parliament Street, the Dixon Street steps, the Shell Gully lookout … or like Denton Place.
Will Denton would have been pleased. He loved plants, especially native plants - and he loved Wellington. That is why he left money to make gardens in the city streets.
A plump, chunky, energetic man with a neat moustache, a lifelong bachelor, he lived for most of his 87 years and died in the same house - Fernhill. When you pass the junction of Ghuznee Street with The Terrace, you can catch a glimpse of Fernhill if you peer up the drive beside the Latter Day Saints headquarters.
A generous veranda once gave extensive views through native trees of a district with many associations for the Denton family: Wesley Church, the Star Boating Club, the family shop in Willis Street (ironmongery, gunsmith, curios) and many buildings erected by Will's grandfather, George Bennett. He and his wife Hannah (nee Harding) arrived in 1848. The second daughter, Eliza, described their life at Clay Point (Stewart Dawson's Corner), where the children played round Plimmer's Steps and scrambled over the rocky shore where her father dumped spoil from his shop-site to form Wellington's first reclamation.
Eliza was twenty when she married a handsome Yorkshireman, George Denton. Eight years later he bought Town Acre 439 (of the original New Zealand Company survey) and built a house proportioned to suit his growing family. Will was six years old when they moved in as neighbours to many notable figures in business, church and state. The land was hard and unsheltered, with a scrubby hillside rising behind. For two years a man worked on the grounds, with tree-planting as a main task.
George Denton was a member of the New Zealand Institute (Royal Society today), intellectual centre for a city without a university, and became secretary of the Acclimatisation Society. In the maturing garden at Fernhill he built breeding tanks for trout, and cages for blackbirds, thrushes, starlings, and finches which had made the long passage in a ship's hold from England. When strong enough, they were placed in carrying-boxes by the Denton boys and liberated in the Wellington hills.
It was a talented and enterprising family. The sons prospered in vocations that derived from their early experience - as engineer, jeweller, photographer, master cutler, farmer, and ironmonger. Two of the three daughters remained unmarried, sharing Fernhill with Will after their parents' deaths.
Sports, the outdoors, music, the Methodist church and the Temperance movement were interests shared by the family when they reassembled at Fernhill, as they frequently did, fur holidays, parties, or family conferences. When needed, an orchestra could he assembled for a family wedding or entertainment, Will Denton, in many ways a perpetual boy at heart, was master of ceremonies at the Christmas parties which delighted his numerous nieces and nephews and, in turn, their children.
He also continued and developed his father's interest in botany. Expertise in the natural sciences was widespread in the Wellington of Hector, Travers and Buller. Less common was Will Denton's love for cultivating New Zealand native plants - today, a major industry, then, a pleasant eccentricity. On the slope behind Fernhill he created a beautiful piece of bush out of his own collecting in the Tararuas and from donations by his many friends. A newspaper article probably dating from 1939, describes the area: "At the back of the house a spring wells up and has been diverted into a little trenched rivulet that half encircles the yard. Here mosses, ferns and curious alpine plants creep or bend according to their kind, and different varieties of punga ferns shade them. Twisty steps turn in a maze in the bush that slopes up the hill. Here almost every tree or shrub is different, and each one has a story that Mr Denton can relate with accurate knowledge." Waterfowl of many varieties, including native grey and paradise duck enjoyed a pond formed by this spring.
In later life, Will and his sister, Edith, split the house into flats and, in the 1950s, subdivided the grounds. As a memorial to their parents, they gave to the city council the 37 acres of George Denton Park, in Highbury, an area that still awaits development.
In 1954, at the age of 57, Will Denton died. The list of his beneficiaries is a rollcall of his enthusiasms for the natural world and for youth. They included Wellington College Old Boys’ Association, for grounds improvement (botanical, not playing fields). After various family dispositions, the residue was left to the Wellington City Council "for beautifying Wellington by botanical means".
Time and again, the availability of the interest on this fund has encouraged
Parks and Reserves management to expedite schemes that would otherwise have drawn heavily on ratepayers' funds. They include the "Welcome to Wellington” sign on the Hutt Road and the entrance to the zoo. When Perrett's Corner has been revitalized, Rob Pryor hopes to use Will Denton's bequest to landscape the berms along the cable car route.
Anthony Dreaver is a Wellington historian.
Article published in The Contact, 11 September 1987.
Gift Of Books To Library
A donation has been made to the Wellington libraries by Mr. W. H. Denton of material, mostly books on early New Zealand, from the library of his father, the late Mr. George Denton. [Correction: Books to Library from E.D. not W.H.]
The gift, announced by the chairman of the libraries committee (Councillor E. M. Gilmer) at last night's City Council meeting, was a valuable and useful addition to the New Zealand section of the reference library, she said. Individual citizens from time to time went to the library with early New Zealand books, and the collection of such material was much more impressive than it was a few years ago. Mr. Denton's continued interest in the city should serve as a stimulus to other citizens who were interested in seeing the collection of early local historical material as complete and useful to students as it could be.
"There must be many old residents in Wellington who have books in their possession that we would be glad to take care of for them," said Councillor Gilmer.