Band Rotunda - Island Bay

Patricia Hutchison

Island Bay's war memorial takes the form of a modest concrete band rotunda, a functional as well as a symbolic structure. The building has social value for this reason, and although little used today for its original purpose as a band stand it still forms the focal point of an open space near the beach and, in the summer especially, it sees community use. The Island Bay Festival, an event held in February for a number of years, uses the Band Rotunda as a focal point for any entertainment.

Although the proposal to build a band rotunda at Island Bay was first mooted in 1914, it was not until 1927 that the idea for a band rotunda was again promoted, this time by an organisation known as the Island Bay Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Committee who had gathered f400 towards the cost and sought a subsidy from the council to fund the work. The Council's Reserve Committee granted

€200 towards the cost of the rotunda.

Following negotiations between the council and the Memorial Committee over the siting of the rotunda, tenders were called by the City Engineer on 14 October 1929. The successful tender was from H.S. Anyon of Ngaio, and the completed rotunda was handed over to the City on 20 February, 1930. It was opened by the Mayor George Troup on 16 March 1930.

Plaques set into the sides of the structure commemorate the 106 young men from the south coast of Island Bay, Houghton Bay and Happy Valley who served overseas during the 1914-18 conflict, and those from these regions who paid the supreme sacrifice in World War Two.

Traditionally Anzac Day has been marked with a ceremony continuing the Rotunda's commemorative

The Island Bay Memorial Band Rotunda

Kathryn Street

First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 10 2014/2015

In the first weekend after Waitangi Day in 2011 a community festival under blue skies at the Wellington seaside saw children, teenagers, and adults stretched out on a patch of grass between the attractions of a bouncy castle and performers in an aged band rotunda. If they had noticed the poster promoting the Island Bay Festival, members of the crowd may have registered the irony of its illustration which proclaimed that ancient astronomers (and local identity Harry Midgley) had ascertained the concrete and copper-clad band rotunda was "the centre of the Universe."

Briefly, for a moment 81 years earlier, the Island Bay War Memorial Band Rotunda had in fact been the figurative centre of the universe for some members of the local community, when in March 1930 the Wellington Mayor George Troup officially dedicated the structure "before a large gathering of residents and their children.” It had been almost nine years since a meeting of the Island Bay Municipal Electors and Ratepayers first established a committee to investigate options for a war memorial, with some not entirely convinced about the proposed band rotunda and instead "favouring the idea of a monument and others supporting the erection of handsome gates". 

The committee established in 1921cannot have envisaged the sausage sizzles, sand castle competitions, seniors' soap-making classes and yoga on the beach demonstrations that feature in Island Bay Festivals. But perhaps they intended that the war memorial band rotunda would be firmly at the centre of community life and identity and its commemorative memorial purpose relegated to an occasional role.

The reporting of the 1921 meeting provides an insight into the ambiguity and conflict within the community's notions of the purpose of the memorial. The memorial was described as being in honour of both those who "served” in the war, and “those who died in defence of the Empire.” At that year's sombre local ANZAC service held a few months earlier at St Hilda's Anglican Church, the "special memorial character" of the evening involved reading aloud "the roll of those of the parish who had given their lives in the war". 

Most war memorials in New Zealand recall the names of those who died, but some list any who served. The Island Bay memorial seems always to have been intended to recall all; living and killed. As the funding, design, and purpose of the memorial rotunda was debated throughout the1920s, the nature of the remembrance vacillated between a focus on the "lsland Bay boys who served their country". to "all those who served in the Great War from the Island Bay district,” and then back to "the men from the district who served", an expression that ignored some important contributions from women.

The difficulty in deciding whose names would be forever remembered on the memorial led to an extraordinary exchange of correspondence between Harold Miller of the Memorial Committee and the City Engineer George Hart. After four months of apparently fruitless requests to be provided with the names for engraving and design purposes, the City Engineer finally told Mr Miller it was "absolutely essential" that he have the list within two days. 

Mr Hart's impatience is perhaps explained by a document he had received from Mr Miller around a fortnight earlier, after the tender for construction had already been let. Scrawled haphazardly in pencil on a spare invoice from the Fowlds clothing store, where Mr Miller worked, was a partial list of names in no apparent order ("a few more to come, say 20" is annotated on the document), and a rough sketch of how the dedication should appear on the primary commemorative tablet. Mr Miller originally dedicated the memorial to "the men who enlisted”, but the wording was crossed out and replaced with "those who enlisted”. Similarly, an epithet "to those who gave their lives: is honour given” was struck out by hand. This apparently arbitrary 'back of the envelope' design suggests that concepts of nobility and monumental tribute perhaps came second to ambitions for the form and function of the band rotunda, for which the contract included 600 square feet of copper sheeting and 88 linear feet of copper guttering in its domed roof, with a total construction cost of £1012.

The final cost of the rotunda was close to the price of modest four or five-room Island Bay bungalows, which sold for between £1250 and £1450 at the time. The war memorial band rotunda was constructed in a little over three months during the summer of 1929/30, in an austere modernist design with no distinctly New Zealand motifs or symbols, nor any real adornment at all, save for the inscribed marble tablets. Residents had originally requested the City Engineer produce a design that featured a "base of smooth sea boulders" gathered from the nearby coast, but the request to incorporate local elements to the memorial was not followed through. 

The design incorporates square archways and columns but these could be considered as essential and practical requirements of a band rotunda, and the City Council archives contain not so much as a hint that these designs were influenced by the geometry of classical ancient architecture or temples. There is no religious iconography and only a muted imperial reference, with the original 1930 plaque noting the services rendered to “King and Country.” There is no allusion to the horrors of death, nor even specifically to loss, as many of those named on the memorial were still living. Subsequent plaques were added to commemorate two quite separate aspects of World War Ⅱ, and they are distinguished from the World War I plaques in that they explicitly honour those who died. A plain marble plaque was arranged by the Island Bay branch of RSA in late 1959, its inscription recording it was “in memory of those from the above districts who made the supreme sacrifice during World War ll. 

Another World War ll plaque was dedicated by the Wellington Mayor on American Independence Day, 4 July 1979, after discussions involving the U.S. Embassy, the Wellington City Council and the Wellington RSA. This plaque honours American sailors who lost their lives while serving on submarines in the Pacific, and illustrated how the changing nature of commemoration can transform the original purpose of a memorial over time. The submariners plaque is not only out of keeping with the original intent of the memorial, which was to remember local people who served, but its dedication occurred at the height of the anti-nuclear protest movement in New Zealand, when visits by modern U.S. nuclear submarines generated protest and political division. 

The rotunda itself, however, retains its original form, despite an appeal from residents for City Council support in 1953 that would have transformed the minimalist war memorial rotunda into a twinkling imperial symbol, by connecting electricity and lights to the dome and "probably a crown on the top" in time for the Royal Visit to Wellington by Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ.

The name of at least one woman appeared amongst the list of 106 names on the original plaques installed in 1930. Christine Smith, an army nurse who served in Egypt and England, was the only person identified by first name rather than initials (apart from Chas Perry, presumably to distinguish him from another soldier by the name of C Perry). A second nurse, Vera Dawson, appeared in a list of 17 names on a plaque installed more than four and a half years later and again, she was the only one distinguished by the inclusion of a first name. Both women survived the war, living into the 1970s. Ironically, in the memorial's attempt to commemorate women's service equally alongside that of men, the women are given a more complete identity through the use of their given names. The Island Bay structure is unusual for commemorating women in this way, as nurses' names more typically appeared at the end of the list of servicemen. 

There were both survivors and casualties listed on the plaques, yet even then, a random search of the Auckland Museum online Cenotaph database indicates it is an imprecise listing of those who served. None are elevated or even mentioned by rank, and the only classification system is alphabetically by surname. The reliance on veterans or their families to self-identify names for inclusion on the plaques leaves open the possibility that some were omitted either because they moved away from the area after the war, or possibly, that some servicemen or women actively chose to not be involved in memorialising the war at all. Indeed, a letter to the editor from "Digger” who claimed to have fought at Ypres appeared in the Evening Post after it ran a story about the band rotunda, castigating the priorities of those who planned monuments to honour war service. And what is one to make, for instance, of the curiosity that EPJM Cousins is listed on the memorial yet EP Cousins is not, despite the fact the soldiers listed their father and mother(respectively) as their next of kin, the parents residing at the same Island Bay address, and they may well have been brothers?

The rotunda has played a minor role in ANZAC Day events, but it appears that upon completion, the war memorial band rotunda slipped almost immediately into the role of another seaside attraction at the end of the tram route, along with nearby amenities such as the popular 1906-era Blue Platter Tea Rooms, the dressing sheds and diving pier installed in 1924 by the Island Bay Sunbathing and Swimming Club, and the playground laid out at Shorland Park in 1930. It was quite plainly a secular, civic structure, devoted to the enjoyment of music. The monument thus speaks for men and women, the living and the dead, the named and the un-named, and functions as a civic amenity and a war memorial. This all-embracing utility, whether deliberate or haphazard, puts the Island Bay War Memorial Band Rotunda in a minority group of New Zealand war memorials. The design itself is unusual in a New Zealand setting, with just four band rotundas built specifically as World War One memorials (the others are at Dargaville in Northland, Manaia in Taranaki, and Hagley Park in Christchurch), out of almost 500 WWI memorials recorded by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. 

The band rotunda is also a triumph of the functional over the simply ornamental, in the same way as other communities wanted memorials to double as facilities that could actually be used, such as halls, libraries, hospitals, schools, swimming baths, and even several bridges. These utilitarian monuments had fallen distinctly out of official favour by as early as 1919 due to the influence of the WWI Defence Minister and post-war acting Prime Minister Sir James Allen, who is credited with ensuring "the vast majority of New Zealand war memorials do not serve anything other than an ornamental purpose” so as to reinforce heroic and noble ideals of war. An estimated 78 percent of WWI memorials are classified as monumental, with the remainder semi-functional structures, buildings or greenery. Further, around 85 per cent of memorials named only the dead. Sir James Allen's definition of noble art forms would have been unlikely to include live performance. Yet that is precisely for that a band rotunda is designed. 

Historian Jay Winter has suggested that "hope is a central theme in secular commemoration”. If his observation is applied to the Island Bay War Memorial Band Rotunda, the living could hope to not merely go about their lives after the war, but they could also hope to enjoy life. It is certainly how George Troup intended the memorial rotunda to be used when he opened it in 1930. The British-born Mayor was a deeply religious man who was active in the Presbyterian Church in Wellington, yet the newspaper report of his speech contains not a single Christian reference. Instead he took a more existential theme, and "urged the young people to think of those whom the memorial perpetuated as living and not dead.” Indeed, for Mayor Troup, the band rotunda was a mere symbol, an ‘emblem': 

"The emblem itself is a dead thing, the memory and love which it contains are living things...as we hear the strains of sweet music coming from under this canopy may it always be as the sound of many voices - the voices of those who strove to keep our heritage safe and free, and hearing those voices may one and all be nerved to follow whenever and wherever the call of duty may come to them.”

It is not what was contained within the band rotunda that made it a war memorial, like a cenotaph, or inscribed upon it, like a gate or plinth, but what was broadcast from it. The band rotunda required a human and musical presence to make it work as intended, to activate it. It was a shell that would only come to life if there was an animated presence within. Reaching out to touch war memorials has long been noted as an important aspect of remembrance. In the case of the Island Bay War Memorial Band Rotunda, it is important to listen as well.

Full sources available on request.

The Band Rotunda Names 

Colin Feslier 

As Kathryn Street's article points out, there are mysteries about the names on the band rotunda, and we are indebted to her research which has indicated the curious and hurried arrangements made so long after the war to inscribe the names. 

The most egregious omission is the names of some of those, clearly 'from the area' who died in World War I. The rotunda names 123 men and women, but omits at least 35 local men who were killed in action or died of wounds. These have been identified by searching the Auckland Cenotaph database for address of next-of-kin and enlistment address. It is therefore likely to underestimate our forgotten fallen. But of course, the rotunda listed those who served - and research using the same method identifies at least 208 from Island, Ōwhiro and Houghton Bays who served. The 122 names include some who appear to have been from surrounding areas such as Newtown, and a small number who may have been fighting with non-New Zealand forces. So it seems likely that some 50 surviving First World warriors have been left off, along with their 35 fallen comrades.

There are also interesting overlaps and discrepancies between the rotunda names and those listed on the St Hilda's memorial board, and those whose names were inscribed on the memorials in the Baptist and Presbyterian churched. Now that we can use modern research to find the names with reasonable accuracy, would we as a community consider adding the missing names? 

Mr and Mrs George and Emily Hogben of 205 Clyde Street had three sons go to World War I. George was killed on 8 August 1915 at Gallipoli. Herbert was killed on 27 March 1918, in France. Their brother Edward survived. None is remembered on the band rotunda. And if the Hogbens should be added, should we also add the names of World War ll  servicemen and women? 

There were at least 25 casualties from the area in World War ll, but present databases do not allow for easy searching for those who returned alive. In the case of the World War I soldiers and nurses, we know quite a lot: where they enlisted; their next-of kin, their occupations, and for the fallen, details of their final resting place, if it is known. It is a sobering exercise to trawl through the names, realizing the huge extent of the commitment from what was then a very much smaller community. It may be that it would be better to provide the full list of names online, on our website, and to leave the decisions of the past to the past. The names added to the rotunda in the 1930s were the names remembered then, and the disruption of memory, the bitterness of loss, and the enormity of the task of finding the names of local men to record is a part of our history also. Those who served did their bit. I think we just have to assume that those who were given the task of finding the names also did their best.

The Band Rotunda Dead of World War l; the 16 remembered

Of the 123 names on the Band Rotunda Memorial, only 16 are of people known to have died in World War I. A further 35 locally-linked men who could have been listed on the rotunda, but were not, also died in the war. 

The list below is of those who are listed on the rotunda and are known to have died as a result of the war. This list is drawn from information on the Auckland Museum Cenotaph database as published in War and Peace in the Southern Bays by Society life member Patricia Hutchinson (2009)

Bowker, George Allan Private. Aged 27. Killed in action Gallipoli, 8 August 1915 Father: George Bowker Trent St Island Bay; Listed on St Hilda's Board of Honour. Enlisted from Otaki Railway 

Hosie, Alfred James Private. Died of wounds, France, 16 July 1916. Father: Robert Hosie, 59 Leraud (Lavaud) Street, Wellington. Hosie,  his brother Wilfred George Rifleman also died in action, France, on 15 September 1916. but he is not listed on the Band Rotunda War Memorial.

Innes, William George Private. Killed in action, Ypres, Belgium, 12 August 1917. Father: George Innes, Glanton, Northumberland, UK. Enlisted from Clyde St, Island Bay.

Johnson, George Albert Sergeant, Aged 27. Killed in action, Havrincourt, France, 13 September 1918. Parents: Charles John and Mary Anne Johnson, Clyde St, Island Bay. George Johnson is commemorated on one of the bells (donated by Annie Ethel and Flora Christina Johnson) of the Wellington Memorial Carillon.

Mailman, Alfred Clarence Private. Aged 19. Killed in action, Gallipoli 27 April 1915. Parents: Mr and Mrs Alfred Eaton Mailman of 222,Clyde St, Island Bay. Enlisted from Wanganui. Brother of Victor Eaton Mailman.

Mailman, Victor Eaton Lance Sergeant. Aged 21. Killed in action, Gallipoli, 8 August 1915. Parents: Mr and Mrs Alfred Eaton Mailman of 222, Clyde St, Island Bay . Enlisted from Wanganui. Brother of Alfred Clarence Mailman.

Marsden, James Walter Sapper. Aged 32. Buried in Jerusalem, Palestine. Died 19 April 1917. Wife: Alice Marsden 28 Cornwall St, Island Bay. This soldier was not listed on the Cenotaph database in February 2009. May be the same person as Marsden, J.S., listed on the Band Rotunda War Memorial.

Mason, Harold Rifleman. Aged 32. Killed in action, Le Cateau, France, 8 October 1918. Parents: William and Mary Friend Mason, 9 Arne [possibly Avon] St Island Bay. The Auckland Weekly News of the time listed him as 'accidentally killed".

Masters, Charles Gordon Private. Died of wounds, France 24 August 1917. Parents: Mr and Mrs H. Masters, Reef St, Island Bay.

McKay, Eric Gordon Private. Aged 29. Killed in action, Gallipoli 8 August 1915. Parents: Angus and Catherine McKay, 7 Danube St, Island Bay.

Milne, Garnet Ryland Private. Killed in action, Somme France, 28 September 1916. Father: John Milne, Wharemoana, Island Bay. Named on St Hilda's Board of Honour.

Nicol, Robert Kenneth, MC Captain. Died 1918, Persia 

Sarratt, William Sergeant. Died of wounds, Belgium, 2 August 1917. Enlisted from 17 Ribble Street. Father in England. 

Shearer, Percy Private. Killed in action, Gallipoli, 8 May 1915. Father: Walter G. Shearer, 16 Governor Road, Northland, Wellington.

Tucker, Frederick Trooper. Aged 45. Killed in action, Palestine 04 January 1918. Sister: Miss J. Tucker, 188 The Parade, Island Bay. Enlisted from 124 Clyde St Island Bay.

Wilson, John Alexander Private. Killed in action, Havrincourt, France, 29 September 1918. Parents: William Henry and N. Wilson,149 Melbourne Road, Island Bay.

In due course the plaque was placed on board the Farrell Line vessel Austral Venture in New York. The vessel under the command of Captain H. Osterbye arrived in Wellington on 13 April 1979 and the plaque was accepted on behalf of the Wellington City Council by the deputy town clerk Mr A.J. Smith. The plaque was placed facing the sea on the south-eastern side of the Rotunda. 

Every year since the plaque was presented the American Embassy has had a representative attending the Island Bay Anzac Day parade.