Howick, New Zealand

This article is about the suburb of Manukau City in New Zealand. For the South African town, see Howick, South Africa.

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Howick is a eastern suburb of Manukau City which is a part of south Auckland.

Howick is named after Henry George Grey, 3rd Earl Grey as Viscount Howick, who was Secretary for the Colonies in the British Parliament and was responsible for the Royal New Zealand Fencible Corps immigration scheme.

His family home is Howick Hall, Northumberland, England.

There were about 250 Fencibles in Howick.

The local iwi (Maori tribe) was the Ngai Tai people of Tainui descent. They had lived here for over 1,000 years with pa (fortified villages) at Ohuia Rangi (Pigeon Mount), Te Waiarohia (Musick Point) and Tuwakamana (Cockle Bay).

The Howick, Pakuranga, and Whitford areas were part of the Fairburn claim. William Thomas Fairburn, with his wife and family, established a Church Missionary Society Mission Station at Maraetai in 1836.

The local Maori insisted they buy the 40,000 acres (162 km²) between the Tamaki and Wairoa Rivers to prevent attack by the Ngapuhi and Waikato tribes.

As an act of Christian peacemaking, Fairburn reluctantly bought the land with his life savings.

In 1840, following the Treaty of Waitangi, the Government took 36,000 acres (146 km²) which it used for the Fencible settlements of Otahuhu and Howick and sold most of the remaining land to settlers, as well as paying Maori and returning most of the Wairoa Valley to them.

The Maori welcomed the Fencibles to Howick and recognised the advantages of co-operation and trade. Maori labourers built the Fencibles cottages under Royal Engineers supervision.

Howick's links to Auckland’s pioneering and Fencible past has influenced its development and is also evident in the names of many streets. Others are significantly named for British military heroes or battles.

Bleakhouse (as in Bleakhouse Rd) was the name given to a Fencible officer’s house built in Bleakhouse Rd for Surgeon-Captain Bacot who became a magistrate in Howick.

Later, in the hands of the Macleans family it became the heart of the social scene in the 1850s and ’60s. The house was burnt down in 1910 but gave its name to the street.

Other roads such as Bacot, Bell, Fencible Drive, Montressor Place and Sale St, plus many others, also have Fencible links, eg Sir Robert Sale was one of the ships which brought the Fencibles to Auckland in the 19th century.

Montressor Place was named for Captain Charles Henry Montressor-Smith who arrived in Howick with the First Battalion of Fencibles in 1847. He later moved to a property in neighbouring Pakuranga, where his house, known as Bell House, still stands at the end of Bell Rd next to the Howick Historical Village.

Moore St was named after General Sir John Moore, a British military hero, who lived from 1761-1809. General Moore fought against Napoleon alongside Sir David Baird for whom Baird St was named and he (Moore) died at Corinna during the Peninsula Wars whilst serving under the Duke of Wellington. At Corinna he was attended by Dr J. Bacot, father of the Howick Fencible doctor, who lived in Bleakhouse.

Moore St was part of the original Fencible village and was sub-divided into one acre (4,000 m²) allotments down to Rodney St. People will, no doubt, recognise that Wellington and Nelson Sts spring from the most famous of British war heroes, Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington and that Selwyn St takes its name from the first and only Bishop of New Zealand.

Then there are streets such as Granger Rd named for John Granger, manager of the brick works, which once stood at Buckland's Beach before moving to Whitford; or Litten Rd named after a former farmer and landowner.

Settlement in Howick centred around the domain, and the village developed as a service centre for the prosperous farming community. It later became popular as a retirement and seaside holiday location.

From the late 1940s to the 1970s the Howick area experienced rapid growth, and in 1990 the re-organisation of local body government in New Zealand saw Howick become a ward within Manukau City, with its Borough Council being replaced by a Community Board and Councillor representation.