Stokes Valley, a major suburb of the city of Lower Hutt in the North Island of New Zealand, lies at the edge of the city, seven kilometres northeast of the city centre. It occupies the valley of a small tributary of the Hutt River, called Stokes Valley Stream, which flows north to meet the main river close to the Taitā Gorge. Stokes Valley takes its name from Robert Stokes, who formed part of the original survey team of 1840 commissioned to plan the city at Thorndon in Wellington.
Stokes Valley comprises a suburb in its own valley, physically separated from the rest of Lower Hutt. It is surrounded on all sides by densely forested hills. Geology and early history It has been suggested that the valley was formed during the ice age 10,000–20,000 years ago by glacial scouring, but considering that the Hutt Valley and the greater Wellington area have experienced major tectonic uplifting it is possible that the valley was formed through major earthquakes and erosion.
According to tradition, Māori arrived in the Hutt Valley in about 1250 AD when the two sons of Whatonga, a Hawke's Bay chief, settled in the area and named the Hutt River Heretaunga, after their old home.McLintock, A.H. (ed.) (1966) An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. Wellington: New Zealand Government Printers. Although Māori had lived in the Hutt Valley for almost 600 years prior to Europeans, there has been no evidence of Māori habitation in Stokes Valley and the closest iwi (tribe), located at Waiwhetū, say they never used the valley for any significant purpose before Europeans arrived. Stokes Valley was located at the junction of the claimed territory of three major Māori tribes, the Te Āti Awa who sold it to European settlers, Ngāti Toa, and the Ngāti Kahungunu, and for this reason it would have in all likelihood never have been inhabited. This partially explains an extreme willingness to include this land in the sale to the early settlers.Watts, M. & P. (1953). Stokes Valley... Through the Years. Wellington: Commercial Printing and Publishing Co.
Modern history The modern history of the area, as far as European settlement is concerned, began on 21 September 1839, when local Te Āti Awa chief Te Puni gestured with his arms and pointed finger the areas of the Hutt Valley and Wellington, that he was willing to sell to the New Zealand Land Company through its agent Colonel William Wakefield aboard the ship Tory.Ward, L.E. (?). Early Wellington. Stokes Valley, which at that time was simply an unnamed branch valley of the Hutt Valley, was included in this land.
The second of the New Zealand Company's ships to arrive in Wellington was the 273-ton Cuba on 3 January 1840. It had on board 20 able-bodied men aged from 20 to 27. Among these was the Company's surveying party, whose duty was to plan the city at Thorndon and survey the site in readiness for the arrival of the emigrants who already procured sections in London. The first emigrant ship, containing 85 adult settlers and their 42 children, arrived only 17 days later. At this stage there was no sections or shelters surveyed for most of the people, and many had to live in huts built by the Māori, or simply shelter under karaka trees. The Wellington and Hutt Valley area was hurriedly surveyed.
The original survey party that arrived in 1840 on the Cuba comprised Captain William Mein Smith (Surveyor General) and Messrs. R. D. Hanson, W. Carrington, R. Park, R. Stokes, and K. Bethune, all well known personalities in the early history of Wellington. Robert Stokes, after whom the valley was named, was initially active surveying a 'valley east of the valley of the Hutt' from 30 March to 2 April 1841, resuming the following 14 October for a few more days,Stokes Field Note Book No 2; NZ National Archives item R23195399 highly probably referring to the area first named as Stokes Valley in a plan of January 1843. Stokes left the employ of the New Zealand Company in early 1842 and went into business for himself. Stokes Street in Wellington was named in his honour in the 1841 map of Wellington.
Robert Stokes took a prominent part in Wellington affairs, including government. He published a work in 1844 on the Wairau Affray, led the first European crossing of the Rimutaka range to the Wairarapa, built a once-famous house in Wellington, "Saint Ruadhan", on Woolcombe Street (since demolished; the site now forms part of The Terrace). He was a keen gardener, known for his prize-winning vegetables and flowers, and was also a keen botanist, and was treasurer of the Horticultural and Botanical Society. He became a publisher and printer,Stokes is listed as a printer in the 1847 Electoral Roll. his name appearing on The New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian as a printer"Memorial of the Settlers of Wellington and the Neighbouring Districts on the Land Claims Ordinance and Pasturage Regulations", The New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, 3 April 1852, p. 3 He was a prominent speaker, and was instrumental in carrying a Bill to establish a municipal corporation for Wellington and a railway link to the Wairarapa. Stokes stood as an elected member of the Wairarapa Council in 1867, and was a Member of the Victoria University of Wellington Senate from 1871 to 1878. Stokes died at Clanricarde Gardens, London, on 20 January 1880.The New Zealand Gazette, 26 March 1842The New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, 16 August 1845.
Crown Grants The first Crown Land Grants in Stokes Valley were made from 18 January 1853. Section 74 was granted to Robert Henry Wood and Section 73 to George Hart. Wood never settled in the valley, even though he received another land grant of section 67. There is no known evidence that he ever left England, and it was common to have absentee ownership of Crown grants in those days, but it is known that he served on the Committee of the First Colony formed in London. Hart who was born in London, also never settled in the valley, but he did leave England after receiving the land grant, arriving on the ship Mary in 1843. In 1863 he was appointed Commissioner of Thorndon for the Thorndon Ward of the Wellington Town Board. The first person to actually settle in Stokes Valley after the making of Crown Grants was Mr. Hart Udy who immediately set up a saw mill on his property at the entrance to the Valley on the north East side of the main road. His property was plot or Section 65 of the original Crown land grant.
Early settlement Mr. William Judd Sr. was known as the first resident of Stokes Valley. Judd arrived at Port Nicholson on the ship Martha Ridgway in July 1840 along with his wife Anne and their sons John, George, and Stephen. The Judds initially lived at Lower Hutt after arriving, but after the birth of his fourth son and upon securing a contract to make a road through the Taitā Gorge, Judd moved with his family to the entrance of Stokes Valley. He constructed a home on a leasehold title on the southern side of the present Stokes Valley main road. The exact date of his move to the valley is unknown, but his name is listed in the "Memorial of the Settlers of Wellington and the Neighbouring Districts..." published in the local newspaper of the time in April 1852. His house was recorded as severely damaged in the earthquake of 23 February 1855 and he most likely lived in the valley for several years before 1852. It was in this house that the last three members of his family were born. This possibly puts his settlement in the valley in the late 1840s.
George Spackman (a contender for first settler) was also known to reside in Stokes Valley as early as 3 April 1852 and is listed beside Mr Judd in the "Memorial of the Settlers...". Spackman is listed on the 1854 Electoral Roll as a settler residing on a leasehold in Stokes Valley,1854 Electoral Roll Spackman arrived with his wife on the ship Bolton on 21 April 1840, and a son was born to them three months later. George Spackman paraded with the "Old Identities" who attended the capital's Jubilee of Colonisation in 1890.
Mr. Hart Udy, after whom Udy Street in Petone is named, was born in Cornwall in 1808. In 1839 he left England for New Zealand with his wife and family on the New Zealand Company's ship Duke of Roxburgh, arriving in Petone in February 1840. Hart worked for Sir Francis Molesworth on the building of the first cutter and house to be built from New Zealand timber. After working for three years in Wellington as a shipwrightEvening Post, Volume XL, Issue 129, 28 November 1890, Page 2> at the stream near Staples Brewery he moved to Waiwhetū (now a suburb of Lower Hutt), where he worked as a carpenter for many years. On 1 March 1845 his house was pillaged by local Mãori. In 1849 he built the first Anglican church in Lower Hutt near the Hutt Bridge . On 24 May 1852 Mr Hart Udy by mutual consent dissolved a Saw Milling partnership which he had with William Corbett and Richard Blake that was based in Stokes Valley, so it is assumed he had worked in the valley for a significant time before then.Wellington Independent, Volume VIII, Issue 696, 12 June 1852, Page 1/> He moved to Stokes Valley in 1853, and resided there until 1857, when he took his family to Matarawa where he had access to valuable bush-clad land. A source says that Udy set up a sawmill at the valley mouth in 1858, but it doesn't make it clear whether this was the original one he dissolved in 1852 that he reactivated or an additional one. He carried on the family sawmilling business until 1865, when he retired leaving it to his sons. Mr Hart Udy Jr., who was five years old when his parents arrived in 1840, married Elizabeth Holland of Petone in 1855, their first home being in Stokes Valley. He was also involved in his father's sawmilling business and moved with him to Matarawa. Mr Hart Jr. later became Mayor of the Borough of Greytown. Mr Hart Udy Sr died on 27 November 1890 in Greytown aged 82 from complications from a bone he had accidentally swallowed, he had 90 direct descendants, and was Justice of the peace of Greytown & greatly missed.
For a long time many made their living by felling timber, splitting posts and rails, and timber production as the valley had a large amount of native bush, including birch, rimu, rātā, tōtara, and white pine. The bush was populated with a considerable amount of wildlife, including weka, California quail, and wild pigs. Once the bush was largely cleared, it was found that the valley's soil had little to offer for farm production and for a time Stokes Valley was known as "Starvation Valley" owing to the difficult times that many of the early settlers had in making a living in the remote valley. Their problems were not helped by floods, drought and snow storms. The Hutt Valley area experienced a major flood in the 1870s which caused considerable damage to the lower portion of Stokes Valley and swept away a large amount of cut timber.
The first recorded marriages in the valley were in 1865. On 5 June Thomas Sparks was married to Mary Ann Robinson (both residents of Stokes Valley) at the Primitive Methodist Church by Rev. Waters.The New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, 10 June 1865, p. 2 Two further marriages are recorded from October, with the marriage of Isaac Sykes to Maria Ann Wyeth of Upper Hutt at St James' Church at Lower Hutt on 8 October, and the marriage of Stokes Valley farmer John Walker to Mary Brown of Kapiti, at the Anglican Church in Upper Hutt, by the Rev. Mr Abrahams on 26 October.The Wellington Independent, 4 November 1865, p. 4