Cardiff Road (2022). Brian Beer. Word on the street image collection.
Cardiff Road (2022). Brian Beer. Word on the street image collection.
The early history of the Cardiff district, named after the capital city of Wales, was defined by the great fire of 1886.
Before that fire the area was very isolated. It took settlers a day to lead a packhorse out from Stratford. A visitor commented that travelling along the Cardiff Road was an exercise in “…tree-dodging. Nothing but a wheelbarrow could travel this road.” The bush was being cleared but only at a very slow pace. After the fire swept through, access improved, more settlers moved in, and the land was cleared faster.
In the 1890s, Taranaki led the way in the introduction of dairy factory co-operatives to take advantage of New Zealand’s burgeoning trade opportunities. The Cardiff Dairy Company was the first one in the province and the district flourished on the back of it.
In 1896 a traveller described Cardiff as a “small hamlet” with a “couple of stores, a blacksmith’s shop and an up-to-date factory.” There had been a school since 1887. Soon one of the stores operated a post office.
In the mid-1920s residents raised£500 to contribute towards the building of a hall on Cardiff Road. For many years regular dances and other events, such as those organised by the Cardiff Entertainment Club, were held there. A few years later the school had its own library and tennis court.
Improved cars and roads in the 1930s, then milk tankers in the 1950s, slowly changed the economy and society. The Cardiff factory closed in 1956. The store beside it closed in 1968. The school eventually closed in 1999.
Much of the Cardiff district is elevated above sea level. In the 1880s a heliograph was occasionally used on Cardiff Road to provide a communications link between New Plymouth and Hawera. Many years later, in the 1950s, a site on Waingongoro Road was selected to build a microwave radio repeater station as a link in the then-telephone toll network between Auckland and Wellington.
This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.
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