Dives Avenue

Dives Avenue in Hawera has long had a refined charm, perhaps due to the number of gracious and attractive homes that line it, but also possibly because it started its life as a grand driveway to the residence of one of the town’s early families.

The driveway led to the home of William and Anne Dive which stood where the entrance to Climie Crescent is now. The home was demolished sometime in the early 1900s, but the driveway remained and was known for a long time as The Avenue – even after it was officially changed to Dives Ave sometime in the 1920s.

The street was well known for the avenue of pine trees which use to line it and which were planted by William Dive’s eldest child, Bradshaw Dive when he was a young man.

William came out to New Zealand from England in 1850 and lived in the Marlborough district where he had several saw milling and mining businesses and became a JP. He married Mary Bradshaw and had five children (only three surviving to adulthood). Mary’s parents, Daniel and Ann Bradshaw must have immigrated to New Zealand with their daughter and new son-in-law and from this time on William and Daniel formed a close personal and business partnership that lasted both their lifetimes.

Disaster struck the extended family within two years, when both Ann and Mary died. However, the family unit remained intact when William married Daniel’s only remaining daughter, 21-year-old Anne. William and Anne went on to have nine children, the last was born when William was 67 years old.

In about 1880 William and Daniel bought a substantial piece of property together in the rapidly growing town of Hawera. Known as ‘The Lakes’, the estate ran from South Rd down to the coast and included the area around Nowells Lake. In 1884 the family made the decision to permanently move up to Hawera from Marlborough and built their impressive home and driveway.

By 1908 The Lakes and many of the other large estates that surrounded Hawera were divided up as the town grew. Around this time the original home was demolished, and the driveway was formed into the residential road it is today.

Around this time also, William, Ann, their younger children and an ageing Daniel left Hawera to live in Auckland. Daniel died in 1909 and William in 1928 and they were buried next to each other at the Purewa Cemetery in Auckland. But this was not the end of the Dive connection with the district.

William’s eldest son, Bradshaw, was to move to the Eltham district where he farmed, married Marion, with whom he had two children, but who then died. He married Maude Perrott in 1913. She died in 1916. He married his last wife Isabella Wyllie in 1918.

Lake Dive on Mt Taranaki was named after Bradshaw after he spotted it during a climb in 1887. Bradshaw became involved with local politics, being elected MP for the Egmont electorate for one term in 1908 and then going on to become the mayor of Eltham. He later retired from farming and moved to Tauranga where he served as mayor again from 1919 till 1929. Tauranga has their own street named after him, Dive Crescent.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.