Huatoki Lane

Old plans of the Huatoki Plaza area show that from the earliest days of the township there has been a pathway with a bridge across the Huatoki Stream, connecting Currie and Brougham streets.

It was New Plymouth's original surveyor, Frederic Carrington, who assigned the area where the Huatoki Stream enters the sea as the New Zealand Company's “Storehouse Reserve”. In the 1840s surf boats were launched from there to ferry people and cargo to and from ships offshore.

Between 1873 and 1907 Huatoki Lane also had to cross the railway line that ran along the western stream bank to the station on the foreshore. At this time the bridge, still surrounded by trees, was a narrow wooden structure with one handrail. A concrete bridge, built in 1941, lasted until the present one was constructed as part of the Huatoki Plaza development in 2009.

The original Storehouse Reserve was gradually subdivided and passed into private ownership. One business has survived the on-going redevelopment - and regular flooding - of the lower Huatoki area. On the western bank of the stream adjoining the lane there has been a hotel since the 1850s. Originally the “Taranaki”, it became the “Royal” in the early 1920s. The “Royal Hotel” on the site was built in the 1950s. In the late 2010s there was still a pub in part of the building.

On the eastern bank is the Women's Restroom which opened in 1936. Downstream and immediately beside the bridge there was, until the plaza development, a large electrical sub-station.

And the name Huatoki? It is thought to come from “hua- tītoki”. The tītoki tree, a New Zealand native, was common in the river valley upstream from Huatoki Lane.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.