By Belinda Feek

Concrete piles poke through the floor, walls peel away from framing, wire-sprung beds lie in empty rooms and carpet has been worn bare by a million footsteps.

Experts predict that around $2 million will be needed to restore this majestic lady to her former glory.

Back to what she was in the days when the hotel was such a landmark that it was held up by a highwayman who had been tormenting the citizens of New Plymouth for months. On February 11, 1893, he stalked into the White Hart  at 11pm,  just before closing time. He confronted the barman and commanded: "Bail up, give me money, for money I'll have." The 18 occupants of the hotel watched in horror as the highwayman pointed his pistol at the stomach of young barman Charles Dickenson. He then got tougher, demanding: "Stand aside or I'll blow your bloody brains out." The villain calmly picked up a tray of loose change and a bottle of whisky from the shelf and walked back out the door, clambering on to his horse and firing a shot as he rode past the police station.

Today, even he might be frightened by the desolate, eerie building it has become. Now the New Zealand Historic Places Trust is gunning for this Category A historic building, a city landmark adorned by a white stag. Wellington heritage architect, Ian Bowman, was commissioned late in 2003 by the New Plymouth District Council to prepare a proposal for restoration and reconstruction of the stately old building.

Rotting soffit board under the balcony.

Complying with the building's New Zealand Historic Places Trust Category A designation, the proposal has been agreed to by the new owners, the Webster Thomson Trust and the Dunlop Family, who have owned the hotel since January, 2003. Their agreement now ensures the original Queen St foyer and the striking, winding stairwell will remain. As a Category A building, the exterior must  remain unchanged. Trust spokesman Jeremy Thomson says although the conservation plans put constraints on the owners, he is looking forward to working with the council and the Historic Places Trust on preservation and redevelopment.

The first building on the site was a six-roomed house built in 1844 by Mr R. Rundle of New Plymouth, just four years after the foundation of the New Zealand colony. The builders had it tough back then, working three days of the week, getting drunk on the other three and having Sunday to recuperate. It is not known how long the men took to finish the house.

The first building on the site served as a hospital before being converted into a hotel in 1867.  This photo was taken circa 1873-75.

[+] Click here for larger image.

The building became a hotel in 1859 and was later sold for removal by auction in 1886. But before then, it had a variety of nicknames, including the Refuge for the Destitute, so-called because new settlers would arrive in town and need temporary accommodation until their own homes were ready.It became Bleak House when the British redcoats used it as a hospital in 1855. The gloomy building reminded them of dismal, dreary institutions in England where the recruits would undergo a kind of fumigation process prior to going to war. Troops were treated at Bleak House during the New Zealand Wars and the name, Itch Hospital, was adopted because it was a place for the sick.

New Plymouth's  first military funeral was held there a year later for a Mr James Taylor, a soldier who died in a freak accident while coming down from the barracks on Marsland Hill. Mr A. Smith bought the building in 1867 and converted it into a hotel.

The "new" White Hart Hotel was built in 1886 with around 30,000m of timber, including rimu and matai. New Plymouth architect James Sanderson used an Italianate palazzo style in the structure.

Ten years later, Mrs Rebecca Tabor obtained the lease, before buying the hotel in 1901. That change of ownership proved to be the most dramatic for the building. Mrs Tabor spent £2000 on major alterations, including the addition of an extra 20m of frontage and verandah.

Architect Frank Messenger designed the extensions in the Sanderson style, adding a Queen Anne stick-style verandah.

Grand facade: The Queen Anne stick-style verandah of the 1901 White Hart.

[+] Click here for larger image.

Soon afterwards, two other significant alterations were made. The top corner was enclosed to form a writing lounge and the main entrance on the bottom Devon St corner was closed off and a new one was added on Queen St.

The life-size stag statue which adorns the verandah was donated around 1901. Two people are recorded making it. One was Leo Arden, a 21-year old sculptor, who volunteered for the Boer War and was killed. The other was a Mr Andrews of the Wanganui Technical School.

These fighting times saw New Zealanders becoming increasingly thirsty. Six o'clock closing was introduced in 1917 as a war economy measure, turning on a new light in the country's drinking culture. Most people described the change as the "six o'clock swill", with drinkers cramming down as many pints as they could before closing time. And it wasn't just the bars that were overflowing.

Sally Monks, now of Auckland, the granddaughter and daughter of the former owners, Mr and Mrs Jones (1925-1946), and Jack and Sadie Outred (1946-64), remembers the hotel was always frantic.

The demand for accommodation was so great that they often had to use the wide, covered balcony on the first floor. Beds were set up along its length and the verandah was occupied by both sexes. On one occasion, a woman had her underclothes stolen by a fox terrier.

Back then, there were few hotels or restaurants in New Plymouth. "There was just the White Hart and the Criterion Hotel (nearby). They were quite prestigious places, with silver service. The people who came were there for special meals or a special outing."

And it wasn't just the average Kiwi who spent the night at the White Hart Hotel. "The Dean of Westminster stayed, (before the Queen's 1953 visit: she and the Duke of Edinburgh stayed at the Criterion) and the famous artist, Gottfried Lindauer, was set up out the back in the stables, before my parents owned it, though. He painted pictures for them for his accommodation.

"Kingsford Smith stayed, in between his pioneering flights between Australia and New Zealand. Dad said he was a colourful character. The highwayman used to come and drink, too, when he was an old man."

Mr Outred was possibly the first publican in New Zealand to introduce a style of drinking where patrons of his new bar for women could sit at tables. Mrs Monks also remembers patrons were pedantic about where they stood. "They (patrons) all had their special corners that they stood in, and there would be terrible trouble if someone was in the wrong place.

"The silverware would be cleaned every day, with Grandma putting fresh flowers around the place, on the tables every day. A supper was served at night, and it was always full of people.

"The antlers on top of the deer were given to them by Mr Weston, who used to own the Taranaki Herald."

Mr and Mrs Outred ended their tenure on a high in 1964, selling the lease to Taranaki Breweries. That year, Taranaki held the Ranfurly Shield, and the hotel was fully booked with the visiting team's supporters. One Saturday night the hart lost one of its legs in a late-night escapade. So for the next 16 years it stood on three legs.

That same year, Taranaki Breweries made major alterations, including the addition of the public bar. In June, 1970, the Starlight Lounge and Pioneer Bar were added. The floors of both bars were covered with "wall-to-wall red and brown carpets. The concrete walls, painted in bright purple and brown colours, blend effectively with the carpets," according to the Taranaki Herald.

The 1970s also saw the birth of a new era in Taranaki hotels: music. New Plymouth music industry icon Brian Wafer was an avid patron at the White Hart then, and later organised gigs there.

The earliest band he remembers playing there was The Stroll Band, from Palmerston North, in 1971. "Another band who played in the early 70s was Pawn. They were doing the whole Bowie glam rock thing, with make-up on. It was quite a laugh, looking back. But it was great."

The introduction of these bands saw the formation of Taranaki's own music scene - a hard one at that. "The first sorta punk band here were called Electronically Tested, who became 99 Changes Hands, who turned into 106 Beats That, who mutated into Nocturnal Projections. This was late 1970s/early 1980s. They moved to Auckland and split up. But back here, Casualty, then Sticky Filth, were starting to make their way onto stages. This was about 1985/1986.

One of the hundreds of local musicians to play at the Hart was crooner Anna Brown, who was 17 when she first performed there. "I was in a band called the Frantic Fossils in the early 80s. That was kind of interesting, because there had never been any girl, that I knew of in Taranaki anyway, that tried to play in a full-on rock band.

"We had the Magogs doing the door for us. I remember feeling really disturbed, just knowing that if I failed that first night, it would be all over. I was standing behind the curtain absolutely sh**ing my undies. But I hit it and never looked back. Another night I got handcuffed to the microphone.

"When my parents found out that I was going to play at the White Hart at 17, they had kittens, but I can honestly say that it was not sinister. You had the young lawyers going there, for a real blast, with the bikies with the surfies. It was amazing, it just rocked."

The Hart's sudden change in scene obviously attracted a new crowd. One of the most controversial groups who drank there was the Magog Motorcycle Club. Former president Russell Gilmer says they started around 1976 or '77 because they were not allowed in public with their patches on.

"At that time we were also drinking at the Ngamotu Tavern until an altercation which forced us out. We legally challenged our right to drink in the White Hart public bar around '79 and were successful."

The Magogs even started their own successful rugby and basketball teams in 1983. The turn of the decade, however, saw new laws come into effect, projecting a societal change in attitudes towards drinking. "We stopped frequenting the White Hart on our bikes because of the drink/drive blitz that became prevalent in the mid-90s. It just wasn't worth the hassle," he says.

With all of these changes, so too did the bars change. The Red Room and the Blue Room were born. New Plymouth artist Don Driver named the rooms. His love for colour, in particular primary colours, was his inspiration, and some of his art work still sits in the Red Room.

The Blue Room had its makeover in the late 80s, care of new lessee Terry Wilson. A previous co-owner of another landmark city hotel, The Royal, he spent $250,000 on renovations when he took over the White Hart lease in 1986. The 5cm-thick paint was sanded off and the timber was re-painted as closely as possible to its original tan/mustard colour.

"All the locals were horrified when they saw the colour," laughs Terry. "They're like, 'We can't call it the White Hart anymore, because it's not white.'

"I also had a band in the Red Room one night and everyone was jumping up and down and carrying on. But then I could feel the floor going up and down as well and thought, 'Oh no, better check that out.' I went underneath the next day and found 300 crates were holding the floor up."

Ron Lambert, Puke Ariki's researcher, says the new coat of paint changed the public's perception of the place. "It was really quite remarkable, because until then it had been seen as a derelict building that should be demolished. He spent a lot of money on it, and that coat of paint really helped. People really changed and saw it as a really amazing building."

The late 80s also saw Terry Wilson introduce happy hours to the New Plymouth social scene. "It would be nothing for us to take around $5000 in those two hours, which was colossal money in those days," he said. "And it didn't matter if they wrecked the place, because I was going to do it up in any case."

New Plymouth journalist Nigel Carter remembers the White Hart's nickname was the Black Lung, because of all the smoke. "It was amazing. It had this notorious reputation for violence and things, but was probably the safest bar in town."

The White Hart has never been out of the news for long. Latest mentions came during a series of historical rape cases heard in the High Court over the past couple of years, when defendants (mostly acquitted), complainants and witnesses sometimes referred to the hotel as a place where they partied before going on to the Magogs' headquarters or elsewhere. An iconic photograph taken by New Plymouth photographer John Crawford and admitted as an exhibit during one of the trials, showed the Magogs and their machines on parade below the famous stag.

Stately: The White Hart in 2005.

The building is now due for another overhaul. The public bar still operates these days, but the rest of the building waits in limbo to see what next.