Freeman's Bay
| Freemans Bay | |
|---|---|
| Basic information | |
| Local authority | Auckland Council |
| Date established | 1840s |
| Population | 3,708 (2006) |
| Surrounds | |
| North | Western Reclamation |
| Northeast | Viaduct Basin |
| East | Auckland CBD |
| Southeast | Auckland CBD |
| South | Newton |
| Southwest | Ponsonby |
| West | Ponsonby |
| Northwest | Saint Marys Bay |
Freemans Bay is the name of a former bay and now inner city suburb of Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand. The bay has been filled in to a considerable extent, with the reclamation area now totally concealing the ancient shoreline. Historically a poor and often disreputable quarter, it is now a comparatively wealthy and desirable neighbourhood known for its mix of heritage homes and more recent single-dwelling houses, as well as for its two large parks.
Since the turn of the 20th century, extensive land reclamation (partly using stone quarried from nearby headlands) has seen Freemans Bay itself disappear. The reclamation of the old bay was finished in 1901, and Victoria Park was created on most of the resulting flat area. It is still public land used mostly for sports purposes.
The coastline shifted more than one kilometre to the northwest of the city centre and is now composed of the concrete wharves of Viaduct Basin and the Tank Farm or as it is now renamed, the Wynyard Quarter.
Waiatarau (or 'Reflecting Waters') was the Māori name for the bay that is now Victoria Park, although other names were used to refer to the area; such as Wai Kōtota ('The place where the cockles are harvested') and Te Koranga ('The scaffolds', referring to the racks upon which fish would be hung to dry in the sun). A stream called Waikuta ('Waters of the reed') discharged into the south eastern corner of the bay (bottom of College Hill Road) while the Tunamau ('To catch eels') stream came down from what is now Western Park and met the bay at the bottom of what is now Franklin Road.
Freemans Bay is one of the earliest settled areas in Auckland, and was earmarked for development and land reclamation in the 1840s by Colonial Surveyor Felton Matthew who laid out the streets along the shores of the local bays.
Freemans Bay is probably named after Captain William Hobson’s secretary, James Stuart Freeman who apparently lived in the area. He was described by Dr John Logan Campbell in 1844 as "the most disgustingly immoral swindling scoundrel in town".
Local gossip had it that he was not actually married to the woman he was living with, or that there was something amiss in her past. She apparently had been on intimate terms with Mrs Hobson and others in the Government House circle but after William Hobson's death in 1842 and Mrs Hobson's return to Britain she found herself shut out of genteel society in Auckland. This pained Eleanor Freeman enormously and enraged her husband. Living in a workers cottage on the wrong side of town certainly couldn't have helped her social status. After her early death at the age of 26 on 17 December 1844 Freeman added to the wagging tongues by remarrying just six weeks later. After his marriage to Mary Ann Miller on 29 January 1845 the Freemans left New Zealand.
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Wikipedia