Our Stories

The main homestead at Hayes Engineering Works is proving a huge draw card since its recent re-opening to the public – and for good reason.

As with the engineering workshops the homestead remains very much as it did when first moved into by the Hayes family in October 1920, making the visitor experience like a step back in time.  As well as being ahead of its time in terms of interior fittings, the homestead had unique features that can be viewed and appreciated today.

The homestead can trace its origins prior to the outbreak of the First World War, when sun-dried mud bricks were made.  These were stored under tussocks for the duration of the war from 1914 to 1918.  When the men returned work continued on the homestead till it was completed in 1920.  The home features five bedrooms, a drawing room, dining room, indoor laundry, kitchen, pantry, bathroom and passageway.

All the bedrooms have their original fireplaces and wallpaper and are essentially in their original state.  It is in these rooms, all fitted, that the first of many unique features can be viewed – piped radio was fitted through the house and the pipes can be seen.

The drawing room is also much as the Hayes family remember it from its heyday.  The original organ has been kindly returned by the Hayes family, a piano, battery radio, wind-up gramophone and furniture including a chaise lounge, carpet square and a rise and fall kerosene lamp.

The passageway features the homestead’s original hall stand, kept company by a suitably aged and mounted deer’s head.  There is an incomplete rise and fall kerosene lamp and the original glass light shades also returned by the family.

But it is in the laundry and bathroom that the Hayes’ ingenuity shines.  The indoor laundry was extremely modern for its time - complete with copper piping and three wooden tubs, a bench and sink where hands could be washed.  Here can be viewed a unique system made from a bike spoke and chain that was connected to wires that ran to the Pelton Wheel at the works.  This set-up enabled those in the homestead to turn the electricity on and off without having to walk to the Pelton Wheel.

The Pelton Wheel was also complemented by a generator that produced enough DC power to have electric light in the three farm houses and a Moffat electric range in the main homestead.  Main grid power did not come to the area until 1956-57, so the Hayes’ homestead was truly ahead of its time.

The bathroom had the first indoor flush toilet in the area, with a shower over the bath.

While these features all sound very grand the homestead was very much an engineer’s house - with tin used instead of tiles, very unusual book cases in two bedrooms and repairs very solid, being made of steel.

Hayes’ homestead is very large for its mud brick-type, with the original moulds in the museum along with photos of the house being constructed.  But judging by the comments passed it is the experience of seeing the homestead as it was in its heyday that clearly appeals to the many visitors.

Creativity was key to living in the Maniototo.

Although there was some evidence of past Maori occupation of the Maniototo Plain, it was, when it was first surveyed in the middle of the 19th century, so isolated and empty, so lacking in even a verbal history, that very few features had names. Because of difficulty of access, settlement by Europeans came later than in other parts of Central Otago, but by 1858 the Maniototo's potential for carrying sheep and cattle had been identified and had lured the first pastoral runholders into the county.Within a year, all 17 defined runs had been taken up and the inevitable transformation of landscape that became associated with pastoralism commenced.

Further interest in the Maniototo and its surrounding hills and streams flared up with the discovery of gold at Naseby in 1863 - and has smouldered ever since. (But it would be true to say that,while less dramatic or romantic than gold, it's the long-term exploitation of pasture that has made the Maniototo what it is today.)

It was into this remote, rough-hewn, rural backwater of colonisation that a man who was to make a longlasting impact upon farming arrived in 1882. He was E. Ernest Hayes, born in Warwickshire in 1851, and apprenticed in his youth as a millwright and engineer. At the age of 31, with his wife,Hannah (Pearson), and their baby son, Llewellyn, he emigrated from England on the Shaw Savill & Albion Company's emigrant clipper Taranaki to join his uncle, Josiah Jones, a flour miller, who owned the Vincent Flour Mill at Ophir. It's hard to imagine what Hayes and his wife's first impressions would have been, but any dismay they might have experienced would rapidly have turned to determination, as their subsequent history proves.

By Don Donnithorne

Read more in Heritage New Zealand, Summer 2004.

There is more to the story of the Hayes Wire Strainer than Ernest Hayes ever intended anyone to know or believe.

Ernest Hayes, founder of Hayes Engineering, was undoubtedly an inventor possessed of both a strong creative insight and an astute entrepreneurial sense. However, widespread, common and persistent misinformation regarding the Hayes Permanent Wire Strainer has credited him with an invention for which he was not responsible, and for which he never claimed responsibility. Ironically, several of his earliest inventions seem to have escaped public attention, while myths surrounding the origins of the now iconic Hayes Permanent Wire Strainer appear to be at least as inventive as the device itself.

Numerous examples of published information repeat the claim that Ernest Hayes invented the Triplex Permanent Wire Strainer. This device, however, was widely available in Otago for almost a decade before the establishment of Hayes Engineering in 1895, and the Hayes Permanent Wire Strainer (widely referred to as the Triplex Permanent Wire Strainer) was simply one of a number based on John Reid’s Triplex Permanent Wire Strainer of 1885.

There is considerable evidence that the production of the Hayes Permanent Wire Strainer began only after Ernest Hayes retired from the works in 1926. In considering some of the facts around the invention of the Triplex Permanent Wire Strainer, it is helpful to background a little of the technological  context that prompted its invention.

Following its introduction during the late 1850s, wire fencing began to replace other forms, and by the 1880s this transformation had gained full momentum. Its introduction was not without problems, and a key obstacle lay in the ability to establish and maintain the correct tension of the wires. This was of particular importance to farmers in regions of climatic extremes, such as the Maniototo, where Hayes farmed, and was a problem to which he devoted considerable attention. In winter, frosts could cause wires to snap, while the heat of summer would cause them to sag, and thereby diminish their effectiveness.

A further problem lay in ensuring the galvanising of the wires was not ruptured during straining or construction, leaving the wire prone to rusting and eventual breaking. During the last two decades of the 19th century, a large number of solutions emerged, and more than 80 patent applications for wire straining devices were lodged during the 1880s. Although many were based on marginal differences from existing devices, all were based upon one of two methods of straining: using either a portable or a permanent wire strainer. These two typologies remain the basis of straining wire fences today.

By Gavin O'Brien

Read more in Heritage New Zealand, Winter 2008.