• We are a membership not-for-profit organisation based in Wellington / Te Whanganui-a-Tara, New Zealand.
• We advocate for heritage in the wider Wellington region, and offer events such as talks, walks and visits to historic places and buildings. You can help by joining us.
• For more information, see our about us page.
• Our newsletters are under the resources page, as are useful links and other heritage information.
• We are also on Facebook and Instagram (#historicwelly)

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News and Events

Wednesday 7 June 2023 at 5.30pm Talk: Helen Beaglehole, historian, editor and writer:

“Sources, Silences, Perspectives and Prejudices: the challenges of writing the first history of settlement in the Marlborough Sounds”

Helen Beaglehole will be speaking about her latest book, One Hundred Havens: The Settlement of the Marlborough Sounds, a story of the area as shaped by land, sea and people. RSVPs required.

Please check the Friends of Turnbull Library website for more information.

Another FOTL talk, which is not on their website yet (keep an eye on it):

Wednesday 12 July at 5.30pm John E Martin: on his book Empire City – The making of Wellington.

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Futuna Chapel in Karori (Futuna Close, off Friend St) is a Category 1 historic place that usually opens from 11 to 3pm on the first Sunday of the month. For 2023 Open Sundays are: 4 June, 2 July, 6 Aug, 3 Sept, 1 Oct, 5 Nov, 3 Dec.

Check out their website or Facebook page for more details and dates.

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The latest issue of Oculus, the newsletter of Historic Places Aotearoa is available on their website: https://historicplacesaotearoa.nz/news-events/oculus-newsletters . As all earlier issues of Oculus are available there, we will no longer add them to our website.

Our latest newsletter is also available on our Newsletters page.

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St Andrew’s on the Terrace, a Category 1 historic place, has Wednesday (and occasionally Thursday) lunchtime concerts starting at 12:15pm.

Check their website for further details.

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Our chairperson, Felicity Wong, gave a talk to the joint annual conference of Historic Places Aotearoa and ICOMOS in Auckland on 12 November 2022 about keeping our built heritage. You can read it here (PDF). Committee member and Victoria University Architecture School lecturer Nigel Isaacs also gave a presentation (with other university lecturers) who teach conservation architecture courses.

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Old or Green: Is the greenest building an old building? We hosted this talk by Brenda and Robert Vale during Heritage Week in October 2021. You can watch a 10 minute highlights version here.

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Our chairperson Felicity Wong gave a presentation (online via Zoom) to U3A Wellington city on 31 August 2021 on Challenges to Built Heritage: Neglect, Earthquakes and Urban Planning. You can read a copy on our advocacy page – or click this link here. (PDF copy)

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Blue Plaques. This is an initiative of our national body, Historic Places Aotearoa to identify and promote our built heritage.

The large cast aluminium plaques are designed to be placed prominently on the facades of important heritage buildings. We have more information on Blue Plaques on our resources page.

There is also a dedicated website for blue plaques.

The image shows Wellington’s first blue plaque at Randell Cottage in St Mary’s Street Thorndon (installed November 2022).

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