Recent Sketches

 

This is an old house, beautifully maintained, in a historic part of New Plymouth.

 

It stands on the corner of Gill and Brown Streets. Gill is one of the streets that run east and west, and are named after people who were part of the Plymouth Company in England in the late 1830s.

 

Thomas Gill was the Mayor of Plymouth in 1836, and was a board member of the company.

 

He owned the wharves and wharf buildings which emigrants had to use to board the ships.

 

Streets running at right angles to the coast are named after people who were prominent in New Plymouth's first years.

 

Brown Street is named for Charles "Armitage" Brown, whose land was just around the corner.

 

He had been a friend and caregiver for the poet John Keats when Keats was dying of TB, then lived in Plymouth and so got involved in the project to found the colony. His son, also Charles, was later Superintendent of the Province. Charles snr died a few months after his arrival and was buried on the side of Marsland Hill, where you can find his grave just above the Cathedral. 

 

This view is from Fort Niger, just on the hill above us here. Fort Niger shelters us from the cold southeasterly winds. It was named after a Royal Navy ship which was anchored off the coast during the Land Wars of the 1860s. The Niger's crew built a fort on this hill, which they named after their ship, and took part in the Battle of Waireka.

 

In this view we are looking south-east, across a row of kauri trees to the playing fields and some of the buildings of the Boys High School.

 

 

 

This morning we had breakfast at the Cathedral Café, which raises funds for Doctors Without Borders working in West Africa fighting Ebola. Then I climbed Marsland Hill, found a sheltered spot, and sketched the view to the west towards Port Taranaki and the Sugar Loaf Islands (above).

 

 

This is another view from Fort Niger, looking south-west, past the pohutukawa trees to the same horizon near Port Taranaki.

 

As you can see, I have been concentrating on pencil; no doubt I will get back to felts, or watercolours again soon!