Stone Store

The Stone Store in Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands is New Zealand's oldest surviving stone building.

As part of the first mission station of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, the warehouse of John Hobbs was designed as a replacement for a wooden predecessor. The building was built in 1832-1836 by the mason William Parrott, carpenter Ben Nesbitt and several Māori. As the material of sandstone from Australia, New Zealand volcanic rock and limestone mortar shells were fired from. Iron connector and window bars were forged by James Kemp. Originally the building had a wooden bell tower on one side. The unusual at that time in New Zealand stone material was chosen to keep rats from grain to improve the defense against the Māori and reduce the risk of fire.

The Stone Store should serve as the basis of a trading post of the Church Missionary Society, where agricultural products from the Te Waimate mission to be sold to ships and European goods to the Māori. Marsden was planning to build a flour mill on the nearby Kerikeri River, but this was built instead in Waimate itself.

Mid-1830s could no longer compete with companies in other European settlers in trade and agriculture, the mission stations, so that turned out to be the camp as uneconomical. The Stone Store was therefore converted by Bishop Selwyn in the early 1840s in the mission library. After the sack of Kororareka the Flagstaff War, it was used briefly by Governor George Edward Grey as a magazine and barracks. After the end of hostilities in 1845, the building was leased and the center of a trading company for Kauri resin. In 1863, it housed a school for boys. In 1874, the building was sold to the Kemp family and operated as a general store. At the same time they took it as a tourist attraction in importance. The Kemps sell the building in 1975 at the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. In the 1990s, restoration work has been carried out. Together with the nearby Kerikeri Mission House is home to the Stone Store today a small museum.

The Stone Store was registered on 23 June 1983 by NZHPT under the register number 5 as a monument of the Category 1.