A community goal is to protect the heritage value and enhance the environment of the Glenside Halfway House.
Archaeological Reports
During WCC clearing of the Halfway House property grounds in early 2009, items of occupation were found. Clearing operations ceased and a WCC archaeological assessment was commissioned. The assessment report to WCC is provided here in two forms, a larger size with higher quality images and a smaller size with lower quality images for ease of downloading.
Halfway House Archaeological Assessment - high quality PDF (approx 5.8 Mbytes)
Halfway House Archaeological Assessment - low quality PDF (approx 1.1 Mbytes)
Archaeological Investigation, 1 April 2015
Wellington City Council are preparing a planting plan for the Halfway House at Glenside. As there is the potential for archaeological features in the grounds of the house, such as former building remnants and historic rubbish pits, Mary O'Keeffe from Hertiage Solutions was employed to undertake archaeological investigations. The purpose was to ensure areas were clear of archaeological features so they could be planted on.
The archaeological investigation was undertaken on Wednesday, 1st April 2015. The work was undertaken by surface scraping and trenching using a 20 tonne digger. Under Mary's direction, Don the Digger Driver scraped in selected areas around the house to reveal the underlying substrate, and to reveal any archaeological features that may be below the grass and topsoil. Trenches were dug to further reveal and map the underlying layers.
Landscape Archaeology Investigation - May 2015 PDF (approx 7.2 Mbytes)
Interesting outcomes
Rubbish pit
One probable rubbish pit was found on the south-east of the house. This has not been excavated, and is being left intact for the time being. There is no great need to excavate this feature; once its excavated, it is permanently gone, and there are no pressing research questions that can only be answered by excavating it.
Kitchen garden
A probable kitchen garden immediately east of the house. This is an area of very dark organic soil, in contrast to the more yellow clay soil found elsewhere. It makes sense locating this garden immediately out from the kitchen and back door.
Artefacts
Artefacts spread through the upper soil layer – rather than discrete deposits of artefacts, small pieces of ceramic, glass, metal, and other material were sporadically spread throughout much of the upper soil layer in the vicinity of the house. This is consistent with small fragments of broken household material being thrown onto the kitchen garden in the organic waste, and small items being dropped over the years and mixed into the soil by leaching and insect action. The vast majority of the material dates from the 20th century
House platform
Original topsoil and overlying fill on the platform to the south of the house, revealing how an existing natural platform would have been flattened off to form a flat platform for the house, plus the rock spur behind the house have been truncated and this material also spread to form the artificial platform