WATERLOO/WOBURN/WAIWHETU
Waterloo takes its name from the famous 1815 battle won by the Duke of Wellington. Two of its landmarks are Trafalgar Square and Trafalgar Park. Waterloo evolved from farmland when the railway line reached it in 1927. The extension triggered rapid residential development and today''s bus and train hub, Waterloo Interchange, is the biggest train station in the Hutt Valley.
Henry Petre farmed the Woburn area from the 1840s, naming it after the Duke of Bedford’s Woburn estate, Woburn Abbey. Petre’s farm was taken over by Daniel and Harriet Riddiford after the 1855 earthquake. Their descendants built a substantial home (demolished in 1981) and gradually subdivided the farm. The northern end became an address for the valley’s affluent, while the southern end was used for new railway workshops.
In the 19th-century period of European settlement Waiwhetū was worked by Irish-born Alfred Ludlam, who was a member of three of New Zealand's four earliest parliaments. In the 1840s the area was set aside by the New Zealand Company as a native reserve for the Te Āti Awa tribe. In the 1930s the New Zealand government compulsorily acquired the land and built new homes for Te Āti Awa. Waiwhetū marae (completed in 1960) was built in the centre of the new housing.
