The cache can be found from the footpath no need to climb any fences.
This Cache is on the site of the historical "Smithy" built in the late 1800's.
In the early twentieth century there were two blacksmiths and wheelwright businesses in
the town, required to keep all the cartage teams and their equipment in operation.
Woodside and Outram Glen, kept up a demand on cartage. It is important not to confuse
the two smithies, the one at Hoylake Street and the other, Rutherford’s, later known as
Fraser’s on Holyhead Street. The latter was located in the Outram township itself and is
now the site of the Outram Garage which is also currently owned by the Warnock Family.
The original owner was John Anderson, likely to be the same John Anderson noted as one
of the first settlers of the area, arriving in West Taieri in 1850. Although the finer details of
the original certificate of title and following changes of ownership are almost impossible to
read, an article in the Otago Daily Times, 2 February 1882, records a mortgagee sale of the
eight sections, ‘containing two acres together with the dwelling-house and blacksmith
shop lately occupied by Jas. Grant.’ The purchaser was David Grant, of ‘Granton.’ David
Grant of Granton was a Scottish surveyor whose uncle, Peter Grant, was one of the first to
develop a homestead on the sometimes flooded Taieri flat. The blacksmith shop noted in
the account of the mortgagee sale is very likely the blacksmith shop that still stands here
today, subdivided off the original eight section block. The original blacksmith structure is
also likely to have been modified and added to over the years.
In the early twentieth century, Alex Chisholm (1977: 38) recalled, ‘Black Sandy’ was the
owner of the blacksmith and wheelwright business on the corner of Hoylake and Skerries
Street, ‘with their house and stables at the rear. Soon the business would be under the
ownership of Alex ‘Sandy’ Walker, newly arrived from the Clyneside, Scotland.’ Sandy’s
brother Jim worked with him as a partner in the business. Sandy Walker arrived in New
Zealand in 1907 and presumably took over the smithy at about this date. He was followed
two years later by his father, a wheelwright (Lemon 1970: 42). According to Lemon, there
were originally three forges in the workshop, while at the time of Lemon’s sketch of the
shop only one remained. In the shed adjacent in the partitioned areas to the forge and
bellows there were ‘a gig, a breaking-in cart and harnesses.
Porter (1983: 202) notes that ‘early blacksmiths known to have worked here were Sandy
Alexander, Alex McDonald and Sandy Walker.’ At this time Sandy Walker’s granddaughter,
Helen Matheson, owned the property. It was from her that Gerald Rillstone purchased the
smithy who in turn sold to the Warnock family a few years later in 2011.