Notional Significance: Disinterment

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts]

The entry to Bolton St ceme­tery is unre­mark­able: a gap in a white fence off a respectable street, a canopy of pines, plain cross­es against a cor­ru­gat­ed iron fence. But I know that I’m pass­ing into a ter­ri­to­ry that would have the earth-mag­ic wing of the psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal move­ment pant­i­ng with occult excite­ment. Iain Sin­clair or Peter Ack­royd would have a field day with the pletho­ra of obelisks, res­o­nant names and erod­ed inscrip­tions, but wouldn’t that be the case with any ceme­tery? It’s like shoot­ing mys­ti­cal fish in a semi­otic bar­rel. Nev­er­the­less, cer­tain mon­u­ments catch my atten­tion, so I decide to play along.

There’s a bro­ken mar­ble col­umn near the entrance, and at first I file this away as a symp­tom of van­dal­ism or neglect, but a clos­er exam­i­na­tion of the carv­ing shows the break to be too clean. A shat­tered pil­lar seems like an obvi­ous sig­ni­fi­er (a life cut short; the futil­i­ty and imper­fec­tion of human endeav­our; all that Ozy­man­di­an sort of thing), but a lit­tle research unearths oth­er con­nec­tions. The Bro­ken Col­umn is an impor­tant sym­bol in Freema­son­ry, though per­haps a rel­a­tive­ly recent one. What’s more, it seems that some Masons map the Three Great Pil­lars of Mason­ry to the Kab­bal­is­tic Sephi­roth, and when the cen­tral col­umn of Beau­ty is bro­ken, it rep­re­sents Man’s sep­a­ra­tion from divine knowl­edge: the sev­ered path­way between Beau­ty and the Infi­nite. But in this place it was the act of build­ing a path­way that caused a sev­er­ance, tear­ing the ceme­tery in two when the motor­way smashed its way through. Beau­ty and the Divine were cer­tain­ly not on the Min­istry of Works’ agen­da.

As the path winds down into a sev­ered gul­ly, past oth­er bro­ken columns, I remem­ber back to one of my first walks in Welling­ton, what seems like many decades ago. It was a gloomy, misty Sun­day, with low cloud whip­ping through the tree­tops and fine rain drift­ing down through the dark foliage. The graves seemed shat­tered, lone­ly and aban­doned, over­grown by indif­fer­ent veg­e­ta­tion, and my (shame­ful­ly Euro­cen­tric) imag­i­na­tion turned this into a sci­ence fic­tion movie: a doomed colony on an alien world, the last remain­ing set­tlers bury­ing their dwin­dling col­leagues as the host plan­et erased their hubris­tic attempts at repli­cat­ing home. Even today, in the bright­ness of late sum­mer, the droop­ing aer­i­al pohutukawa roots can seem mon­strous, and by the time that I realise that they are also invaders here, I know it’s time to move on before my alle­gories tan­gle them­selves into total inco­her­ence.

But first, I come across a grave that even I can see is explic­it­ly Mason­ic. The com­pass and set-square make that clear, even if I had to go back and look up the cap­i­tal G (for God and Geom­e­try, and per­haps for Gno­sis), the stone ash­lar, the tes­sel­lat­ed pave­ment and the uneven columns topped with ter­res­tri­al and celes­tial globes. This lav­ish memo­r­i­al to Cap­tain Hen­ry Tuck­er was erect­ed by Cap­tain Edwin Stafford, who lat­er com­plet­ed their pact by join­ing him in the grave. Such ded­i­ca­tion would seem unusu­al today with­out a more inti­mate con­nec­tion, and I won­der whether a dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion could be put upon the two upstand­ing columns than the Boaz and Jachin of Mason­ic lore. But it would be pruri­ent and point­less to spec­u­late about what the Her­ald called “the fine feel­ings, and the rare sen­ti­ment” between these two men. The pil­lars have been top­pled in the past by falling trees and ‘60s yob­bos (“because there’s noth­ing else to do in Welling­ton on a Sun­day”), but they escaped the bull­doz­ers. Their friend­ship can stand on its own terms.

Oth­er mon­u­ments were not so lucky. Mass graves are not some­thing one expects in New Zealand — they seem to belong to anoth­er world, a world of pogroms and plague pits — but the remains of 3,693 peo­ple are crammed into a “memo­r­i­al vault” on the oth­er side of the high­way, their orig­i­nal tomb­stones scat­tered through the remain­der of the ceme­tery. Time is a com­mod­i­ty that we can only val­ue when it’s in our grasp: we’ll will­ing­ly man­gle or erase the past to save a few sec­onds in the present, all the while burn­ing through the resources of the future. Whole books could be writ­ten on the saga of the Foothill Motor­way, but for the moment I’ll just men­tion that in 1965 a Coun­cil­lor Mor­ri­son was report­ed as say­ing that “although some oth­er trans­port sys­tem might be tech­ni­cal­ly prefer­able the impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion was that the Nation­al Roads Board had the mon­ey and was pre­pared to spend it.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

But the cat­a­stroph­ic changes wrought by the motor­way con­struc­tion were not the only rea­son why Mar­garet H. Aling­ton called her his­to­ry of the ceme­tery Unqui­et Earth. From the start, this bur­ial ground was fraught with con­tention, chaos and per­tur­ba­tion. Even before the land was grant­ed, the plans were beset by sec­tar­i­an squab­bles and high moral dud­geon, and the land was fre­quent­ly assault­ed by encroach­ments, road-build­ing and park con­struc­tion as well as the nat­ur­al haz­ards of fire, wind and land­slides. Exhuma­tion is noth­ing new, since over­crowd­ing often result­ed in the acci­den­tal unearthing of unmarked remains when new graves were being dug. It was alleged that some of these were qui­et­ly and uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped, and in one dis­turb­ing instance a child’s cof­fin lay in the adja­cent stream for years. On many occa­sions the Inspec­tor of Nui­sances was called in to inves­ti­gate “putre­fac­tive fer­men­ta­tion”, “human cor­rup­tion” and “foul mias­ma­ta”, and the sex­tons often had to bat­tle van­dal­ism, rub­bish dump­ing from oppor­tunis­tic neigh­bours and the noc­tur­nal occur­rence of what were deco­rous­ly described as “impro­pri­eties”. Some of those activ­i­ties may still be pop­u­lar, if the infa­mous Welling­ton­ista “Spot the Dog” post is any­thing to go by, and per­haps the incon­gru­ous amphithe­atre that over­looks the mass grave some­times attracts an audi­ence keen on impro­vised erot­ic the­atre. Today, the only action is a pair of con­ser­v­a­tive­ly-dressed men prac­tic­ing Tai Chi moves, their grace­ful move­ments trac­ing slow arcs above the rest­less rest­ing place of thou­sands.

Near the memo­r­i­al , there’s a grand old tree fes­tooned with epi­phyt­ic ferns and moss­es. I once took this as a wry sym­bol of post-colo­nial­ism: the Eng­lish oak suc­cumb­ing to native ecosys­tems; the invad­er reclaimed by indig­ine­ity. Now I find that the tree has a name and a his­to­ry. It is the “Sel­wyn Oak”, sup­pos­ed­ly plant­ed by the epony­mous Bish­op, and even though he returned to the old coun­try, his asso­ci­a­tion with the found­ing of the ceme­tery war­rants some recog­ni­tion here. He had a rep­u­ta­tion for reli­gious tol­er­ance and fair deal­ings with Maori, but there is a dark­er note in his reac­tion to the drift away from “pure” Angli­can­ism towards the syn­cretism of Hauhau: “watch­ing over the rem­nant of a decay­ing peo­ple and the rem­nant of a decay­ing faith”. In that con­text, one might indeed read a defi­ant response in the sight of lush native climbers engulf­ing the rigid Angli­can limbs of the good Bishop’s oak — though in that case, I’d rather not think about the omi­nous creep of Trades­cant­ia around its roots.

“It is a waste of time to deny the past. It is there, behind us and in us.” That’s what Aling­ton wrote in her epi­logue to Unqui­et Earth, and it’s thoughts like that that keep me look­ing for con­nec­tions. Even over­in­ter­pre­ta­tion can be fer­tile, an imag­i­na­tive tan­gle of roots and branch­es that treats the past not as dry fac­tu­al bones but as liv­ing seeds still capa­ble of engen­der­ing new sto­ries. But I’m stumped by the shiny black cube that marks Her­bert J Williams’ grave at the base of the tree: it bears Mason­ic insignia, but I can only link it to the use of black cubes to secret­ly veto an unlucky appli­cant. Has Williams been posthu­mous­ly black­balled, barred from the Craft in the after­life?

I’m on safer ground with the more explic­it signs that lit­ter this stretch of com­pen­sato­ry park­land: plaques that cel­e­brate and com­mem­o­rate, though some­times in rather tokenis­tic ways. The instal­la­tion of a plaque “ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of per­sons who have con­tributed towards the bet­ter­ment of the New Zealand envi­ron­ment” in a place that has been so thor­ough­ly des­e­crat­ed is so far beyond irony that I can do lit­tle more than leave the thought to fes­ter by itself. On the oth­er hand, as motor­way envi­rons go, this land­scape has been remark­ably well-han­dled. The com­bi­na­tion of Bru­tal­ist ener­gy and the Eng­lish pic­turesque tra­di­tion (foot­paths mean­der­ing lazi­ly through bosky glades, while a slen­der raw con­crete foot­bridge soars and curls over­head) could have seemed jar­ring, but it goes far beyond the usu­al “mit­i­ga­tion” plant­i­ng, and despite its con­cep­tu­al con­tra­dic­tions it seems to have set­tled into some­thing resem­bling charm.

We have Hel­mut Ein­horn to thank for that. A fierce oppo­nent of the motor­way project, he was ini­tial­ly shunt­ed out of the Min­istry of Works to a harm­less sec­ond­ment, then assigned what must have been a bit­ter task: “coor­di­nat­ing the archi­tec­tur­al and aes­thet­ic con­sid­er­a­tions” of his hat­ed road. Would it have been more prin­ci­pled to refuse com­plic­i­ty with a brief that he believed to be fun­da­men­tal­ly dam­ag­ing and wrong-head­ed? Or would that have been futile, com­pared to the oppor­tu­ni­ty to influ­ence the out­come for the bet­ter, even in what he thought must have been a super­fi­cial way? Some of his efforts failed: a pro­posed piaz­za across the motor­way, com­plete with exhi­bi­tion build­ings and relo­cat­ed head­stones, was qui­et­ly down­grad­ed to a nar­row pedes­tri­an bridge, though the rein­forc­ing for its sup­ports still lie hid­den between the lanes of the high­way. But the com­bi­na­tion of thought­ful plant­i­ng, sub­tle tex­tures and occa­sion­al­ly dra­mat­ic engi­neer­ing brings a touch of émi­gré flair to even some of the grimmest stretch­es of the motorway’s path. I appre­ci­ate the crisply geo­met­ri­cal dynamism of the stan­chions as I walk through the oth­er­wise sub-Mil­ton Keynes carpark between Bowen St and Bal­lantrae Place, avert my eyes from a vio­lent­ly pas­tel col­li­sion of Tus­can vil­las and Syd­ney ter­races, then sweat my way up the nar­row steps to Hill St.

From the over­bridge, I get the mer­est glimpse of what should be the most nation­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant build­ing of the jour­ney: the Bee­hive. If you’re look­ing for Mason­ic sym­bol­ism, then it’s hard to go past bee­hives, which are among the emblems pre­sent­ed to a Mas­ter Mason. They rep­re­sent the api­an virtues of duty, indus­try and coop­er­a­tion — which should pro­duce pre­dictable snig­gers, par­tic­u­lar­ly among those who find it far eas­i­er to satirise all politi­cians as venal, indo­lent and bick­er­ing than to actu­al­ly engage with polit­i­cal thought. At least one con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist has gone beyond point­ing out the Mason­ic con­nec­tion to sug­gest­ing a resem­blance to the Tow­er of Babel, though that author’s patho­log­i­cal parei­do­lia also extends to find­ing all-see­ing eyes through­out Civic Square and child-sac­ri­fic­ing Illu­mi­nati in Cap­i­tal E. I rethink my atti­tude to imag­i­na­tive over­in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

Sir Basil Spence — who may have sketched his Bee­hive design on a nap­kin, though his ear­li­er, more detailed draw­ings show that it was far more thor­ough­ly thought-through than the anec­dote sug­gests — was prob­a­bly not a Freema­son, but the com­mis­sion­ing PM Kei­th Holyoake cer­tain­ly was. Of course, not all that long ago it would have been odd if a Prime Min­is­ter or Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al were not a mem­ber: all of the excitable occultist para­noia and New World Order wingnut­tery obscures the fact that the Craft is at heart lit­tle more than an old-boys’ club for well-con­nect­ed white men. There’s far more psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance in the archi­tec­tur­al moves that Spence actu­al­ly intend­ed (a round build­ing as a “peg” to anchor the curve of Bowen St; tur­bine imagery as a late man­i­fes­ta­tion of Modernism’s cel­e­bra­tion of heavy indus­try), and more polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance in the very real con­sti­tu­tion­al clus­ter of Par­lia­ment, judi­cia­ry and Trea­sury, than in the most inge­nious cryp­to-Mason­ic fan­tasies.

Beyond Hill St, the motor­way takes a slow curve to the right, shift­ing align­ment from the foothills route to the old Thorn­don gul­ly, falling in line with the long straight slash of the Welling­ton Fault. I flow into the tran­si­tion, ready for the next stage.