Fairton is a town in the

Ashburton District Ashburton District is a Districts of New Zealand, territorial authority district in the Canterbury Region of the South Island of New Zealand. It encompasses the town of Ashburton, New Zealand, Ashburton, a number of small towns and settlements an ...

, New Zealand. According to the

2001 New Zealand census The New Zealand Census of Population and Dwellings () is a national population and housing census conducted by Statistics New Zealand, a government department, every five years. There have been 34 censuses since 1851. In addition to providing d ...

it had a population of 1185, of which 612 were male and 573 were female. The Newlands School house, opened near

Rangiora Rangiora is the largest town and seat of the Waimakariri District, in Canterbury Region, Canterbury, New Zealand. It is north of Christchurch, and is part of the Christchurch metropolitan area. With an estimated population of Rangiora is the ...

in 1880, was moved to Fairton in 1901. The school moved to a new location donated by a local business in 1968.

Marae

Hakatere Marae has occupied the original Fairton School building on State Highway 1 since 1970, two years after the school left the site. It held

Waitangi Day Waitangi Day (, the national day of New Zealand, marks the anniversary of the initial signing—on 6 February 1840—of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Treaty of Waitangi was an agreement towards British sovereignty by representatives of the The Cr ...

events from 1973, and incorporated a

hāngī Hāngī () is a traditional New Zealand Māori method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit oven, called an ''umu''. It is still used for large groups on special occasions, as it allows large quantities of food to be cooked witho ...

into the annual holiday from 1974. The land was officially purchased by the Mid Canterbury Māori Committee in 1975. The marae is named after the nearby Ashburton River. The original school house and ''wharenui'' (meeting house) was destroyed by fire in 2003. A new $300,000 ''wharekai'' (dining hall) was completed in 2007, the entranceway was widened in 2008, and a new multi-use conference building was completed in 2009. The Ministry of Health granted the marae $10,000 a year from 2009 to 2012 to develop a community marae garden on a half acre of land. Ashburton carver Vince Leonard completed carvings for the meeting house and

Ashburton College Ashburton College is a state coeducational secondary school located in Ashburton, New Zealand. It opened in 1965 following the merger of two Ashburton secondary schools: Ashburton High School and Hakatere College, and moved to its current site ...

until his death in 2019. In October 2020, the Government committed $110,208 from the

Provincial Growth Fund Shane Geoffrey Jones (born 3 September 1959) is a New Zealand politician and a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the New Zealand First party. Jones' political career began 2005 New Zealand general election, in 2005 as a l ...

to renovate the marae, creating 14 jobs.

References

Ashburton District Populated places in the Canterbury Region {{CanterburyNZ-geo-stub