Can you help put together New Lynn’s history?

Contact Derek Battersby if you have any old photos or documents on the history of New Lynn.

The Waitakere city councillor says the area has an interesting past but little has been recorded.

The old New Lynn Borough Council, which ceased to exist in 1989, produced a book to celebrate the suburb’s 60th jubilee during the late 1980s.

Mr Battersby helped to put the book together and is now keen to have another more detailed look at it.

"I want to create a more comprehensive history of New Lynn," he says.

"So if anyone has unpublished images or information from the early 1900s through to the 1950s I’d like to hear from them.

"I’m hoping to get unpublished material that’s been stashed away in wardrobes and shoe boxes."

The area was named New Lynn by surveyor Frederick Utting in 1863.

Mr Utting was from King’s Lynn in Norfolk, England, and he noted the similarities between the countryside he was surveying and his homeland.

A number of English migrants set up businesses in the area during the mid-1880s. New Lynn’s high-quality pleistocene clay was perfect for brickmaking and pottery and the industry flourished.

Residents called the suburb The Whau and the district’s western edges were referred to as Waikumete.

But documents show land auctions referring to the area as Port New Lynn as early as 1865.

Call 827-4152 or email derek.battersby@waitakere.govt.nz if you can help.

- © Fairfax NZ News