The new Kerikeri war memorial in the Kerikeri Domain was first used for an official Anzac Day ceremony in 2023. It had been built by agreement between the Kerikeri and Districts RSA and the Far North District Council to replace a memorial which formerly stood outside the RSA clubrooms, but which was dismantled after the RSA sold its land and buildings in 2019.
The new memorial is a curved stone wall on which are displayed a number of commemorative plaques. Four flagpoles stand behind the wall. The flagpole from the RSA memorial was moved to the domain memorial, as were plaques marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the Great War and the 50th anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day, but the other plaques are new. The central plaque is dedicated to the memory of those from the district who fell in all wars. It is flanked on the left by plaques listing the names of five local men who gave their lives in the First World War (D.L. Baker, V.H. Baker, J.M. Boyd, C. Faithfull, D.J. McLeod) and seven who gave their lives in the Second World War (G. Callender, I. Grant, B.D. Hewett, J. Raymond, R. Shannon, R.K. Strongman, J. Waha); and on the right by a Vietnam War plaque (A.J.S. Don) and a Maori Battalion plaque.
Kerikeri RSA memorial
The RSA memorial consisted of a flagpole standing within an enclosure marked by four low brick pillars. A plaque attached to one of the front pillars listed the names of 13 men from the Kerikeri area who saw active service during the First World War, four of whom gave their lives; on the opposite pillar another plaque commemorated (but did not name) those who had served in wars since the Second World War.
This flagpole was built using a bequest from Herbert Murray, a local benefactor. The plaque beneath it read: THIS FLAGPOLE WAS PRESENTED BY / HERBERT H. MURRAY / TO COMMEMORATE THE BATTLE / OF THE SOMME 1916, / AND TO THE MEMORY AND THE GLORY OF / ALL MEMBERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH / ARMED FORCES WHO FELL IN ACTION. / “WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.” Another plaque listed the names of four local men who gave their lives in the First World War and eight who gave their lives in the Second World War.
The memorial was presumably constructed after the RSA moved from its first clubrooms in Hone Heke Street to new premises in Cobham Street in November 1988. Several memorial trees were also planted in the vicinity, one in 1993 with a plaque marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the Great War and two others in 1995 with plaques marking the 50th anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day respectively.
Earlier memorials
The earlier history of Kerikeri’s war memorials has been only patchily documented. According to one account, the town's first war memorial was a tōtara flagpole erected at the Kerikeri Primary School in Riverview Road during or after the First World War. This served as the focus for the town's Anzac Day commemorations until the Kerikeri War Memorial Hall was opened in June 1945.
When the Riverview Road school was relocated in 1963, the flagpole was moved, first to the memorial hall, then to the RSA's first clubrooms in Hone Heke Street, and finally in 1988 to the local golf course. There it partly rotted away, but the remains were turned into a carving, which was blessed on 14 September 2009. (There is another account of a ‘ricker kauri’ flagstaff that had originally been located at the school being moved first to the grounds of the memorial hall, then to the servicemen’s section of the Wiroa Road cemetery.)
The Kerikeri War Memorial Hall (which had originally been built as a passion fruit processing factory in 1931) was demolished in 2009.
See: Kerikeri 175th Anniversary, Kerikeri, 1994, pp. 53-4, 59, 61; Nancy Pickmere, Kerikeri: Heritage of Dreams, Russell, 1994, pp. 106, 146; ‘Demolition of war memorial hall begins’, Bay Chronicle, 31/1/2009; ‘History flags pole as treasured item’, Bay Chronicle, 24/9/2009; ‘What’s in a name?’ Kerikeri Village Times, March 2015, p. 4; 'Big turnout for Kerikeri RSA's last dawn service', Northern Advocate, 25/4/2019; 'Work due to start on new war memorial at Kerikeri Domain', Northern Advocate, 22/2/2022.
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