Kaitaia Memorial Hospital

Kaitaia Memorial Hospital

The Kaitaia Memorial Hospital, situated on a hill overlooking Kaitaia, was first opened in October 1927 (the official opening ceremony was held on 14 March 1928). The name honoured the part the men of Mangonui County had played during the war and their contribution of a significant sum towards the hospital. Primarily a maternity hospital, Kaitaia Memorial Hospital was subsidiary to the existing Mangonui County Hospital based at Mangonui. However, in May 1934 the county hospital buildings were dismantled and re-erected in the more populous Kaitaia; the following year the Kaitaia complex was renamed the Mangonui County Memorial Hospital. In 1953 the Northland Hospital Board renamed it again, this time simply as Kaitaia Hospital.

No plaques or tablets today recall the hospital's original memorial status. The photograph above of the hospital complex in 1934 shows the original Kaitaia Memorial Hospital building to the left and the partially reconstructed Mangonui County Hospital building to the right.

See: 'Local and General'Northland Age, 29/7/1927, p. 4; 'Hospitals in the North', NZ Herald, 9/3/1928, p. 12; 'Transfer of Hospital'NZ Herald, 16/5/1934, p. 3; 'Hospital Board'Northland Age, 24/3/1935, p. 10; Keith Parker, Kaitaia's Hospital, Kaeo, 2005, pp. 16-31, 42.

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Gwenyth Frear

Posted: 18 Dec 2022

My husband was born in the Mangonui hospital in Feb 1933, and his brotherwas born in June 1934 in the same hospital at Kaitaia.