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March, 2022 Arrowtowns oldest wooden building is undergoing a facelift.The roof on the iconic police hut at Butlers Green, a tourist photo favourite, is undergoing repairs to fix leaks and replace rotting timber to preserve the roofs original red beech shingles which date back to earliest days of the gold-rush. Lakes District Museum director David Clarke says the building was starting to get dilapidated, but with a little bit of money and some volunteer labour itll be preserved for another generation. The main thing was to stop the roof leaking and protect the shingles, which when you go inside and you look up, is an amazing example of what roofs were originally like. Were using some old original red beech timber thats been taken out of museum restorations to do some of the repairs and weve got new spouting and downpipes. The huts had many uses through the years Clarke suspects it was first used to store gold in the 1860s. The hut shows up in early photographs of Arrowtown it was in front of the jail that still remains, among all the police buildings where the armed constabulary were. Clarke says the hut was shifted in the 1950s to a farm on Adamson Drive to make way for holiday cribs. It was being used as a hay shed when local fire men laid sights on it in the 90s. The fire brigade were going to burn it down as a sort of exercise. Id just started at the museum, and had seen photos of this building and correspondence from a previous director who thought that it was probably the oldest wooden building in Arrowtown and should be saved. Clarke worked with council to save the building, organising for it to be relocated to its permanent site near the Chinese Village and for it to be restored. It had an interesting early life, and then nearly succumbed and now its sort of part of the fabric [of Arrowtown]. The roof refurb has shaped up to be a community project, with everyone involved donating what they can to help protect the historic building. Most of those guys have donated their time, scaffold guys gave scaffold free and builders gave their time free, Clarke says. The hut now houses interpretation boards relating to the Mahu Whenua covenants that protect 53,000 hectares between Arrowtown and Wnaka. Source: Mountain Scene
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