what was the original settlement of Wellington. It really was the maddest place to build a city. A beachfront site with a rocky headland at Kai-upoko, early settlers had to scramble up across the rocks at stormy high tides to get from Willis Street to Lambton Quay. Plimmer’s Ark (an old ship used as a shop) sat across the street and bits of the hull sit there still in an old basement. There have been buildings here at Clay Point (aka Windy Point) ever since pākehā arrived. The clay of the point was made into bricks, building sites were created and early timber shacks on the site for grocers, butchers, milliners, fruit shops, mercery and haberdashers were replaced some years later by stone buildings for uses including as homes for City Meats and the Hungarian Club. For the last 120
