Former potteries building faces demolition

The building that was once Bishopdale Potteries may soon be no longer, with the site covered in scaffolding and bearing a demolition notice.

Bishopdale Potteries was built by Bill Gibbons to maintain supplies for the construction industry in 1953, according to Julie Warren’s 1992 publication on the Nelson pottery industry.

Warren wrote that Gibbons bought out Nelson Brick and Pipe around 1975 and closed it down around 18 months later, transferring the equipment up to Bishopdale.

“Many of the bricks live on in both the homes and gardens of Nelson and the local potters’ kilns,” the book said.

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Nelson based glass artist Anthony Genet rented space in the building for 20 years, although his lease ended around three years ago, when the tenants were asked to leave.

Genet recalls initially, there were no windows, so the tennants put all the windows in themselves and did other leaseholder developments.

“When I moved in, it was a clay store, and we had to get a digger in for the day to dig out all the clay,” he said.

“Then I had one of the worst days of my life with a waterblaster, cleaning all the clay remains out.”

But it was time well spent, “turning something that was nothing into something that was useable and welcoming for the public, because I had my gallery up there and made a business.”

There were two big warehouses up there, he said, and Genet was in the old brick works, along with three or four others. There were also a couple of businesses in a shed down the end.

Genet started Flamedaisy Glass Design there before moving to Trafalgar Square.

He used the space for storage, and for his big projects, and he had other artist friends who did the same.

At the beginning of the tenancy, rent was $30, and by the end of it, around $200 a month.

“It was always really cheap rent. When you get a place that’s cheap rent, you don’t give it up,” he said.

While he was based there, there were always people coming in and out, serving as a “good stepping stone”, that Genet said got him to where he is today.

Potter Royce McGlashen, who was born on a farm in the Richmond Hills, recalled buying field tiles from the building in the 1970s – “long and quite fat” pipes laid in the paddocks and ditches used for drainage, made from clay that came from the Moutere Hills or from just outside the workshop on Bishopdale Hill.

“They extruded them, and they dried them and fired them in big kilns. The kilns are there today, they’re absolutely beautiful,” he said.

“It was just a hive of industry.”

He even made “garden warriors” out of the pipes, about 70cm high. The pre plastic era pipes were also used for sewer reticulation throughout the city as well as Richmond, he said.

Property records list the owner of the property as Bishopdale Developments Ltd.

Gibbons, which has demolition signs on the building, declined to comment.

Nelson City Council group manager environmental management Mandy Bishop said this area of Bishopdale was granted resource consent in 2017 under the Special Housing Area Act for 60 residential lots.

The old Bishopdale Potteries buildings were included in the area given consent for development, but, as they fit within the demolition exemption scope of the Building Act, they did not require an additional consent for demolition, she said.