The 100th commemoration of the 1924 opening of Flock House planned for the weekend of July 20 and 21 in Palmerston North is rapidly approaching.
Former farm cadets, staff members and descendants of the more than 750 war-orphaned boys and girls from the United Kingdom sent to New Zealand between 1924 and 1931 are urged to register for the historical event, and attend.
The boys did practical farming courses at Flock House near Bulls in Rangitīkei, its farms and facilities.
The UK girls went to Awapuni, Palmerston North, and were taught cooking, baking, laundry, sewing, butter-making, nursing, milking, poultry and bee-keeping and orchard culture.
Their training centre, called Shalimar, went to the Women’s Division of the Farmers Union in 1939 and was destroyed by fire in 1958.
Those cadets from the UK were sourced and assisted by the NZ Sheepowners’ Acknowledgment of Debt to British Seamen Fund of £237,000, donated from the proceeds of the sale of wool during and immediately after World War 1.
Flock House also trained more than 2400 NZ cadets between 1931 and 1988, under government ownership and the management of the Ministry of Education, followed by the Department of Agriculture and Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Up to 60 trainees were taken on each year for a 12-month course, and there were also short courses in skills such as shearing and butchery.
In the 1980s the introduction of full fees under the user-pays principle led to a dramatic fall in student numbers, and in 1988 the programme was closed.
Flock House and the farm were transferred to AgResearch with the formation of the Crown Research Institutes in 1992 and sold to private interests in 1999.
The student facilities and buildings had been used as a commercial conference centre, during the time the farm was used for research.
From 1969 to 1983 the principal was All Blacks rugby coach and agriculturalist JJ Stewart.
The homestead was built in 1908 by a Whanganui building firm, Russell & Bignell, for the farm owner Lynn McKelvie, who sold Flock House to the Sheepowners’ Fund in 1923.
It is now a Heritage New Zealand listed historic place, category one.
The centenary commemoration has been proposed by Alasdair Bettles-Hall of Feilding, the son of a UK trainee called Victor from 1929, who had been in an orphanage from age seven to 15.
Bettles-Hall is now helped by an organising committee to work on the format, speakers and social activities. The event will be held at the Silks Lounge, Awapuni Racecourse.
“As we are now two years into the project, it has become clear that finding the descendants of the original orphans is a lot harder than first thought,” Bettles-Hall said.
“Nor is it easy to notify former NZ farm cadets, because the records, where they exist, have redundant addresses and no telephone numbers.
“Word of mouth between former cadets and their families and registration of interest through the website are our main means of getting participation.”
The organisers are aware of numerous reunions held in the past, one for the UK trainees in 1960 and others for NZ cadets according to their years of attendance.
An article in Farmers Weekly in September 2022 drew 70 replies and the website flockhouse.nz has registered about 475 emails of those interested in the event.
