DISTRICT COURTS - Courts of New Zealand

The DISTRICT COURTS
NEW ZEALAND
42
The Warkworth Courthouse:
A mystery and a memoir
A Judge writes.... ‘So reads the plaque set beneath the
front gable of this modest little wooden building. Has
it been in use as a courthouse since 1880? The jury
is out on that one. There was certainly a constable’s
dwelling on the site at that early date and it may be that
it was in that more humble capacity that the building
first served. In truth I have been unable to ascertain the
date upon which a Court first sat here – save to say that
it was about the date shown above that a police court
was known to have been first convened in the town.
Perhaps my research has not been sufficiently assiduous.
Perhaps, if its origins are more humble than the plaque
suggests, I don’t really want to know.
‘My first personal acquaintance with this historical little
venue was when I went there one day as a schoolboy to
observe the wheels of justice in motion. My companion
and I in our short trousers were startled by the local
constable bellowing out the name of the next defendant
and enquiring in none too delicate terms whether either
of us was the said suspect.
‘A few years later I darkened the door again when,
as a very newly fledged lawyer, I made my first ever
court appearance there in 1966. At that time I suspect
not much had changed physically about the place
since 1880, nor indeed in the administration and
clerical arrangements prevailing. The sole charge local
constable served the offices of both Registrar and
prosecutor, and no one seemed unduly troubled by the
perception of a conflict of interest in this arrangement.
The presiding Magistrate and his clerk attended from
Auckland, and proceedings were run on the military
and authoritarian lines common at the time and which I
had observed in action as a boy some years previously.
‘At the end of the day’s proceedings the presiding
Magistrate, Mr M C Astley SM, bade the press and
members of the public to remain as he said: ‘I have