Manning Valley Historical Society

History Of The Museum

 

The town of Wingham was laid out by Assistant Surveyor Gorman in August 1843 and proclaimed a village in July, 1844,  the location being described as the point where the road from Raymond Terrace to Port Macquarie crossed the river.  The first sale of land did not take place until September 1854 and the nearby  property  "Bungay Bungay", which was established in 1841, continued to serve as the local centre until 1859:

By 1861 Wingham had developed into a small centre with a population of fifty. Growth during the early years remained slow and in 1866 Wingham was described as having only one store, one hotel, a blacksmith's and a lockup.  By 1871 the population had reached just 102

.

Wingham enjoyed reasonable growth during the 1870s and 1880s and a number of new shops and banks were opened. The site of this building was purchased for £10. 10s. by James Campbell Duff at an auction of crown land on the 29th August 1871.  Duff mortgaged the property  to the English, Scottish and Australian Chartered Bank in September 1871, possibly to commence business.  A store is believed to have been built about that time by Frances J. Dennes, a cabinet maker, who had been apprenticed to A. R. Hansford of Tinonee and Samuel Lee, a builder. It appears that no part of this building remains.

Duff died on 21 March 1881, aged 47, and the property was transferred to his widow, Jane Duff, in October 1881.  Jane Duff sold the property to Adam Herkes in October 1882.  Herkes operated a general store through the 1880s and his advertisements of September 1886 list items as diverse as groceries, men's and women's clothing, fabrics, hats, shoes and boots, ironmongery, crockery, glassware, patent medicines, wire netting, rope and saddlery,

Herkes sold the property to James Brown, a blacksmith of Wingham, on 2 September 1891.  Little is Known of Brown's operation of the business and no advertisements by it have so far been noted.  The building appears to have been in use in 1896 because in April of that year the Sydney Drapery and Grocery company announced it had opened premises opposite Fotheringham's Hotel.  That venture must have been short lived for in June 1897 Hubert McDowell Wade and Percy Neate Dark advertised that they had taken the premises on the corner of Farquhar and Bent Streets and would open about 28 June with a new stock of top quality groceries at bottom prices.  Wade and Dark's advertisement appears to indicate that the business had been closed for a while.  There is some possibility that the store was changed or rebuilt about then.

Wade apparently left the partnership in 1902, for newspaper advertisements after then are in the name of  P. N. Dark only.  On 30 September 1904, Brown sold the property to Percy Dark's father, Stephen Whiteman Dark, who was described as a store keeper of Clarence Town.  Stephen Dark later transferred the properly to his son Percy on 16 September 1910.  At the time Wade and Dark took over the business, the store itself, not including the various outbuildings that must have been in use, was probably only about a quarter the size of the present building.  Later, perhaps shortly after Stephen Whiteman Dark purchased the building in 1904, it was extended backward approximately doubling the floor area.

Percy Dark continued in the business until 27 March 1914, when he leased the store to Ethelbert William Moxey, storekeeper of Williamtown, and Frederick Arnott Moxey, business manager of Strathfield.   (Dark subsequently operated a bakery and confectionery business in Isabella Street.)  So began the building's long association with the Moxey family.  It is this association, spanning almost half a century, that is remembered by many Wingham people today.

In 1926 Moxeys modernised the shop front and extended the building towards Church Crescent, effectively doubling the shop area again, and bringing the building substantially to its present form and size.  The residence, which was located on the Church Crescent side of the store, was broken into sections and partly used in the 1926 extensions.  About 1938 the remaining section was extended forward to the footpath alignment and remains in use today as the Society's meeting room.  A section of the old bull nose iron verandah that survived on the side of the meeting room was demolished about May 1977 because of its deteriorating condition and encroachment onto Church Crescent.

For the twenty years from 1926 to 1946, Moxeys' was a large, comprehensively stocked, country store. There were fifteen free standing or connected buildings, some only with earth floors, stretching rearward to the lane behind the present Wingham Motel.  Included among them were bulk store, cars and carts sheds, kapok and tins shed stables, eggs and produce store, oils and feed shed, produce and hardware store and inflammable liquids depot.

Moxeys kept the store open during the war years, but not without some difficulty because of the shortage of male labour.  In November 1946 the grocery section of the business was sold to the Hunter Valley firm, Conway's Cash Stores Pty. Limited,  Gwyn Allan (nee Moxey) continued to operate the drapery section in the eastern side, still under the name of  E. W. Moxey, and Terry Liddell managed the grocery section.  Liddell joined Conway's after being demobilised from war service in 1946 and moved to Wingham shortly afterwards.  Percy Neate Dark died on 15 March 1948, aged 73.  The property was then transferred to sons Percy Keith Dark of Bellingen and Adrian Ross Dark of Wingham.  Conway's renewed their tenancy, taking out a ten year lease in Julv 1951, but the days of the old general store were drawing to an end.  Conway's and Moxey's closed the doors in January 1963.  The era of the general store was over, supermarkets were the way of the future and the old timber building was by then failing into disrepair.

The property was purchased by the Wingham District Memorial Services Club Limited in March 1961 as the eventual site for their proposed new club.  Opposition from nearby churches and schools caused the Services Club to acquire a new site in Bent Street, the old building was leased to the Manning Valley Historical Society in October 1966 and later sold to the Society in July 1974.  The Society's museum was officially opened by aviatrix Nancy Bird Walton on 30 November 1968.

The building was classified by the National Trust in 1988 and identified as worthy of protection in the Greater Taree City Council Heritage Study.  Restoration to the floor and wall structure and replacement of roof iron was carried out in 1991 and 1992 with financial assistance from the NSW Department of Planning.  The group of buildings has operated as the headquarters, archives and museum of the Historical Society to this day.