The public is firing back at the decision to remove the brick oven at Ferrymead Heritage Park.

The current president of Friends of Ferrymead, Martin James, said in a Facebook post to Remembering Christchurch: “Very sad news. The new management at Ferrymead Heritage Park are removing the heritage brick bread oven from the bakery. My heart is broken and I’m gutted. Ferrymead is meant to preserve history not destroy it.”

James, who has been a volunteer at Ferrymead for 45 years, told chrislynchmedia.com, “Societies have come together out of concern for the new management of the park which is taking away heritage aspects.”

“The park was created about 60 years ago to preserve and conserve our early Christchurch heritage not to destroy it. Recent planned actions include demolishing the heritage brick oven in the Ferrymead Bakery. This oven is probably one of the last remaining of its kind, certainly in the South Island,” James said.

One commenter to James’s post said, “The mentality!!! That’s the most pathetic and downright ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard! It should be blinking preserved even if never used. The ones doing it are utter idiots and should never be in control of heritage stuff in any way shape or form! I’m absolutely disgusted!!!”

The oven was built by the late Len King who was a master bricklayer and James said King gave his time and labour at no cost to the heritage park. Ferrymead named the building “King’s Bakery” after him.

“Previous bakers have described this wood-fired side flue scotch oven as an absolute gem to work with. This oven must not be destroyed,” James said.

A former worker at the bakery said on James’s Facebook post, “I ran the bakery 1977-79. It was a beautiful oven to bake in. The wood gave the bread a lovely taste and smell. The flue was a dream to control the fire. Closed down the flame barely flickered, full open the fire roared. Len King who built the oven did a fantastic craftsman job, and to destroy it will be sacrilege. If this is true, I will be one angry fella.”

However, a senior manager at Ferrymead told chrislynchmedia.com that the oven is “damaged beyond repair, according to engineers who reviewed the building’s status”.

“The oven, which was constructed in the late 1970s, is a replica and served the park well for many years. I understand it has laid unused since the earthquake of 2011,” the manager said.

They said that King’s Bakery is one of four buildings in the park that have been designated as “earthquake prone” by Christchurch City Council.

“We must remediate that classification within a fixed timeframe, or the building becomes unusable,” the manager said.

One commenter on Martin James’s Facebook post said, “Unbelievable. Fundraising to fix this could have been happening for [the] last 13 years. Disgraceful.”

The senior manager at Ferrymead said, “…the oven would need to be pulled down and rebuilt at a significant cost … The oven is contaminated with ‘highly friable Class A white powder asbestos’. Literally one of the most dangerous types of asbestos. It is going to cost upward of $20,000 just to remove that, let alone any other costs.”

The park instructed their “engineers to provide a solution to preserving the façade of the oven, and they have provided these plans and drawings. Any parts of the façade not contaminated with asbestos will be preserved in storage for a future time when the park has sufficient funds to rebuild it as a permanent display at the rear of the bakery building.”

But James said that is not enough.

“Hopes of perhaps rebuilding it in the future when funds etc are available is just pie in the sky talking. We believe that no bricklayer as skilled as Len would ever be available again to create such a master piece, and besides where would it go since the heart of the bakery would be lost?” James said.

“We acknowledge that there are issues due to the Christchurch earthquakes and some asbestos issues too. We have asked on several occasions for engineers reports to be furnished but unfortunately we have not received them. We did get copies of asbestos testing in the bakery building and surrounds: these tests show no asbestos contamination in the building so we would understand that the asbestos is already contained on the external top cavity of the oven,” he said.

“We believe a plan to mitigate these issues needs to be developed. Many other exhibits at the heritage park have asbestos issues but these are either contained (railcars) or have had the asbestos removed (locomotive engines and trams). Even if the oven is not able to be upgraded for use in the near future it should be preserved in situ,” James added.

“All societies support redevelopment and change but it must be done in a managed way that involves consultation, care and respect to the societies and members who have made the park what it is today. It seems our vision is not the same vision of the new manager or Trust Board. This new approach is done on a whim or idea and is change for the sake of change,” he said.

The Tramway Historical Society is in full support of Friends of Ferrymead, calling for an “immediate pause to any modification to buildings until consultation with the societies can be undertaken”.

They said in a letter to the park’s trust this week, “The society is seeking information around the decision [that] has been made to demolish the Bakery oven rather than to seek a group to repair it. We are aware that the park has received offers to repair the oven over the years since the earthquake which have all been turned down at the time. We believe an outline of the proposed modifications and an engineer’s report would help to explain this decision.”

When chrislynchmedia.com asked about the comment “Ferrymead is meant to preserve history not destroy it” the senior manager at Ferrymead said, “We agree with that. The park also has to provide a safe space for people to visit and work in, and ensure that any events we hold are not putting the public at risk. Like any organisation, there is a balance between nostalgia and safety.”

James said, “We have plenty of heritage exhibits that we treasure, preserve and maintain that will never fill their original purpose. Examples of the these are our wonderful collection of aeroplanes and fire engines. Our aeroplanes will never fly again but it doesn’t mean that they are destroyed, the same can be said of our many railway engines, carriages and trams. Once they have gone they can never be replaced. We see the bakery oven as a taonga for future generations. As for a plan moving forward – there appears to be no firm plan or published business management plan or budget for the space left after the oven is removed.”

When asked why Ferrymead Heritage Park is currently closed until the end of September, the senior manager at Ferrymead said, “We are going through a number of changes in the park in response to the business case developed by the Trust in 2023 and delivered to the Christchurch City Council at the end of December last year. Many of these operationalise the six strategic objectives, which are good governance; protection and repair of buildings and infrastructure; preservation and cataloguing of artifacts and taonga; respect and recognition of te ao Māori; improvement to the environment, and; world-class visitor experience.”

“When the new directors were appointed, there was a review of risk and a number of health and safety concerns were identified. A key concern is the entry and egress to the park, particularly when there are large numbers of people present. We felt the need to increase the capacity of these to mitigate any event requiring an evacuation. The park hibernation allows our hardworking team to undertake repairs and improvements without the general public in the park. In any case, these months are traditionally very slow for Ferrymead Heritage Park and we wanted to delight and impress our local community and the ratepayers of Christchurch with some new improvements,” they said.