Newspaper Article 1995 – Rissington site of first NZ CWI

Rissington site of first NZ CWI

By Ivy Dickson,
Staff reporter, Hastings

Joyce Wooster has fond memories of Rissington and Miss Jerome Spencer, the founder of the Country Women’s Institute in New Zealand.

Mrs Wooster, who at 74 was born the year CWI started is still a dedicated member of CWI at Bay View, in Napier, and her mother Margaret McLean was one of the early members at Rissington.

In February, the institute will celebrate 75 years of bringing country women together, but the first CWI at Rissington ran out of members in 1988.

Miss Spencer taught Sunday School at Rissington when Mrs Wooster was five.

“She was a delightful person. I have happy memories of her,” Mrs Wooster said.

Miss Spencer set up the first New Zealand CWI after finding out about the organisation in England during the First World War, where she had gone to help the war effort.

The Country Women’s Institute was founded in Canada in 1897.

Miss Spencer was born in Napier in 1872 and attended Napier Girls’ High School, later becoming its headmistress.

Her life in the country started when she bought a small fruit and honey orchard at Awataha. Later she moved to Omatua.

Mrs Wooster said women used to walk for miles to CWI meetings each month because it was the only time most of them saw each other in the isolated communities.

“Women put on their gumboots and oilskins and trudged miles across muddy paddocks to get to a meeting.” Mrs Wooster said.

“CWI was the highlight of our month and served its purpose by bringing everyone together it meant a lot to the women.” she said.

People turned up in buggies, gigs, drays, on horseback and early tractors, and in dinghies when the bridge washed away in the 1924 flood, Mrs Wooster said.

Only two women turned up to the last Rissington CWI meeting – Mrs Wooster and her friend Margaret Wali. They decided to call it a day, and were later invited to join the Patoka CWI.

Mrs Wooster said that in the early days, when there were few cars, trips into town were infrequent.

“A service car brought mail, bread and school children, and took mail back to town,” she said.

“It was a thrill to go to town. My first impressions of Napier were the lights on the trees on the Parade and the water coming up to the seawall behind them,” Mrs Wooster said.

The sea used to come up to the wall before the 1931 Napier earthquake, she said.

CWI national president Mrs Avelda Howie, Dunedin, will attend the Rissington commemorative ceremony.

Hawke’s Bay president Lola Proctor said the institute would tidy up Miss Spencer’s grave at Rissington for the occasion and a 75th anniversary banner will be launched at the July annual meeting in Whangarei.

Mrs Proctor said the banner will work its way down the North Island to Rissington for the commemorative ceremony.

The CWI history, written in 1958, will also be up-dated for the 75th anniversary.

The eight original members of the first CWI were Miss Spencer, Mrs F. Hutchinson Junior, Mrs J. Howell, Mrs Kay, Mrs A. Williams, Mrs Welch, Mrs Mulqueenie and Mrs Woodward.

Photo captions –

Omatua homestead, Rissington, where the first Country Women’s Institute meeting in New Zealand was held in February, 1921.

Miss Spencer. . . founder of CWI in New Zealand.