Newspaper Article 2014 – Stoneycroft remembers

Stoneycroft  remembers

By CLINTON LLEWELLYN

A wig famously worn by the late Sir Richard “Dick” Harrison, a Hastings-born former Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1978-84, has a new home.

The wig had been donated by the Harrison family to the Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank so it could be permanently displayed to the public at the digital archive’s headquarters at Stoneycroft House in Hastings.

It followed the discovery by a team of researchers, led by Robyn Warren, that Stoneycroft had been the boyhood home of Harrison from 1924 to 1942, and six families – not five as originally thought – had lived in the historic homestead after it was built in 1975.

The wig was officially unveiled to the public at a Knowledge Bank’s open day on November 29, said the trust secretary James Morgan.

He described the gift of the tailor-made wig, on a stand with a special metal box, as “really something special”.

“For it to belong to a man described as one of the best Speakers that New Zealand has ever had, and then to be able to display it in the house he grew up in, is a little bit of magic,” he said.

Photo caption – On show: Richard Harrison’s parliamentary wig on display at its new home at Stoneycroft House in Hastings. It is on a stand next to a discovered photo showing the former Speaker of the House as a teenager relaxing with his father, William Creed Harrison, in the grounds of Stoneycroft.
Photo: SUPPLIED