One of the characters of early Hawke’s Bay was George Rymer (1844 ‒ 1917), who was born in Yorkshire, but came to New Zealand in 1863 to take part in the Otago gold rush at Gabriel’s Gully. Settling at Meeanee, George began a coaching service in 1866 which took passengers and freight from Meeanee to Napier and Ahuriri, and from the Shamrock Hotel at Awatoto to Napier.

The home of the Mission Estate concert since 1993 in Taradale has a long history. When Marist priests arrived in Hawke’s Bay in 1851, they settled at the Pakowhai Pa (and planted the first grapes in Hawke’s Bay) and were under the protection of Chief Puhara. But it would take 46 years before Mission Estate moved to the elevated site they now occupy.

To commemorate the fallen soldiers from World War I, most communities around New Zealand constructed a war memorial. Taradale, in 1920, was a borough council, and it had plans for its own war memorial. The memorial would take the form of a concrete clock tower designed by Jack Ellis, and on land purchased in 1916 on the corner of Avondale and Gloucester St, Taradale.

Henry Stokes Tiffen was recognised as a naturalist and horticulturist; he would bring home exotic seeds and plants (sugar beet, tobacco, persimmons) from his overseas travels. He had 22 acres in grapevines on Greenmeadows in 1895. 

He died in 1896, remembered as one of our greatest benefactors, his purse ever open to the needy, his disposition kindly and cheerful.