Description Comments

Feilding Community Centre

Description: This building was opened in 1908 as the Feilding Technical School, and became a teaching facility for woodwork and cookery classes following the opening of Feilding Agricultural High School in the 1920s. Originally two storied, in 1931 the Napier earthquake damaged the heavily ornate top storey of the building so badly it had to be torn down. The centre came into its own again when the then Labour government gave its approval for educators H Crawford and Gwen Somerset to establish New Zealand's first community centre there in 1938. Somerset went on to establish a children's playgroup in the building that became the prototype for the playcentre movement. In the 1970s, the centre housed a pilot rural education programme. The building was registered by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust as a Category I Historic Place in 1998.