'Every history is a product of its time': Sarah Ell

Hidden in the centre of a busy and fast-growing city lies an oasis of calm, a picture-perfect house surrounded by lush, well-tended gardens. Push open the wooden gate and find yourself transported to another world, into a slice of living history carefully preserved for nearly two centuries . . . The Elms Te Papa Tauranga is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most important heritage sites, bearing witness to more than six hundred years of significant and at times turbulent history. The Spirit of a Place is a captivating portrait of this unique site and all the people who have made it their home.

Kete caught up with author Sarah Ell to talk about what it took to write this book, revisionist and social history, and what else she's got on the horizon. Kia ora Sarah! This is a beautiful book, obviously the result of a long period of work. Can you tell us about the process of writing it and what you’ve found different to your other historical non-fiction?

I submitted a pitch in 2022, when The Elms Foundation called for proposals to write a new history of the house and grounds. I came up with a thematic concept, rather than a strictly chronological one, exploring the different aspects of the story: the site’s pre-European history, women and children, the garden, the impact of war, and so on. I wanted the book to be readable and accessible, and to tell the stories of the lives of people who had lived here. Fortunately, the foundation agreed and I was asked to write the book.

You’ve said the book is ‘a window into the broader story of Aotearoa’. Can you explain that a little more?

The site was one of several which were heavily populated by Māori for hundreds of years, then missionaries started visiting in the 1820s and construction began on the surviving house a few years before the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, so this site has borne witness to around 600 years of both Māori, Pākehā, and shared history. The things that have happened here encapsulate so many themes of Aotearoa New Zealand history: occupation by tangata whenua, the musket wars of the 1810s and 20s, the coming of missionaries and traders, other European settlement, pressure on land and resources, war and land confiscation, the growth of an urban centre . . . all these things have gone on around this place, and are a ‘way in’ to understanding the tides of change which have occurred in all parts of the country over the past few centuries.

There are many interlocking stories within a history, especially of a place—do they all play to different aspects of society and changing attitudes?

I think what is most interesting is how every history is a product of its time. Each historian chooses what they want to include – they might think or say that they are just reporting the facts of what happened, but how they choose to shape the story, what they put in and what they leave out are revealing. So that’s one reason this book is called ‘A History’ not ‘The History’ of The Elms. The history written in the 1980s by Charles Vennell (Brown and The Elms) was highly influenced by Duff Maxwell, at that time occupant and caretaker of The Elms, and as the story suggests, he weighted the story heavily towards the missionary period.

I’m lucky to have studied at a time when revisionist and social history have become so predominant, and the lives of ordinary people started to be considered worth recording — and they are most certainly are! We’ve also got much better at looking at and talking about the more uncomfortable aspects of our country’s history: Te Titiri, for example, and the New Zealand Wars. I’m glad the younger generation is getting a chance to learn about and discuss these events from a more balanced viewpoint.

And the book represents many different voices, especially Māori. Was it important to Te Papa and to you to have as many of these voices as possible included?

It was vitally important to me and the trust to ground this history in the stories of tangata whenua, to which this has always been a special and important place. I spent time with Puhirake Ihaka of the Ōtamataha Trust, talking with him about the history of this place and the whakapapa of the people who lived there, to make sure their traditions and stories were represented. I also really wanted to include the stories of the other types of people who have been overlooked in histories in the past: women, children, domestic servants. The Maxwell women were the occupants and guardians of this property for around 70 years in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and before them the missionary women played a huge role. All these stories were so fascinating to research and write about.

You’ve a historical novel coming next year from Bateman titled A Sky Full of Fire, and you’ve written YA historical fiction in the past. How do you find that process compared to a book like this?

Hard, so hard! I’m a journalist by trade so the researching and recording of facts comes naturally to me. Making stuff up about imaginary people, even if set against a historically accurate background, is much harder, and requires a lot more emotional energy and time. The other thing I struggle with when writing historical fiction is resisting the urge to stuff everything I’ve found out in my research into the book . . . I had to force myself to cut large sections of A Sky Full of Fire (which is about the Tarawera eruption) which contained fascinating historical detail but which did not move the story along!

I stand by the saying that truth is stranger than fiction, too: often the things in my books which are true are much weirder than the things I have made up!

And lucky last question: What’s next for you? Do you have another big writing project lined up? Fiction or non-fiction?

I’m very interested in historical crime, so I have a couple of ideas related to that bubbling away on the back burner. Again, I have to decide whether to fictionalise these events and bend the truth to my will, or just lean into the strangeness and darkness of the actual facts of the case, and use creative non fiction techniques to weave a story. So much historical fiction sanitises the past and includes anachronistic attitudes and behaviour, especially for female characters . . . New Zealand for much of its history was a dirty and dangerous place, especially for women, who held so little power over their own destinies, and I want to try to capture that. Spirit of a Place: A New History of The Elms Te Papa Tauranga (The Elms Tauranga) is available in bookstores now.