Baches in the landscape and their contested recognition as heritage: case studies of heritage landscapes at Taylors Mistake and Rangitoto Island

Abstract

This dissertation explores how and why New Zealand vernacular holiday cottages known as baches or cribs have come to be recognised as heritage, although what constitutes the heritage of the bach is vigorously contested. Baches typically formed small settlements around the coast and lakes, and along rivers, on both public land and in small subdivisions. This created distinctive bach landscapes in a number of places including Taylors Mistake near Christchurch and Rangitoto Island just offshore of Auckland.

Studies of the physical aspects of these landscapes, what it was like to dwell at the beach, how they have been represented in popular media and a history of the official responses to the bach are used to situate the controversies over heritage recognition at Taylors Mistake and Rangitoto Island.

The approaches to heritage in these case studies are analysed in relation to three intellectual perspectives on heritage; fine arts, humanities and the holistic environmental perspectives. It is argued that assessments of the baches are predominantly from a fine arts perspective that systematically fails to recognise bach heritage. The humanities perspective corrects some of the omissions but it is concluded that only a holistic environmental perspective is capable of incorporating recent understandings of the dwelt and imagined aspects of heritage landscapes.