This small area of ‘edgeland’ has had many incarnations - part of a larger block of land gifted by Rangitane and Ngati Kahungunu leader, Retimana te Korou, to Joseph Masters and the Small Farms Association for the town of Masterton in the 19th Century, part of it became the site of the Landsdowne Dam that was destroyed in a storm in 1924, and part of it was attached to the ‘Hansell’s factory site’ with one of the founders’ homes and a horse training track and stables.

Over the last few decades it has been home to a few local horses. But it is now erased, the horses and trees and wetland are all gone, displaced for a residential facility for our aging population.