A Woman of the Wairau

When young Stella Maxted arrived in the Wairau Valley from Blenheim, she did not know that she was to become part of a valley dynasty and farm there with her husband for 50 years.

Mervyn and Stella Wadsworth on their wedding day. Photo supplied by Stella Wadsworth.
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 “Our father bought the Wairau Valley Hotel in 1942. My sister and I had jobs in Blenheim and because it was wartime we had to get special permission to move. Military personnel on leave used to come out from Blenheim and stay for the weekend. At night, we would have sing songs around the piano and play cards and chequers."

Stella met Mervyn Wadsworth at a dance in the Wairau Valley Hall and they were married in 1949.  Mervyn was the son of Alfred and Dinah and grandson of early valley settlers, Henry and Fanny. “He was a man of the land- he just loved it.  He was a champion dog triallist¹ and such a good all round farmer,” she says of her husband, who died in 2000.

Meanwhile, Stella was forging a life for herself in the small close knit community.  “When we first married, Mervyn was head shepherd at Lansdowne. We lived in a cottage on the estate and I cooked for the shearers.  I was quite interested in how farms worked but I was wet behind the ears.”

In the early 1950s, the Wadsworths were given an opportunity to help out on a farm in the Wairau Valley, which they eventually owned. They named it Homelands and farmed there until 2000.  Initially there were no fences and gorse had to be cleared.  Mervyn sometimes drove trucks for Cyril Broadbridge² to ‘get some income to put in another fence.’

Stella soon learnt to help on the farm and could lamb a ewe if she had to, help with the milking, drive a tractor (“in a way”), and she helped in the deer shed when they got deer in the 1970s. “I never felt isolated- we had really good neighbours and Merv was there on the land.”  The three children, Val, Jane and Pamela went to primary school in the valley and then college in Blenheim.

“When we first went to the valley, there was no electricity and most people didn’t have cars.  People didn’t go into town much - church and school were the community hubs. There were dances every Saturday night and ladies wore long frocks,” says Stella.

Everybody attended the dances in the Wairau Valley and Northbank. There were farewells and welcome homes for soldiers, kitchen teas for new brides, tennis, cricket, table tennis and ‘wonderful card evenings’ at Hillersden.  With a Presbyterian church at Hillersden and an Anglican Church at Wairau Valley, most women joined their ladies’ guilds and/or the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers.   Stella was also on the committee of the Wairau Valley School and very involved with the girls’ and boys’ agricultural clubs.

Stella Wadsworth (MDC councillor) planting trees with children at Wairau Valley School.
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But eventually Stella wanted a change from ‘babies, bums and boobs’ and with three other women from the valley, travelled to Blenheim each week to attend Toast Mistress meetings. She stood for the Marlborough County Council in 1986. “Toast Mistresses gave me the courage to stand for Council,” says Stella.  She was the first woman to be voted onto the Marlborough County Council, which was initially a bit of a shock to the all-male Local Authority. “I stood to represent the views of women and children and was on the County Council and eventually the Marlborough District Council, for a total of 12 years,” she says.

After Mervyn’s death, the farm was sold out of the family and Stella moved to Blenheim where she continues a lively interest³ in people and community groups.  “It was a pretty good life. It was lovely bringing up the kids in the country because we were altogether as a family.”

Mrs Wadsworth was interviewed by Joy Stephens in Blenheim in May/June 2014 (updated 2024)

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