Birchville 3.34

Birchville is a suburb of Upper Hutt, New Zealand in the North Island. Its centre lies at the entrance to the Akatarawa Valley, in the north of the city, near confluence of the Akatarawa Stream with the Hutt River. It is about a 5 km (10-minute) drive north from the centre of Upper Hutt. The Birchville community is spread out along both banks of the Hutt River in a long fairly narrow valley.NamingOriginally described as being part of Akatarawa or Mungaroa in early news paper reports. The "Town of Birchville" only appears in land registry records during the mid-1920s, when the Commissioner of Crown Lands offered week-end cottage sections on the banks of the Hutt River for sale or lease. Other land owners also subdivided their land on the opposite river bank, when the sections in the original subdivision all sold and many were built on. These subdividers noted that Birchville was a popular week-end holiday resort.When the Parkdale subdivision was developed during the 1970s, confusion arose over what was the appropriate name for the suburb should be. In 1982, the New Zealand Geographic Board clarified that Birchville, rather than Parkdale, Rivervale, Akatarawa, or Gillespies Road was the official locality name. The Upper Hutt City Council again affirmed, during the first decade of the 21st century, that the suburb of Birchville included all the housing developments along Akatarawa Road and Gemstone Drive between State Highway 2 and the Akatarawa Cemetery.Early Exploration and SettlementEuropeans first explored this area in 1840. On 4th (or 5th) August that year, a party of 5, led by Dr. Ernest Diffenbach, using a punt to travel up-river, had reached the Akatarawa Stream junction. The party appears to have stopped on the riverbank to brew tea before continuing up the Akatarawa Stream.