Amongst the remarkable characters leaving a historical note to our coastal area would have to be Isabella Lavery, born in Warnambool, Victoria, in 1866. At 23 she married Harry Hucks and about 1903 with husband, four daughters and one son came to Christchurch.
Lavery became the first proprietor of Theatre Royal Café an establishment lasting over 50 years in Gloucester Street, featuring a grillroom where eggs, pies and steaks were consumed, and originally a men-only institution.
It was particularly busy after Saturday sport, and a faithful clientele including the gents from the upmarket central city schools and working men from city businesses. ‘The boys’ came to know Isabella as ‘Mother Hucks’.
About the time of the First World War in 1914, Isabella took out a mortgage with the Sydenham Money Club and built two substantial structures at North New Brighton. The Ozone Dressing Sheds faced Marine Parade opposite the current community centre.
The two-storey Ozone Café, ‘a well-appointed brick private hotel’, on the northern corner of Marine Parade and Bowhill Road was a ‘palace’ (its original name) midst the bleak scrubby sand dunes and matchbox holiday baches.
This was a leap of faith 108 years ago in the future of New Brighton where residents were scattered midst these wavering sandy dunes.
As an example of her generosity, towards the conclusion of the War in 1918 she offered the building as a convalescent home for returned soldiers and paid staff to operate it.
Mother Hucks whilst building a reputation as a hard-working businesswoman in a male dominated arena, she was also known for her big heart helping those down and out, despite suffering a few setbacks herself.
On an April evening in 1922 a crowd sat on sandhills in the Domain (Thompson Park) watching a spectacular blaze gut the Ozone complex. The Hucks family had a narrow escape, Isabella exiting the cafe in her night attire but losing all her personal possessions. The fire starting from a fireplace in the adjoining Dressing Shed Tearooms setting the roof on fire.
The under-resourced fire service at the time consisted of ancient machines pulled by horses who had to be rounded up and attached hence time was not on their side. Firemen also struggled to find the water sources and had to rely on locals to point them out.
Residents beat the fire in danger of spreading through sparks to the dry marram grass and broom with wet sacks and sand. Whilst the prevailing wind was in their favour and prevented a wider disaster, the heat cracked the windows of the shops on the other side of Bowhill Rd and destroyed a motor garage at the back.
Despite incurring a heavy financial loss of four thousand pounds, the determined Australian was soon restoring the dressing sheds and Ozone Cafe to their former glory.
This was a time when public changing facilities were non-existent, but bureaucracy demanded flesh be concealed within neck-to-knee bathing costumes, and public measurements taken by male officials (usually appointed members of local surf clubs) where the gap between thigh and knee was deemed to infringe public morals.
The Ozone Dressing Sheds supplied the seaside visitor with changing cubicles, the prescribed beach dress, cold showers, towels and milkshakes and afternoon tea. Fifty changing sheds for men and fifty for women at 6 pence to store valuables and clothes (the days where the currency was British and we didn’t get our own coins till 1933).
Once changed, to walk across the road to the beach a coat had to be worn to avoid the risk of getting arrested. You could hire a towel and woollen costume for 3 pence but before the advent of jandals (thongs, flip flops or slops) the journey across the gravel road was like watching fire walkers on hot coals.
In the 1920s and 30s solid kahikatea surf boards were hired out curved at top and you flopped on board on a board and wrapped your arms around the front. Never a good position if a wave dumped the board head-first into the sand.
At the cafe, the well-heeled from the other side of town could enjoy an upmarket atmosphere. The rooms were panelled and illuminated by beautiful Australian made leadlights, and the springy wooden dining room floor provided an ideal surface for dancing.
A collection of flags adorned the walls, the tablecloths snow-white linen, and everything was scrupulously clean (a Hucks trademark). Both the plebs (average working people) at the Ozone Dressing Sheds and the gentry (well bred) at the Cafe consumed food from high class crockery embossed with the word ‘Ozone’.
The big cafe dining room seated about 40 where morning and afternoon teas were served. The apres-midi session was a sliver service affair and patrons could take trays across to the beach or to their automobiles paying a small deposit of 2 shillings and over the years not one silver tea set was lost (takeaways 1920s style).
Coastal locals employed to cater for the large numbers who sat down to a summertime Sunday dinner at the cafe found the stout, jolly Isabella an excellent employer. However, ‘Mother Hucks’ preferred to use her family’s labour. Husband Harry was employed at Christchurch gasworks, and occasionally worked at the Lake Coleridge power station, but often found at the back of the cafe managing a beehive as well as a fowl and duck run. These provided the guests with honey, eggs and meat.
While her friendly bustling nature was on show most of the time, sometimes at the Gloucester Street venue Isabella became annoyed at the behaviour of ‘boys’ firing butter and pie at the ceiling or at each other from end of knives.
“I’ll get Mr ‘Ucks, I’ll get Mr ‘Ucks”, she threatened, but Harry, far less robust that his sturdy wife, inspired little fear in the riotous youths. The food had to be removed from the ceiling as butter melted when the room got hot and dripped down on the fashionably attired clientele.
The daughters cooked, cleaned and waitressed for their mother even when married, and the husband of one daughter, a taxi-driver, brought overseas visitors to his mother-in-law’s establishments.
The Ozone complex was not a financial success. The Sydenham Money Club, as mortgagee, came to realise that service, flair and the Hucks name were insufficient to bring profitability to an enterprise in a depressed part of Christchurch, visited by the big spenders mainly in the summer months.
When Harry died in 1926, Isabella disposed of her seaside interests and once more devoted her full attention to the Theatre Royal Café while daughter Olive and husband continued to live in the Dressing Room flat and run that business.
Her generosity was once more apparent during the economic Depression and daily billies of soup were sent to Nurse Maude in Madras Street. Isabella looked after the needs of ‘the boys’ and first to come to the assistance of anyone who happened to be down on his luck’.
After the departure of Mrs Hucks, the Ozone went from being a bed and breakfast to a boarding house then gentleman’s club before being converted to self-contained units to becoming vacant. It was purchased by the New Brighton Centre for drug rehab and later a roller-skating rink operated downstairs and had various periods as a bar where one had a good view of the tides upstairs and from Sumner to the mountains and the Dressing Shed operated as a fitness centre.
In 2003 the building was on the market and a property developer proposed a 12-storey ‘Seaside Apartments’ block on the site meaning the demolition of the Ozone. The local community were not so keen with one spokesperson saying:
”It would stand out like a pimple on a bum.”
This project never got off the ground and a series of other temporary ventures briefly graced the building before it was finally demolished and absolute shame for a classic building allowed to slide into a condition uneconomic to repair.
The site is currently for sale and housing developers Williams Corp had a look but decided it had enough on its plate out this way.
As for the redoubtable Mrs Hucks, each weekday morning a grandson would take the butcher a message about how his grandmother would like her customers’ steak cut. He would then come to the Gloucester St Theatre Royal cafe with the meat and place it in an ice-chest.
After school he and a cousin would reluctantly forego sport and wash and dry dishes all for the price of a kiss and an apple. Granny Hucks lived a spartan existence, working long hours and sleeping in the cafe storeroom on a stretcher. Underneath she kept her coffin.
Her obituary commented: “In the last stages of her cancer illness, when she had been long away from business, she frequently inquired after particular habitues of her restaurant who were less customers than friends, and nothing delighted her more than a personal message received from her daughters from any of “the boys”.
Isabella died at 69, on 16 June 1936.
North Brighton has never been quite the same, and as one sips a mocha from the North Beach Coffee Shed across the road, you could imagine the bathers in rented woollen knee-to-neck suits wrapped in towels gingerly cross Marine Parade and taking a quick dip in a cool Pegasus Bay before returning for a proper silver set afternoon tea (no coffee).
One hundred years on and Mother Hucks will be looking down lamenting how times have changed.