The Stone Store was New Zealands first architectural white elephant. Modelled, like the adjacent mission house, on Samuel Marsdens establishment at Parramatta, in Sydney, the store testifies to the determination of Church Missionary Society (CMS) catechist, storekeeper and blacksmith James Kemp and his wife Charlotte not to leave their comfortable nest at Kerikeri to further the work of the Society. They had arrived in 1819 and would linger here long after there was anyone to preach to, quietly laying up treasure on earth.
The buildings impossible location, up a shallow creek and far from the shifting frontier of missionary endeavour, arose from infighting between the CMSs Kerikeri and Paihia factions. You may ask why, then, did we go to so great an expense in the erection of a building which is now condemned by the collected wisdom in New Zealand, CMS leader Henry Williams wrote to his superior in 1835. He knew very well why. Marsden feared that whalers and traders would have more pulling power than preachers and backed Kemp precisely because this warehouse was far from temptation. Unfortunately it was also unhandily far from the seagoing ships needed to transport goods to and from its expensive door.
Make no mistake, it was expensive. Lavishly built from local basalt, supplemented by Sydney sandstone in the arches, jambs and corners, the store must have looked jarringly out of place in a land where raupō whare were the norm and where even missionaries made do with timber. But there was more. At a late stage in construction someone stuck a structurally unsound belfry/clock tower on Kemps folly. It probably lasted less than a decade but it explained why early visitors frequently shook their heads at it towering over the chapel! The heavy window bars, built by Kemp himself, showed how much he feared his Māori overlords.
Mr Kemps folly has been underutilised during most of its long career as, off and on, a post office, general store, kauri gum store, temporary boxing rink and polling booth. In 1975 the former Historic Places Trust bought and leased it to a storekeeper who ran a dusty museum as a sideline. Its institutional life has been eventful. In 1981 debris dammed the swollen river at the nearby bridge, flooded Kemp House and sent water through part of the store. Two summers earlier, the Trust had inserted historically inaccurate dormers and a structurally unsound chimney. The building almost succumbed to this combination of unwise tampering, traffic vibration and dampness caused by rising ground water levels. When the Trust closed it in 1992 for extensive conservation, parochial teeth gnashed and there were marches in the street — but the store is now safe to enter. It sports proper dormers now, and vibration caused by has been much reduced thanks to the removal of the bridge in 2008.