The Taratahi Hotel

The Taratahi Hotel's provenance lay in this small cottage built by Thomas Ray built in 1858. Busy with his Cobb & Co coach business, his wife Mary started brewing beer. So successful was her beer that she went into business and named the premises, "the Cottage of Content", and Mary had one of Wellington’s first recorded liquor licenses. The photo shows the restored cottage that has now been relocated to Somerset Road.

Thomas then took advantage of the fact that Mary brewed beer and had one of Wellington’s first recorded liquor licenses and he had a Cobb and Co license by merging the two interests into a two story hotel which was used as a staging post for coaches for the trip to Wellington. The Cobb and Co license was an essential part of running a successful hotel in the days of stage coach travel, as was the essential liquor license.

On New Year's Eve in 1859, its first year of operation, locals gathered in the front room where they decided to combine with two nearby villages, Belvedere and Clareville, calling their newly formed town Carterton. Over the succeeding decades, the hotel became an essential meeting place for many civic functions and meetings in the Carterton community.

The hotel was named the Taratahi hotel in the 1870s. In the 1880’s you could have a 3-course meal for 1/- (one shilling), 10c in today’s money.

The gabled end of the Cottage of Content can just be seen in the photo to the left of the hotel building.

The early hotel was modest by other hotel standards by having only two bedrooms, but Thomas's manner and demeanor as a landlord were praised by inspectors. 

An outbuilding of the Taratahi hotel advertising Burridge's Ales, particularly Brown Jug and Invalid Stout. Burridges of Carterton was a brewery and bottling plant, known as W. Burridge & Son, which operated in the early 20th century. The business supplied their beer in bulk and bottles and had a depot in Carterton, with one reference indicating it operated between approximately 1905 and 1925. The building can still be seen on the extreme left in the 1959 photo of the hotel below.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Hotel had a very varied history. The Ray family owned the hotel until 1915 although for most of that time they leased it to various license holders. 

According to many press reports, especially during the :prohibition years" of the mid 20th century, between 1908 and 1946 it was extremely popular, being the nearest licensed establishment to the ‘’dry’’ Northern Wairarapa.

The hotel owners arranged for a bus company to ferry thirsty Masterton patrons every evening at seven and return them at 10pm. Press reports of fights, fines for opening beyond time and sales of alcohol to youths, and even breaking North Wairarapa;s prohibition laws by sending alcohol northwards were plenty, and the hotel gained somewhat of a colourful reputation in the region.

When he bought the hotel  in 2006, Richard Skelley ran it as a traditional pub, but found the appetite for a traditional country watering hole had diminished. In 2007, a dramatic change of purpose was enacted when he subleased part of the hotel for Wairarapa’s first brothel, an event which sent shockwaves through the community at the time, although most locals regarded the place with tolerant amusement.  Perhaps reflecting both its early history, and its new purpose, it was called the ‘House of Content’ but it was reported that as an out of town establishment, many punters were not happy parking their cars there under the watchful eyes of the locals, and the House of Content lasted less than nine months..

From 2007-2008 it was subleased to the 'Hillbillies' café and children’s petting zoo with a variety of animals in the adjoining buildings and paddocks.

In 2008 saw it converted back to an hotel which now has no status as a tavern or pub but is now available for accommodation for medium to long term residents.