Page:Charleston • Irwin Faris • (1941).pdf/120

 The building still stands, forlorn and shaken by age, though now there is no sound of rattling coach-wheels, no pawing of horses’ hoofs nor jingle of harness. The rubber-tyred motor car has supplanted the stage coach. No longer do groups in miners’ rig-out congregate to meet the incoming mail, to hear the gossip of the coachies, and to collect eagerly-awaited letters and reading-matter. The place is virtually dead, its years of plenty have flown. Its people are scattered, excepting the few who still maintain a fading belief in a possible resurrection of past glory. The old hotel is stared at and quizzed by tourists, but its walls are silent, though they have much to tell if they could and would, much more than any human of to-day can know or tell, or than can be found recorded.

In 1867 a track was formed from Charleston to the new field of Addison’s Flat, but a deputation of Charlestonians later waited upon Mr. Kynnersley and the Provincial Engineer requesting that they “would immediately commence the construction of a good packing-track to Waite’s Pakihi, some eight or ten miles, in order that the inhabitants (of Charleston) might partake of the benefit of supplying these diggings as well as Westport.” The Provincial Engineer later reported that “the deputation was assured by Mr. Kynnersley and myself that the making of this road was totally out of the question, and that it was not needed in any way.” Yet, seven years later there was a good coach-road constructed from Westport to Charleston, via Waite’s Pakihi, as Addison’s Flat was first called.

This field was discovered by Cornelius Cronin and Patrick Donovan in April, 1878. It was a comparatively small field, and was soon worked out. It lay about five miles from Charleston, and about a mile from the main road. A rush occurred, principally from Westport and Charleston, and from the latter at least one hotelkeeper, James Fitzgerald, of the Templemore Hotel, established a public-house at the new field, naming it the Croninville Arms. A public-house was then considered an essential in a new township, and the first of these at Croninville was opened by Mr. O’Donnell.