Marama Hall maintenance work to begin

A different type of sound will reverberate from Marama Hall over the coming months, as vital maintenance work gets underway on the Category 1 historic building.

Music – including public lunchtime concerts – can often be heard resonating from the Hall, which is an integral part of the University of Otago’s School of Performing Arts.

However, staff, students and concerts have been temporarily relocated, and scaffolding is now going up ahead of a programme of exterior heritage maintenance to the fabric of the century-old building.

University of Otago Head of Campus Development Gordon Roy says the work involves stonework repairs, painting and the replacement of cast iron rainwater goods.

Mr Roy says the project is part of an ongoing programme to ensure our heritage assets are suitably maintained.

While at this stage the project is expected to be finished by around August 2025, estimating exact work timelines on heritage buildings is complicated because more work could be uncovered as the project progresses. This means the current timeline is very much an estimate, he says.

Marama Hall, named after a World War 1 hospital ship, was originally built as a drill hall for medical students and opened in 1923. A large honours board in the foyer lists people who served on the ship.

However, because the training corps was disbanded before the Hall opened, the Student Association used it until 1960, followed by the Education Department until 1968, then the Music Department, and now the School of Performing Arts.

The Hall is in the University complex of buildings constructed between 1878 and the 1920s which Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga describes as “a major example of nineteenth and early twentieth century Gothic in New Zealand, impressive in its size and completeness”.

The Hall’s architect, Edmund Anscombe (1874-1948), faithfully followed the style set by Maxwell Bury with the Clocktower and Geology Block, but the Hall of Oamaru stone and Leith bluestone is more ornate with its four turrets, carved features, panels, pointed tops to the windows, and stone pillared cloister.

The building’s exterior is largely unchanged, apart from a pitched, slate roof being added above the original flat roof a decade after it was built.