Along the sharp turn up the hill to Roseneath on Carlton Gore Road, above Oriental Parade.

Just a few steps with a grand view leading to the locked gate of Roseneath School.

Wellington City Heritage website notes that the Wellington Beautifying Society planted 50 pohutukawa trees along the road in 1937 and some of them remain.

Apparently Sir George Grey saw this point as the location for Government House. It is named for the son of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Edward Jerningham Wakefield. It was he who drew up the contract by which Maori sold the The New Zealand Company the land that became Wellington. The contract, its translation, and understanding by local iwi is still a point of dispute.

The path and steps are on top of the Carlton Gore retaining wall built between 1925 and 1930, designed by the Wellington City Engineer’s Department (City Engineers J.M.Dawson and A.J. Paterson) jand built by Fletcher Construction. According to Wellington City Heritage archives the city debated whether a lift or inclined tramway was suitable but decided a road – including a wonderful hairpin bend – would be a better solution.

Carlton Gore? I could find no insight who this was, and why this is named for him.

At the top of the hill to Roseneath School along side the memorial to war dead from the school in 1917.

The notice board for canons firing the Saluting Battery from  Pt Jerningham beside St Barnabas church.

Steps are everywhere in Lisbon and I haven’t made any attempt here at all to try to list them all but one set of stairs makes an appearance in Jose Saramago’s book The History of the Siege of Lisbon.

“…meet at the foot of the Escadinhas de Sao Crispim, there are a hundred and thirty-four steps, said Raimundo Silva, and as steep as those of the Aztec temples.”

FIND THESE STEPS: From the top at 49 and 59 Maida Vale Road and from the lower level at 62 Evans Bay Parade.

 

 

FIND THESE STEPS: Grafton Road runs parallel to Palliser Road at the lower level and Palliser doubles back on itself. The steps run between 2 Palliser Road at the higher level and come out at  74 on the lower.

From the top of the stairs.

Cheerful artwork improves the bus stop.

 

FIND THESE STEPS: The top of Sutherland Crescent ends at Melrose Park and the stairs are just to the right of the sports facility. At the bottom the path from the stairs is along the Southern walkway from Melrose Crescent.

Lions, and tigers and stairs!

Sorry about that. I couldn’t resist. These steps follow along the eastern edge of the Wellington Zoological Gardens.

Not the usual concrete, though, but made from timber and they are rustic.

 

The steps are just to the right of the sports building, and are part of the Southern Walkway – an 11km walk through the Town Belt, meandering through bush and hills from Oriental Parade through Mt Victoria, Mt Albert Park, and the Houghton Bay playground to Houghton Bay Road.

A glimpse inside the zoo.

One of the locals.

The steps end at the pathway that continues on to Melrose Crescent.

FIND THESE STEPS – In Seatoun, opposite the ferry, at the end of Pinelands Avenue, and from the top at 7 Fettes Crescent.

These steps are more properly included under ‘The 3 Questionable Steps’, but by geographic interest I’ve included them here, too.

The entrance and pathway, and the abandoned steps along the way.

 

 

 

 

FIND THESE STEPS: On Garden Road at Bank Road, near the Orangi Kaupapa Road to Garden Road steps.

I’d missed these steps entirely until a reader of this site – Jill – let me know about them (thank you, Jill). In addition to my not seeing them, I was defeated by them.  These are the first steps I didn’t climb to the top since the steps are steep, slippery, and covered with leaves and dirt. A claim on the New Zealand health system seemed imminent.

These ‘Steps to Nowhere’, as Jill calls them, are a mystery. But Jill has counted them – 163 steps – so they are a substantial contribution to the collection of outdoor staircases, but simply not used now.

At Garden Road, the steps leading to the house are are well maintained.

But just beyond the house the path is overgrown and the steps disappear.

Then they head up the hill toward nothing in particular, meeting up with an open, flat grassy lawn and then eventually the path leads to the top of Bank Street.

These steps are old, and required some work to build them. But they lead nowhere now.

As Jill asks,  Why are they there? Where did they lead to? Who uses them?