Brown Owl Tearooms, Upper Hutt The Brown Owl Tea Rooms, later a Cabaret and Ballroom, stood at the corner of Akatarawa Road and Main Road (now State Highway 2) and were a popular dining and entertainment venue between 1927 and about 1962, before being purchased by the Rimutaka Baptist Church. The following description is from the book ‘Upper Hutt – The History’ by JA Kelleher: Brown Owl dates from the late 1920’s when a tea-house of that name was opened by Mary St Johnston. Friends had remarked to her on how the traveling public was neglected. Mrs St Johnston determined to do something about it. The corner at the junction of the main north road from Upper Hutt, and the road branching to Akatarawa and the west, was for sale. She purchased it and set about converting a six-roomed house into tea rooms. She opened on New Year’s Eve, 1927. An unusually good summer, which extended to Easter, enabled Mary St Johnston to serve most meals out on the lawns, in the garden and under fruit trees. Before long even Government House, and the state with its visitor programmes, were patronising the Brown Owl. In the winter a ballroom was added, dancing in rural surroundings was popular. Huge log fires provided a cosy atmosphere. Up to the mid-1950’s the Railways ran a well-patronised, half-hourly weekend bus service to Brown Owl. The origin of the name: “I used to be taken, as a girl, to Epping Forest, England,” she explained. “There was an old inn on the fringe of the forest called The Owl. I had spent many happy times there, and was delighted to dedicate my tea-house to the memory of that quaint old inn.”
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 17:12:05 +0000
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