is a suburb of Auckland in northern New Zealand. It is situated on the North Shore, on the northern shores of Waitematā Harbour, northwest of the Auckland City Centre. The suburb includes the peninsula of Northcote Point where the northern approaches to the Auckland Harbour Bridge are located, and Northcote Central, the commercial centre of Northcote. Northcote features two volcanic maars.
Northcote was settled by Tāmaki Māori in the 13th and 14th centuries, and was constructed as a headland pā to protect the wider communities. Europeans settled Northcote in the 1840s, and a community developed around the ferry terminal. Early industries included the brickworks, sulfur works and orchards, and by the 1880s Northcote beaches had become local attractions. By 1908, the area had grown enough that Northcote became a borough. After the Auckland Harbour Bridge opened in 1959, Northcote Central rapidly developed, while Northcote Point became isolated.
Northcote Borough was merged into the North Shore City in 1989, which in turn merged into the Auckland "super city" in 2010. In the late 2010s and 2020s, Northcote began an urban regeneration and housing intensification project.
Etymology
Northcote is named after British Conservative politician Stafford Northcote, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh, an idea put forward by resident Major Benton. The first name used for the peninsula on European maps was Rough Point, named after Captain David Rough, first harbourmaster of Auckland, in 1841. In 1848 it was renamed Stokes Point, after Captain John Lort Stokes of the survey vessel HMS Acheron, There are two volcanic craters found on the eastern coastline of the suburb: Tank Farm, also known as Tuff Crater or , joined to the south by Onepoto (also known as ). Onepoto and Tank Farm erupted an estimated 187,600 and 181,000 years ago respectively.
Prior to human settlement, the inland North Shore was a mixed podocarp-broadleaf forest dominated by kauri. Pōhutukawa trees dominated the coastal margins of Birkenhead.
Geography
Northcote is composed of two suburban areas: Northcote (aka Northcote Central) to the north, and Northcote Point, the peninsula south of Onewa Road. The suburb is bound by Ocean View Road and Northcote Road in the northwest, the Auckland Northern Motorway in the northeast, and Shoal Bay in the east. The hill is the location of the Pupuke Road Reservoir and Pump Station. The southern headland of the Northcote Point peninsula is called Stokes Point.
Onepoto Stream flows east through the suburb from Birkenhead, entering Shoal Bay south of Onewa Road. Hillcrest Creek flows east through the north of Northcote, entering the Waitematā Harbour at Shoal Bay, east of the Auckland Northern Motorway. Until the 1970s, the upper reaches of the creek were primarily swampland. A traditional recorded name for Hillcrest Creek is "The Drifting Canoe", a name which recalls an incident where a tapu waka drifted into the stream at high tide.
Two beaches were formerly located in Northcote along the western shores of Shoal Bay: the City of Cork Beach and Sulphur Beach. These locations were reclaimed in the 1950s, and are now located beneath the Auckland Northern Motorway. which is the location of Halls Beach.
History
Māori history
thumb|left|View of (i.e. Stokes Point) in the 1910s, before the construction of the [[Auckland Harbour Bridge. The headland was the location of ]]
Māori settlement of the Auckland Region began around the 13th or 14th centuries. The Tainui migratory canoe visited Northcote, stopping at , a sacred tree on the cliffs south-east of Tank Farm. and many of the early Tāmaki Māori people of the North Shore identified as Ngā Oho. The Shoal Bay area was used to harvest shellfish, and the volcanic soil at Northcote allowed for kūmara cultivation.
The warrior Maki migrated from the Kāwhia Harbour to his ancestral home in the Auckland Region, likely sometime in the 17th century. Maki conquered and unified many the Tāmaki Māori tribes as Te Kawerau ā Maki, including those of the North Shore. After Maki's death, his sons settled different areas of his lands, creating new hapū. His younger son Maraeariki settled the North Shore and Hibiscus Coast, who based himself at the head of the Ōrewa River. Maraeariki's daughter Kahu succeeded him, and she is the namesake of the North Shore, ("The Greater Lands of Kahu"). Many of the iwi of the North Shore, including Ngāti Manuhiri, Ngāti Maraeariki, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Poataniwha, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki and Ngāti Whātua, can trace their lineage to Kahu.
Te Riri a Mataaho
Northcote is part of the setting of ("The Wrath of Mataaho"), a Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki traditional story () that describes the creation of the two volcanic craters of Northcote, and , collectively called ("The Two Deep Pools"). and was located on the opposite shore to Point Erin, where a pā called or was located. Both pā sites were used as bases for summer fishing, especially shark fishing.
site was originally occupied by Tāmaki Māori who descended from the Tainui migratory waka and developed the tribal identity Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki.
During the early 1820s, most Māori of the North Shore fled for the Waikato or Northland due to the threat of war parties during the Musket Wars, and was left unoccupied. and Hetaraka Takapuna's descendants lived on the shores of Tank Farm into the 1890s.
Early European settlement
thumb|The farm of [[Thomas Bartley (politician)|Thomas Bartley at Northcote (1860)]]
thumb|The Sulphur Works at Northcote in 1884
The Northcote area was a part of the Mahurangi Block, an area purchased by the Crown on 13 April 1841. Land at Northcote Point was subdivided into eight lots in 1843.
The Northcote ferry service began in 1854, run by James Reed. The regular ferry service led to the development of Northcote. The church is the oldest currently existing building on the North Shore.
In 1878, Auckland Chemical Works was established at Northcote, on the beach next to the brickworks. The factory processed sulfur from Moutohora Island in the Bay of Plenty, but was unprofitable, as the amount of sulfur estimated to be on the island was overestimated. This community established on the northern shores of Tank Farm over the next twenty years. The Catholic church, needing to raise funds to establish Hato Petera College, leased out these lands to engineer and land developer Harry Hopper Adams. Adams saw opportunity for developing the area, and trespassed the Māori of Awataha in 1916. In 1920, the whare was torn down, and residents of Awataha made petitions to parliament to stop the evictions, arguing that Awataha was not included in the Mahurangi Purchase. Some members of the Awataha community were given lifetime leases of Catholic land at Awataha, while others were arrested.
Borough status and growth
thumb|left|Dignitaries at the flagstaff and tōtara unveiling ceremony celebrating the establishment of the Borough of Northcote in 1908 (from left): Northcote military veterans J. Hawes, Sergeant-Major Hilditch, Hapi te Pataka (centre), Whatarangi Ngati, and her daughter Takurangi, who married ethnographer [[George Graham (ethnographer)|George Graham ]]
thumb|left|A photograph of Queen Street in Northcote, taken by [[William Archer Price circa 1910]]
In 1908, Northcote had grown enough to be proclaimed a borough, which allowed Northcote to have its own council and mayor. To celebrate this, the Stoke Point headland was proclaimed to be a public reserve. A flagstaff was erected at Stoke Point, a memorial tōtara tree was planted at the site, named Tainui by Māori local to the North Shore, and the Stokes Point headland gained the name ("The Single Tōtara Tree"). Plans for a bridge crossing were formalised in the 1940s, with construction in Northcote beginning in the mid-1950s.
Construction of the harbour bridge and the Auckland Northern Motorway led to major changes in the environment. Much of on Stokes Point was destroyed to make way for the harbour bridge landing,
The harbour bridge was officially opened on 30 May 1959.
In 1989, Northcote Borough was merged into the North Shore City.
In the late 1990s, the former Smale family farm was redeveloped into Smales Farm, a commercial complex adjacent to the motorway. This was joined by the Akoranga Business Park, developed adjacent to the headquarters for The Warehouse Group.
Under the Auckland Unitary Plan, Northcote was identified as a key area for planned intensification. Gentrification became a more prominent issue in Northcote during this period. 1,700 new homes are planned to be constructed in Northcote in the 2020s, while at the same time a new greenway reneration project was established in Northcote. Te Ara Awataha is an urban renewal project which includes a series of urban parks, native plant regeneration, and daylighting the Awataha Stream, which had been undergrounded in stormwater pipes in the 1950s. and had an estimated population of as of with a population density of people per km<sup>2</sup>.