The Belmont Hills are situated between Porirua East and the Hutt Valley near Wellington, New Zealand. An area in these hills was chosen by the Army as a magazine area due to its close proximity to Wellington yet not near any urban areas.

The go-ahead for the Magazine area was granted on the 30th of October 1942 and preliminary site work and roading was started immediately. The existing road was widened and extended to and wind it's way through the site..

Early in the construction of the site the army camp was built. As with the Wrights Hill Fortress Area in Karori, the same camp housed the construction workers and after construction housed the military personnel based there (however with the Wrights Hill Fortress Area the camp was originally built for the construction workers rather than the army).

The magazines to be built were of predominantly reinforced concrete construction with the parts of the walls and roof being precast. The predominant type used was the " Type P" and was 25 feet wide while the design allowed for the length of either 50, 60 or 100 feet. They even had a double width variant of the design available.

While the "Type P" magazines were being constructed, work started on the construction of 10 "Type M" magazines which were also precast and were 20 feet wide.

Due to weather and manpower issues at one stage the Army had enough munitions sitting outside and under canvas to fill the magazines had they been ready.

The positioning of each magazine relative to the road was dependent on the size and shape of the magazine. The long magazines with doors at both ends were parallel to the road while the nearly square magazines face the road with its doors to the road.

While the "Type P" magazines were quick to assemble they were however not terribly waterproof. Also with explosives storage the magazine buildings ideally should have had separate internal walls/ceiling to prevent moisture on the inside of the magazine wall from coming in contact with the explosives. (Such an arrangement was employed for the storage of the cartridge bags in the underground magazines of the Wrights Hill Fortress in Karori.).

Only two of the magazines at Belmont were built with double walls.

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Later on in 1944 an additional 10 magazines were built. These were of the "Macallan" type. They had steel rather then precast concrete frame. Eight of these were grouped at the North Ease end of the area. These were originally for the Ministry of Supply. This small cluster had the road encircling the cluster with each magazine having a door at either end facing the road. The other two "Macallan" type magazines are amidst the "Type p" magazines.

To summarise the work done 3 miles of road had been widened and metalled, 3½ miles of new road created, 62 magazine buildings, as well as laboratory, office, stores and the camp.

The Belmont Magazine was still in use as recently as the 1960's.

Today the Belmont Magazine area is a part of the Belmont Regional Park. It is also farmland, which is administered by Landcorp. The magazines are in various states of disrepair with the worst being in the Ministry of Supply cluster. A small airstrip has only destroyed some roading. Six have been put to use for farm related purposes - three oh which have been modified.. Another magazine exists in a Natural Gas equivalent of a substation and has been substantially altered.

I visited the site in January of 1999. It is a largely barren landscape where trees only exist down the hill in gullies etc. The site is very exposed to the wind as I found out on visiting (although I was prepared as I had expected this). In some of the magazines we found mounds of fleece and bones - the remains of sheep carcasses from sheep which had died while sheltering from adverse weather conditions.

Sources:

Official War History of the Public Works Dept.

Observation Posts and Magazine Areas: Further Notes on Wellington Military sites.

Bibliography

* Site Visit 28th January 1999

* Observation Posts and Magazine Areas: Further Notes on Wellington Military sites
   Tony Walton,
   Dept. of Conservation (Wellington)

* Official War History of the Public Works Dept.
   F. G. Grattan.