Ockham NZ Book Award Winner 2026 www.nzbookawards.nz
BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction
The Judges wrote "Innovative, engaging and inherently human, Mr Ward’s Map is a celebration of research, storytelling, and archives. Elizabeth Cox deployed one historic cartographic document as the foundation for a superbly written publication that bridges multiple world views and time periods – highlighting one source and how it resonates in the contemporary moment. Across 560 pages, Cox unpacks the 88 sheets of Mr Ward’s map, alongside carefully selected archival photography and illustrations. While anchored in Victorian Wellington, Cox presents a range of complex issues and histories that have universal reach. This skilfully interweaves impacts of colonial land alienation on tangata whenua, reveals imbalances and intersectional experiences of race, class and gender, and offers a reflection of societal changes, and what remains the same."
A fascinating journey through Wellington’s history
In 1891, a remarkable map of Wellington was made by surveyor Thomas Ward. It recorded the footprint of every building, from Thorndon in the north and across the teeming, inner-city slums of Te Aro to Berhampore in the south.
Updated regularly over the next 10 years, it detailed hotels, theatres, oyster saloons, brothels, shops, stables, Parliament, the remnants of Māori kāinga, the Town Belt, the prisons, the ‘lunatic asylum’, the hospital and much more, in detail so particular that it went right down to the level of the street lights.
Luxuriously packaged with a cloth case and fold-out jacket, Mr Ward’s Map uses this giant map and historic images to tell marvellous stories about a vital capital city, its neighbourhoods and its people at the turn of the twentieth century.
Elizabeth Cox is a Wellington historian who specialises in New Zealand’s social and architectural history.
Hardback, 560 pages
H: 315mm W: 230mm Spine: 40mm
Weight: 2200 grams