The Thistle Inn is one of New Zealand's oldest public houses.

Originally built in 1840, the Thistle Inn was rebuilt after a fire in 1866. Up until the reclamation of Wellington Harbour

Reclamation of Wellington Harbour

The reclamation of Wellington Harbour started in the 1850s, originally to increase the amount of usable flat land for Wellington city. Reclamations in the 1960s and 1970s were to meet the needs of container shipping and new cargo handling methods...

 the building was only a few metres from the shoreline and patrons often arrived by boat, including, according to legend, the Ngati Toa

Ngati Toa

Ngāti Toa , an iwi , traces its descent from the eponymous ancestor Toarangatira. The Ngāti Toa region extends from Miria-te-kakara at Rangitikei to Wellington, and across Cook Strait to Wairau and Nelson....

 warrior chief Te Rauparaha

Te Rauparaha

Te Rauparaha was a Māori rangatira and war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe who took a leading part in the Musket Wars. He was influential in the original sale of conquered Rangitane land to the New Zealand Company and was a participant in the Wairau Incident in Marlborough...

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The Thistle Inn was featured in Leves Amores, a short story by Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...

, written in 1907.

The building, is classified as a "Category I" ("places of 'special or outstanding historical or cultural heritage significance or value") historic place by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust

New Zealand Historic Places Trust

The New Zealand Historic Places Trust is a non-profit trust that advocates for the protection of ancestral sites and heritage buildings in New Zealand...

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