Feilding near Palmerston North: Town Guide to Farming Heritage and Manchester Square

Feilding sits on fertile river-plain country and is the only large town in Manawatū District. Palmerston North is the city next door, not the council that runs Feilding. Many people live in one place and work in the other, so the town has a country-town feel with a steady weekday link to the city.

The name is not a Māori name. The town was named for Colonel William Henry Adelbert Feilding, a director of the London-based Emigrants and Colonists’ Aid Corporation.

In 1871 he negotiated the purchase of the Manchester Block, about 100,000 acres of mostly bush-covered land between the Rangitīkei River and the Ruahine Range. The block took its name from the Duke of Manchester, who chaired the corporation. A natural clearing was chosen for the first township.

Ngāti Kauwhata are the iwi linked to the marae associated with Feilding, and Te Ara notes close ties with Ngāti Raukawa. Two historic meeting houses, Manaiahu and Kauwhata, stand at Aorangi and Te Arakura, a few kilometres south of town.

Aorangi Marae and Kauwhata Marae, also known as Kai Iwi Pā, remain important places for Ngāti Kauwhata. The Manchester Block sale came after Native Land Court cases in the 1860s, and the town’s story sits on that earlier history of the land.

The first colonial settlers arrived from Britain in January 1874, while the town survey was still under way. The railway from Palmerston North reached Feilding in 1876, and Feilding became a borough in 1881.

Streets were named for corporation figures and New Zealand political leaders. By the early 1900s it was described as the market town of a thriving farming district, a role it has not really left.

Today the square is still where the town feels most like itself. Sale days bring farmers in from the district, the town centre holds the shops and civic buildings, and the edges of town are where new housing is being planned.

For a visitor, the useful circuit is simple: the square, the saleyards, and a walk along the older commercial streets.

The Feilding Soldiers’ Memorial stands in Manchester Square, at the meeting of Manchester Street, the square and Kimbolton Road. Heritage New Zealand lists it as a Category 2 historic place. It is a tapering obelisk topped by a winged angel, a common First World War memorial form, and it was unveiled in 1923 by Governor-General Viscount Jellicoe. It has been the focus of local ANZAC commemorations since then.

The town clock has told the time from the square since 1904. It is a separate landmark from the war memorial, and together they make the square easy to recognise.

Around them, many commercial buildings date from the early 1900s. Local effort to keep that Edwardian character has shaped how the centre looks, which is why Feilding is often described as an Edwardian town rather than a new retail strip.

Farming institutions grew with the town. Te Ara records that Feilding Agricultural High School opened in 1921, the forerunner of today’s Feilding High School, and that New Zealand’s first Young Farmers’ Club was formed here in 1927.

The saleyards have operated on a site close to the centre since the 1880s. Stock still sells there, and the yards are one of the few large selling complexes left in the middle of a town.

Feilding itself is flat plains country, not a bush or beach destination. The pleasure is open farmland, a walkable centre, and the Makino Stream corridor, which the council has treated as one of the town’s main amenity edges. The stream side of the centre is where civic buildings and green space sit close together.

Manfeild, on the southern edge of town, is the standout venue: a motorsport circuit that also hosts equestrian events. It is a reason to visit in its own right when a race or horse meeting is on, and it is the main outdoor spectator spot attached to the town.

Wider walks and ranges sit outside Feilding, in the Ruahine country to the east and along the rivers that frame the district.