Sweet taste of victory | Auckland News | Local News in Auckland

The price was right for Franklin District Council to buy the remaining land around a historic school in Pollok. Residents eagerly tell Joanna Davies about plans.

Drive halfway up Awhitu Peninsula towards Manukau Heads and you'll arrive in Pollok.

There's not much to see: you pass an old Presbyterian church, then an empty school and the community hall.

The school closed in 2005, when the number of children enrolled were too few to keep two teachers on, but the building remains. For now it is empty.

The people of Pollok have won a long battle to save the building and turn the surrounding land into a reserve.

Brian Johnston, the school's former chairman, says it needed to be saved.

"If you take away the school, there's really not that much left in Pollok," he says. "The community paid for and built it in 1883, so we own the building, and the community also paid for two-thirds of the land.

"For us, it was an issue of not owning all of the land it sits on."

When the school closed, Franklin District Council chose not to buy the property from the Ministry of Education. This month, the council resolved to buy the last of the land for $35,000.

Mr Johnston says the community set out to prove that they already owned most of the property.

"We got the building listed as a historic place, which would make it very difficult for the building to be knocked down."

Another resident, Jock Patterson, says the building will be leased and eventually some of the land will be offered to campervan tourists for overnight parking.

"We want to keep the playground because that was replaced only a couple of years before the school closed, and we want to make this a place for the locals and tourists to use," he says. "We have to clean up a lot of the land first, though, and everyone around here will help with that."

Council spokesman Ken Dyer says the change of heart came because the price was right.

"It was a much more affordable price for the council, and that was the key to the decision," he says. "We have talked a lot with the community and we have finally found a solution."

The final agreement will take a few months.

Pride of Pollok

The first building in Pollok was a Presbyterian church, dated 1870. Not long before this, a group of families from Pollok in Scotland settled in the area after sailing across Manukau Harbour from Onehunga, giving the village the name of their old home.  The school was built in 1883, with the community raising 12 pounds for two thirds of the land, and constructing the school building.