normal functioning of the school was totally dependent on the absence of war. After the beginning of the Taranaki Wars in 1860, the Grey Institute was closed. John Whiteley moved back into town, and the students returned to their villages. In June, the former girls' school building was temporarily hired by the government to house Maori allies, removed from their district in order to avoid charges of complicity with "the rebels". The learning for both boys and girls in the Grey Institute buildings resumed in 1865, when John Whiteley returned to the mission house. In September 1865 the government handed back the buildings, so Whiteley could carry on with the Grey lnstitute. That year there were twenty-four Maori boys and girls and twelve adults boarding there. Then, on 13 February 1869, while riding from New Plymouth to White Cliffs, Whiteley, who had openly declared his support for the government, fell victim to a Hauhau ambush, and was shot. After that, the school was closed permanently and the mission station abandoned. In 1878, a shortage of funding determined the Wesleyan Church to sell the Grey Institute building. The former mission house became a Maori minister's parsonage and the original educational purpose of the building had been forgotten. Later, in 1940, the Mission House was renovated and reopened as Rangiatea College, a boarding school of domestic science and hygiene for Maori girls until 1959, when new premises were established at Spotswood. The Moturoa property is now held by the Grey Institute Trust of the Methodist Church. Since 1960 the building has been occupied by the resident caretaker and run as a community centre. Next to the mission house is the Moturoa Chapel, built in 1869 for Zaccheus Wells on his farm at Mangorei for the use of settlers and shifted in 1940 to its present site. Image gallery References Bibliography Heritage New Zealand, New Zealand Heritage List Porter, Frances; Historic Buildings of New Zealand: North Island, New Zealand Historic Places Trust, Auckland, N.Z., Cassell Ltd., 1979, ISBN 0908572115 External links Buildings and structures in New Plymouth 1854 establishments in New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Category 1 historic places in Taranaki