The Woodbury woman remembered with a working library
1867–1936
Rural women’s leadership
On the corner of Woodbury and McKeown Roads stands a small building made from timber and rounded river stones. Above its entrance are the words Eleanor Howard Tripp Memorial Library.
Eleanor was born in 1867 and grew up within the Tripp family’s world around Ōrāri Gorge and Woodbury. Although surviving accounts provide only limited detail about her daily life, Timaru District Council’s heritage assessment describes her as an active community member and the founder of the Woodbury Women’s Institute.
The Women’s Institute gave rural women opportunities to share practical knowledge, organise community work and reduce the isolation that could accompany country life. Eleanor’s role in forming the Woodbury branch therefore offers a more substantial explanation for her local importance than her family name alone.
The proposal for a purpose-built Woodbury library had originated with the Women’s Institute several years before Eleanor’s death, and she had been a keen supporter. The Depression delayed the project. Eleanor did not personally build or fund the library, but she had supported the idea while she was alive. The Woodbury library project was collective completed it in her memory.
After Eleanor died in January 1936, the community revived the proposal and decided to create the library in her memory. Local MP Thomas David Burnett formally opened it on 5 December 1936. The Council’s heritage report describes the building as an unusually rare New Zealand memorial erected in honour of an individual woman.
The building quickly became more than a monument. During its first year, membership rose from 37 to 79. The shelves held 1,664 books, and borrowers took out 3,748 volumes. Its reading room was open to the general public each day except Sundays and public holidays.
Those figures help explain why the memorial matters. Eleanor’s name was not placed on something people merely looked at. It was attached to a service they used.
The library remains a particularly fitting record of community impact. Eleanor supported women organising together and backed the creation of a shared source of knowledge. After her death, other local people supplied the fundraising, construction, books and voluntary labour that allowed that idea to continue.
Read the WuHoo stories
A Trip to the Eleanor Tripp Woodbury Library
Sources
Timaru District Council: Woodbury War Memorial and Eleanor Howard Tripp Memorial Library heritage assessment
Supports Eleanor’s dates, community role, association with the Women’s Institute, the opening date and the heritage significance of the library.
Timaru Herald, 5 December 1936: Tripp Memorial Library opening
Confirms that the library proposal originated with the Women’s Institute and that Eleanor supported it before her death.
Timaru Herald, 27 July 1937: first annual report
Records the library’s membership, collection, lending activity and public opening arrangements.