Days Bay is a residential area in Lower Hutt in the Wellington Region of the North Island of New Zealand.

The Eastbourne Borough Council bought the ferries in 1913 and the accommodation, Days Bay House, was sold[5] to Wellington's Croydon School.

Days Bay's ornate wooden late-Victorian Pavilion, providing teas on its deep verandahs, a restaurant, evening dances and outdoor concerts[note 1] was very popular until it was totally destroyed by an early Sunday morning fire in October 1952.

Suburban electric trains up the west coast and the rise of private cars in the second half of the 20th century opened new options for Wellingtonians.

Since public ownership in 1914, aside from the maturing of trees, no waterslide and a new small pavilion, more than a century has elapsed and Williams Park has changed little.

The Days built their house in the bay and operated a schooner that ferried early settlers between the Hutt Valley and Wellington.

A refreshment booth was organised, playground equipment was brought in for young children and races and other activities set up for the older ones and the excursions became a great success.

[12] In November 1896 the Evening Post reported steamers Duco and Mana were unable to take all who wished to go to Day's Bay.

Large wharf gates—since removed—had to be put up at Days Bay to control the crowds as well as barricades and at the city end the Wellington Harbour Board felt obliged to build a special Ferry Wharf—finished by autumn 1897—otherwise the swarms of trippers created real difficulties at their Queens Wharf.

[12] Newspaper reports of as many as six shark fins at once in the warmer waters of the eastern harbour and infestations of venomous katipō spiders in rotten wood on Day's Bay's high tide mark did not deter them.

[17] His real pleasure was in running his resort and finding extra work for his commercial vessels in their slack times.

The usual civic institutions were beginning to take root in the neighbourhood, initially an unelected group calling themselves The Day's Bay Ratepayers Association.

Properly constituted they would see a useful tax source in his business and in any case he did not want to run a scheduled commuter ferry service to please permanent residents.

He now put his share of Wellington Steam Ferry and its 226 acres of Day's Bay up for sale and in August 1905 it was bought by a syndicate led by William Watson of the Bank of New Zealand.

Harold Beauchamp, father of Katherine Mansfield appealed to the Premier, Richard Seddon, for the Government to acquire Days Bay and proclaim it a National Park "for all time".

[note 2][18] He suggested maintenance costs then would be funded by the rents from the accommodation house and pavilion and an agreed portion of the ferry company's fares.

It lost Miramar business when trams arrived and, as expected by Williams, Harbour Board and Eastbourne Borough Council both pushed up wharf rentals.

The paving of the Hutt Road and the extension of the bitumen to Muritai lowered ferry custom and the council was obliged to buy a fleet of buses.

Cobar replacement Ocean Cruiser, a stripped Fairmile with a puny stand-in for its three V12 petrol engines, proved unreliable and did not attract the hoped-for custom.

The resort hotel operation met with only moderate success and in 1913 with its immediate surrounds, 4 acres, it was sold to Miss Gladys Sommerville and building and grounds became Croydon School.

[5] When the resort without hotel became available at the end of 1913 once again strong public pressure arose for the Government or Wellington City Council to buy it.

[23] The Wellington City Council announced on 11 March 1914 that councillors had visited and inspected the land in Days Bay and after a special meeting in the evening in committee resolved to buy it on the terms submitted by the deputation of citizens and the vendors.

Of course the visitors would have been just as happy to get off the boat at Rona Bay, there you could take your pick from wharf or sandy beach or if a fresh southerly sprang up, visit friends.

The subway was strongly and in the end successfully opposed by local residents and the paving in front of the park finally went ahead in 1927.

[38] In 1914, less than twelve months before he died, his mother gave a large sum of money to help Wellington City Council purchase from a subsequent owner the Day's Bay resort for the benefit of the public.

In 1913 the ferries were sold to the Eastbourne Borough Council and Day's Bay House to Miss Sommerville for Croydon School.

The remaining Day's Bay land was bought by Wellington City Council and the companies were eventually wound up.