Kiwitea is a village and rural community in the Manawatū District and Manawatū-Whanganui region in New Zealand's central North Island.

They cleared dense standing forest, laid grass, subdivided it into paddocks for sheep and cattle, and built roads.

Taylor who was born in Staffordshire, England in 1843, educated in Wolverhampton, armed in Birmingham, mined for gold on the West Coast, managed a large butchery in Fiji, and ran a store in Turakina before raising the money to purchase the Kiwitea site.

[1] James Barrow, who was born in Johnsonville in 1852 and had been farming with his father in Pāuatahanui, purchased 300 acres in 1878.

[2] Schoolmaster Richard French, a native of King's County, Ireland and graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, arrived in 1886 and took over the school in 1890.

[1] In 1897, The Cyclopedia of New Zealand described Kiwitea as a "little settlement", four miles from the telegraph office in Cheltenham, and connected by daily coach trips to the nearest market town, Feilding.

[2] As of 2019, students from Feilding made up a quarter of the school's roll, with many parents preferring the open country atmosphere.