On 18 August 1860, Major W. Rawson Trafford, commanding Wellington Militia and Volunteers, announced that plans for a Stockade and Blockhouse to be built at the Upper Hutt, on McHardy's Clearing were available from the Royal Engineers office in Lower Hutt and that tenders for either one, or both closed at Noon on 5 September 1860.

The frame of the two-story structure is made from timber and double-skinned with shingle infill, to protect it from rifle fire.

[2] According to Best the blockhouse was never used as a refuge, but there are anecdotal reports of families retreating there one night in the late 1880s or early 1890s during an undefined emergency.

Electric power, security lights, fire alarm and a sprinkler system are more recent additions, as are the metal gratings over the loopholes.

The Hutt Battalion of the Wellington Militia occupied the blockhouse and stockade from December 1860 until May 1861, without hostilities, according to the memorial plaque.

By October 1861, the Bishop of Wellington was asking to rent the stockade from the Colonial Government for "a Sunday School and place of Divine Worship".

After the Upper Hutt Police Constable's position was retrenched in 1880, the blockhouse was still used occasionally as a public building.

Local people expressed interest in the conservation of the structure, and in 1916 the land was reserved under the Scenery Preservation Act 1908.