The migration links established between New Zealand and England had distinct regional, county and in some periods, parish dimensions.

The rural home counties of the south-east (which included Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, Surrey and Essex) contributed large numbers of migrants to New Zealand.  The migration from this area, like the significant flow in the 1870’s from the Midlands, followed a long-term decline in rural wages and conditions, which sparked a union movement of rural labourers, the “revolt of the field” in 1874.  However, the failure of this revolt sent quite a number to New Zealand.  There was a loss of livelihood in these areas, as local craft workers, like shoemakers or wheelwrights, found they could not compete with factory production.

The south-west (including Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire) provided migrants when there was a reduction of copper and tin mining in the area.  A depression in the 1840’s was followed by a long-term decline from the 1860’s, as alternative supplies came in from the New World.

Proximity of ports
New Zealand was a likely choice for people from these three key regions because the ships bound for New Zealand departed from London or from Plymouth in Devon, which were reasonably close to the south-east and south-west.  By contrast, people in the north who wanted to leave England would first go to Liverpool, where the obvious choice was to board ships for the 10-day trip across the Atlantic to Canada or America.  This was cheaper and more convenient than heading south to find a ship for the 100-day voyage to New Zealand.

Assisted migration
About half of 19th-century English immigrants to New Zealand came on assisted passages.  Those who offered assistance tended to recruit especially in the south-east and south-west, where they expected to find the kinds of people – farm labourers and craft workers – who were wanted in New Zealand.  New Zealand Company agents were strongly concentrated in these areas and there was a close correlation between the location of the agents and the origin of company migrants.  Company recruiting established patterns of migration and through the process of chain migration – where letters from friends and relatives who had already settled in New Zealand encouraged emigration – later migrants were also attracted from these areas.  The pattern was further reinforced by the continued interest in these areas from provincial recruiting agents and then after 1871 from New Zealand government agents.

Localities
When recruiting migrants, New Zealand drew upon particular districts and parishes within the main source counties.  For Wellington and Nelson, the New Zealand Company targeted people from Maidstone, Hollingbourne, Cranbrook and West Ashford in Kent, and Yeovil, Bath and Langport in Somerset.  To settle New Plymouth they drew heavily from the farming region around Holsworthy and Launceston, the mining towns and farming villages of southern Cornwall, the area surrounding Plymouth, and the west of Dorset.

Occupational backgrounds
The majority of New Zealand’s English, at least until 1920, were from the respectable, largely rural, working class.  Unlike America, which attracted unskilled labourers and industrial workers, New Zealand recruited agricultural labourers and pre-industrial craftsmen among the men, and domestic servants among the women.

There were three main reasons why these types of English immigrants came -

The colony’s labour needs: New Zealand required labourers and tradesmen for its farms, mines, ports, and towns and craftsmen to meet the needs of its growing population.  Builders were especially needed, and they came in considerable numbers.

The groups to whom assistance was made available: Builders and agricultural labourers were preferred by the New Zealand government in the 1870’s.

The pressures in England within these occupations: Rural population growth and the enclosure of lands placed pressure on the incomes and opportunities of rural labourers, while the development of industry threatened the prospects of many traditional craft workers.

New plants, new animals
Understandably, the English set out to use the land in ways that were familiar and quickly established in New Zealand English forms of agriculture.  They introduced animals such as sheep, cows and pigs and cultivated crops such as wheat and fruit such as apples.  They introduced English grasses.

They also sought to make the landscape more recognisable by bringing in English trees and wild animals.  Colonists were provided with a variety of game animals, including deer.

A rich and varied contribution
The contribution of the English may be discerned in many other facets of New Zealand popular culture.  In music, their influence can be seen in the form of brass bands, barber shop quartets, pantomimes, choral and church music, nursery rhymes and Christmas carols.  Events such as “the last night of the Proms” music festival were brought from England.  More recently, the popularity of English television programmes such as Coronation Street may in part reflect the number of English migrants.  The high culture taught in schools focused on the English greats such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Dickens (rather than, for example, Irish or American writers).  And it was the English spoken by those who came from London and the south-east which emerged as the dominant variety of speech among New Zealanders.

A diverse heritage
The English-born immigrants who arrived in New Zealand from the early 1800’s did not represent a cross-section of their society.  Moreover, England experienced profound change throughout the 19th century so that the migrants who arrived in New Zealand in the 1840’s were very different from those arriving in the 1920’s or the 1950’s.  The former were still largely rural peasants used to pre-industrial ways of working; the latter were usually refugees from modern urban life.  Therefore, the contribution made by the English to the development of New Zealand was complex.  It comprised elements of an emerging “national” English society and culture, distinctive aspects of some regional cultures, and features of the new urban–industrial class society that emerged during the course of the 19th century.