damning report<\/a> from an inquiry into the incident that it had ordered up from consultants Grant Thornton.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4K0S6MK_IMG_6372_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nThe desk in its original condition.
\nPhoto: Raymond Morgan\n<\/p>\n
But Morgan said he had not been contacted at any stage, even for the inquiry.<\/p>\n
“I think if they come to me and make an offer, I mean, I wouldn’t charge the city for it… they never contacted me,” he said.<\/p>\n
The desk was of national significance, made about 120 years ago for the council and, unusually, with its full history known, said art historian Dr William Cottrell.<\/p>\n
“The reports that I did for the city council and Wellington museums in 2019 would have highlighted just how important those pieces were.<\/p>\n
“So nobody did any research at all. It’s quite a tragedy that those pieces have been lost.<\/p>\n
“Clearly it was just somebody just taking truckloads down there [to the tip shop],” said Cottrell.<\/p>\n
“This is an outrageous example of where somebody’s just taken it upon themselves in ignorance and lost this furniture, which is furniture that belongs to the citizens of Wellington.”<\/p>\n
But the city council rejected that.<\/p>\n
“We disagree with the claim it has any great significance – otherwise it would likely already be in a museum,” a spokesperson said on Friday, adding they would see if anyone had any use for the desk.<\/p>\n
It would likely be brought up at a committee meeting next week.<\/p>\n
The council disputed that it was obvious the documents were in the side cupboard – though Morgan said someone had been in touch who had seen them at the tip shop, sticking out, and tried to pull them out.<\/p>\n
The Grant Thornton report said three lots of checks by council staff on the desk had failed to find them. They should have been destroyed, it said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, before the idea of gifting it back was raised with him, Morgan said he had other plans for it.<\/p>\n
“I”m going to use the desktop as part of my whiskey cabinet.”<\/p>\n
As it was, the desk was proving a “showpiece” for people walking past. “People that live in Wellington who do the Eastern Walkway stop and admire it and they recognise straight away what it is.”<\/p>\n
It seemed to him the desk had been renovated in some way a few decades ago.<\/p>\n
But it was still a “damn good idea” to save and display it, Morgan said.<\/p>\n
“Because there’s a story to it and it raised a few eyebrows and I think it’s always interesting to have an interesting story around Wellington city… [It was] not necessarily an embarrassment. I think it adds to the flavour of it.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The desk in its current condition. Photo: Raymond Morgan A builder who bought Wellington’s most embarrassing historical desk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-292873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Mayoral](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4JSWY7J_IMG_7151_jpeg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n