From a volcano's lava flow
to the finishing post

A suburb built on a lava flow

Modern Ellerslie sits largely on lava flows associated with Maungarei (Mount Wellington), Auckland's second-youngest volcano and its youngest onshore volcano, which erupted around 10,000 years ago. The main stream of basalt ran southwest from the cone toward Penrose, and much of the suburb is built on or near that volcanic landscape.

Maungarei is one of the best-preserved maunga pā in Tāmaki Makaurau, with terracing, tāpapa garden mounds, rua storage pits and hāngī pits visible to this day. Māori occupation is generally dated from around 1400AD, while later histories around the Tāmaki isthmus involve overlapping periods of influence and conflict among several iwi.

Ngāti Pāoa are strongly associated with the wider Tāmaki and Panmure area, including Mauinaina and chiefs Te Hīnaki and Te Tata, while Ngāti Whātua, Ngāi Tai and Te Ākitai Waiohua also hold mana whenua interests across the wider Tāmaki isthmus.

A Scottish entrepreneur and a naming puzzle

Ellerslie is generally said to take its name from Robert Graham's intended "Elderslie", after his family home in Lanarkshire. Local histories differ on why the spelling became "Ellerslie": either a clerical error or a change to avoid confusion with Elderslie in Otago. The name stuck.

On 20 December 1873 the Auckland to Onehunga railway opened via Newmarket, Ellerslie and Penrose. The original Ellerslie Station sat between the bridges with a level crossing on the main road. A run of accidents in 1874 saw residents lobby successfully to relocate the station, which required the road realignment that defines the village layout to this day.

The day the races began

Horses had raced at Ellerslie since 1857, when Robert Graham hosted racing on his property. An 1866 agreement records Graham handing over the course after erecting a grandstand, judge's box and associated yards. In 1872 the Auckland Jockey Club bought about 90 acres, or 36 hectares, from Graham; after the Auckland Jockey Club and Auckland Turf Club amalgamated in January 1874, the Auckland Racing Club held its first Ellerslie meeting on 25 May 1874.

Ellerslie became the home of the Summer Carnival and Auckland Cup Week. In 1913 the racecourse installed the world's first automatic totalisator, designed by Sir George Julius and first operated at Ellerslie on 22 March 1913. The 1920s and 1930s were the racecourse's heyday, with a dedicated race-day railway station operating between January 1874 and September 1971.

Villas, bungalows and the tram

In 1886 most of the Graham farm was subdivided for housing. Electric trams reached Ellerslie on 17 November 1902, opening up suburban living for working Aucklanders through the mid-1930s. After World War One, Californian bungalows filled tram-served suburbs across Auckland, and Ellerslie picked up its share.

By the 1920s the village supported milk, bread, fish, grocery, haberdashery and drapery shops, deliveries still done by horse and cart. The 1906 Henry Winkelmann photograph of E. H. Biss's workmen's dwellings shows the kind of solid, modest housing the new village was built on.

The motorway that cut the village in two

Construction of Auckland's first motorway, and one of New Zealand's earliest motorway sections, began between Ellerslie and Mt Wellington in the early 1950s and opened in 1953. Later extensions made Ellerslie less directly accessible from Greenlane, redirected traffic patterns and affected village trade.

State-subsidised mortgages drove suburban infill through the 1950s and 1960s. Two contrasting aerials from this era tell the story. The 1940 Crown survey image of Ellerslie shows the racecourse, railway and village still embedded in farmland. The 1972 survey shows the same view criss-crossed by motorway, the racecourse hemmed in, the bungalow grid hardened.

"The Hill" and the new village

Ellerslie today is a sought-after character suburb of roughly nine to ten thousand people, depending on the boundary used. Stats NZ's Ellerslie SA3 had an estimated population of 9,540 at 30 June 2025, a 2023 Census median age of 36, and median weekly rent paid by renting households of $580. Current listing-market rents and house values sit higher, but shift with the market.

The defining recent story is The Hill. Fletcher Living is developing 6.2 hectares of former Ellerslie Racecourse land into 357 residences, including Belvedere apartments and Vivid Living retirement accommodation. Consent was granted on 17 April 2023 and amended on 16 May 2023, and construction is now under way. Separately, Simplicity Living's Waiatarua build-to-rent project on 1.4 hectares of Auckland Thoroughbred Racing land is planned for 330 rental homes, with completion reported for February 2027. The track itself has been rebuilt with a StrathAyr surface, and jumps racing has ended at Ellerslie.