Woodlands once was a farm that lay amidst firs’, purchased by Bishop Robert Gray in 1849, on which to build a school, which today is Bishops Diocesan College. Building operations started 165 years ago in 1850. Today, the name Woodlands refers to the buildings that are the hockey Astro, club and pavilion, OD Union offices and Museum. Before, it was the cemetery of St Thomas’s Anglican Church. In 1977 Bishops leased the land after it had been deconsecrated and the land was prepared for junior cricket and rugby games for the Prep Schoolboys. Through the efforts of the Reverend Stephen Oliver, at the time, the Rector of St Thomas’s Church and (1987 – 1995) Mr Ulick Brown O.D. (1933 – 1940), the land was purchased in 1996, to serve as a rugby/cricket field for the school. When in 1990 the Prep School terminated the teaching of Standard 6 (Grade 8 today), the College began using the field to accommodate extra numbers, and cricket and rugby were played there by College boys. When it was decided that the College should get its own Astro – many 1st XI hockey matches had been played since 1989 on the astroturf at Hartleyvale – the switch to the area used for hockey began. Since 1998 when it was laid down, the astroturf has served Bishops’ hockey well, but from the moment the first matches were played on the newly laid Astro, with magnificent buildings and surroundings adorning the landscape, a new day dawned for Bishops sport.