Prints For Sale: Caccia Birch, Palmerston North

This print is identical to my original drawing done for Historic Places Magazine.

Size of image is approx. 31 cm x 51 cm

Price is $NZ 85.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
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Prints For Sale: Ophir Post Office (1886)

This print is identical to my original drawing that appeared in Historic Places Magazine.

Size of image is approx. 30 cm x 24 cm

Price is $NZ 51.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
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Leaves From My Sketchbooks. 61. Ruined Cottage, Motueka

For a few years in the 1960s New Zealanders were blind to the treasures in their midst. That's when many colonial buildings were destroyed for ever. Fortunately we came to our senses and a significant amount of heritage has been preserved thanks to organizations like the Historic Places Trust. This cottage at Motueka, among the tobacco and hop fields, was not beyond repair but I doubt if anybody saved it.

I found it a delight, so much so that I did another drawing of it on a white, porcelain Thomas plate, using iron oxide mixed with oil of cloves to make an ink. As the oil evaporated it left the oxide as configured 'dust'. Then, very carefully, it was placed into a kiln and baked until the plate's glaze ran and permanently incorporated the image.

I had it in mind to do a whole dinner service of cottages but, apart from a series of round tiles, I only ever did the one plate which now graces our sideboard, a paved intention on my road to hell!

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
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New Zealand Odyssey: William's Cottage, Marine Parade, Queenstown

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by me, Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

In 1988 when I did this illustration a stiff wind could have blown down this neglected 'sore-thumb' rusty-roofed cottage on the lake front at Queenstown. But that was before the town became a tourist mecca of expensive motels and street names in Japanese. Before, somewhere along the line, the cottage was saved and preserved as something of historic interest (which largely proves that where historic places are concerned, age is far more important than architectural merit).

The Historic Places Trust of New Zealand advises that its address is 21 Marine Parade; other experts say it's No. 19. It's the oldest house in the town, named after John Williams who built it around 1864. It's now a café.

Why they called it Marine Parade when it's nowhere near the sea defeats me.  


© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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New Zealand Odyssey: Flemings' Creamota Factory, Gore

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by me, Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

In 1988, when I did this illustration, the Flemings Creamota factory still produced the oatmeal porridge that had fortified New Zealanders at breakfast since 1919. Later, the factory closed down in 2001 - another 'icon' (how I hate that word) gone. 

The weird cartoon character on the left of the building is 'Sergeant Dan', the grotesque figure that gave as much symbolic recognition to Creamota as that ghastly Four Square man did to the eponymous grocery chain.

The factory is still there and is listed with the NZ Historic Places Trust as a category one  building.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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Hayes Historic Engineering Works, Oturehua, Central Otago

As we drove along the valley of the Ida Burn between Oturehua and Poolburn in Autumn 2010, no doubt the hills looked much the same as they did ten years after the pastoral modifications of the first runholders. This is to our benefit for had Hayes Engineering Works been sited in, say, Dunedin or Auckland, ‘progress’ would have obliterated it by now.

Instead we are treated to a late nineteenth century colonial example of the Victorian succession to Britain’s industrial revolution. It‘s in working order, preserved because of its astute acquisition by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

A corner of the workshop in 2010

Hayes Engineering Limited was established in Central Otago in 1885 by E. Ernest Hayes, recently immigrated from Warwickshire. His first building was a shed of 7.75 square metres; therein he invented and produced tools and implements to aid self-sufficiency in a remote district. As time went by demand for his inventions came from his near neighbours, then from farther afield, and subsequently from around the world.

Among the more notable of his innovations were disc-cutter tools for cutting up pollard, a bran mixture used for poisoning the rabbits who were already a pest on the pasturelands of Central Otago. By 1897 he had built a lathe out of a gate post and chaff cutter wheel and thus was able to increase production of the disc-cutter.

Hayes went into serious engineering production which was enhanced when he built a forge in 1905 to produce his standard lifter, the famous wire strainer branded ‘Monkey’, a cart jack and wire coiler. In 1906 he invented his best known gadget, the parallel wire strainer for farm fences which was patented in 1923.

The old forge in 2010

Other Hayes inventions were water wheels, pulley blocks, cattle stops and the rachet-tightened ‘Triplex’ permanent wire strainers that have been indispensable to all farmers ever since and are still seen all over New Zealand.

Ermest Hayes retired in 1926 after which his sons carried on the business; he died in 1933, aged 82.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Fyffe House, Kaikoura Peninsula

Since before recorded history there were whales off Kaikoura. They mewed unmolested because Maori, who flocked to this coast for its fish and crayfish, had developed no technology that might harm them. But the whalers came in the early eighteen hundreds with their harpoons and flensing knives; the seas and beaches hereabouts must often have been a loathsome sight.

Kaikoura’s first whaling station, the Wai O Puka Fishery, was established in 1842 by Robert Fyffe and John Murray in ‘Fyffe’s Cove’ (now called Armers Beach). Twelve years later Fyffe was joined by his cousin, George, who unexpectedly found himself in charge of farming and whaling operations when Robert drowned just a few weeks later.

The Fyffes’ house was built in three distinct stages. The first, a simple cottage, possibly built in the mid 1840s, was earlier known as Cooper’s House. Its construction materials were standard for the times: cob, lath and plaster, pit sawn native timbers and eucalypts. But it also had whale vertebrae for foundations!

By 1857, George had added a kitchen with a store room above; then, with his wife, Catherine, he continued the extension, at right angles to the old cottage, until they had, by 1861, completed the west wing of Fyffe House. Only two other families, the Goodalls and Lows, have owned Fyffe House since it was built. George Low bequeathed it to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust in 1981.

In the intervening years Kaikoura has grown into a flourishing tourist town and it’s difficult to picture life when it was a remote whaling station on a harsh and craggy peninsula below mountains whose snow lasts all summer.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Open 7 Days 34. Rolston’s General Store, Oturehua

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

ROLSTON’S GENERAL STORE

Main Road, Oturehua, Central Otago.
Proprietors: Grant and Mary Rolston

The first store in Oturehua (then called Rough Ridge) was built in 1899 by James Caldwell, but within three years Thomas Gilchrist had bought him out and the business remained in the Gilchrist family for the next eighty-seven years.

Very close to the site of the original store, the present building was put up in 1929, with a bakery at the back run by Alex Robertson, who married into the Gilchrist family.

It was gold that lured Thomas Gilchrist from Victoria and also sustained the early settlement, although farming became the eventual heart of the economy. Horse-and-cart deliveries were made to St. Bathans and Moa Creek, orders being taken one week and delivered the next, and the offering included everything from timber, petrol (in cases), tyres, fencing materials and stock foods to crockery, tools and clothing.

In 1989, when only Herb and Bruce Gilchrist remained (Herb having been there forty-seven years and Bruce thirty-six), the Rolstons moved in from Norsewood. The shop remains little changed and still sells a wide range of goods. It has the local postal agency and runs the rural delivery of mail, papers and groceries, often through heavy snow.

The community is nowadays composed of transport workers and farmers, supplemented by visitors who summer at their cribs , enjoy winter sports at the Ida Burn Dam or appear in their thousands at the motorcyclists’ Brass Monkey Rally every Queen’s Birthday weekend.

The nearby Hayes Engineering Works is a monument to New Zealand’s capacity for inventiveness.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
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N.Z. House & Cottage 36. Wyllie Cottage, Gisborne

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

WYLLIE COTTAGE, GISBORNE

I should explain ‘Mac’ before I go any further. When planning these texts I asked owners and administrators of properties to help with information and anything quirky that might be of interest. It was Jan Colbert of the Gisborne Museum and Arts Centre who pointed out Mac’s burial plaque and told me that ‘Mac’ (Museum and Arts Centre - get it?) made the museum and adjacent Wyllie Cottage his home, having been rescued from near death as a vagrant teenager. He died, having begged snacks and lorded it over staff and visitors for some years, in his feline dotage. His kidneys had packed up; all that junk food, I guess.

One thing you can do with old cottages that you can’t do with old cats is restore them. Wyllie Cottage (strikingly similar to the one in the NZ Historic Places Trust’s logo) was the first house of European design constructed on the Whataupoko bank of the Taruheru River in Gisborne. It was built in 1872 by James Ralston Wyllie and his wife Kate. As their family grew to eight children they extended the house but, interestingly, it never had a kitchen venting chimney and it’s thought that Kate, of Maori background, did her cooking outdoors. There’s nothing outstanding about the cottage but, restored, it is a good example of kauri-shingled vertical board and batten: pleasingly simple.

To make room for a larger house the cottage was removed in 1886 to its present site by its then owner, J.C. Dunlop. His wife ran a school in the cottage and it appears to have served as a school three times, the later schoolmarms being the Misses Evans and a Miss Aylmer. A dressmaker, Miss Simeon, also occupied it (I wonder whether she was related to the transient Captain Simeon of Lyttelton?). Eventually it was bought by W.D. Lysnar whose daughter, Winifred, sold the property, in 1954, to Gisborne City Council.

Thereafter Wyllie Cottage slowly decayed until, partly as a bloody-minded response to the bruited intention of the council to demolish it, the cottage was saved by public subscriptions. Restoration began in 1970 when it was found that the sagging building was not quite as bad as had been thought. Indeed, the biggest job was the restoration of the roof, which was done with shingles supplied by the Historic Places Trust.

As for Mac, he’s buried round the back, among the bedding plants.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

N.Z. House & Cottage 33. Alberton, Auckland

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century.

I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

ALBERTON, AUCKLAND

When I saw Alberton for the first time - over thirty-five years ago - I thought it weird. The oddly curved ‘ogee’ towers seemed a clumsy attempt to do something almost impossible with corrugated iron and the balustraded façade, a mixture of Italianate and Indian arches, had a saccharine pomposity. But maybe its phoney grandeur was concealing something genuine? I was pleased to discover that behind the grand exterior there lies a simple farmhouse the evidence of which, in my illustration, is the central gable.

Allan Kerr Taylor, born in India in 1832 and educated in Edinburgh, was one of six brothers who came to New Zealand between 1843 and 1851. He bought land at Mt Albert when he was sixteen and farmed it while probably living in a cottage of local scoria. He began ‘Alberton’ in 1863 to house his new wife Martha Meredith whom he’d married in 1862 while on a visit to England (she died the following year.) Widowed and childless, Kerr Taylor married again in 1865 to seventeen year old Sophia Davis of Kaitaia. She bore ten children and outlived Allan Kerr Taylor by forty years, dying in 1930 as ‘mistress of Alberton’.

In his heyday Kerr Taylor prospered mainly from forestry and mining investments. He employed Matthew Henderson, a leading Auckland architect to give visual expression to his wealth through building on to the modest farmhouse a ballroom, guest rooms, a conservatory, and all that addendum of architectural embroidery by which Alberton is so well recognized. Thereafter, until his sudden death in 1890, life at Alberton was an open season of ‘at homes’, archery parties, balls and meets of the Pakuranga Hunt. It was not all parties, though; Kerr Taylor served on the Provincial Council and was chairman of the Mt Albert Highway Board.

When he died, Sophia found that prosperity had faded and in the remaining years she had to sell portions of the estate in order to keep Alberton going. She clearly managed well, though, and she and her daughters continued to live in the big house while she threw additional energies into feminist, ratepayers’ and welfare matters. The three daughters remained in the house after Sophia’s death and the last of them, Muriel, bequeathed Alberton to the Historic Places Trust in 1972. Of its original 550 acres the estate has contracted to the one last acre and its house, completely surrounded by Auckland’s expanding suburbs.

Alberton is now an exhibition of dynastic life from colonial days to the early twentieth century. Of all it has to show I find the pencilled message written on the white painted wall above a housemaid’s bed most intriguing: ‘Susan does not like it here so she is going to leave cause Mrs Taylor calls her Cookie.’

Who was Susan? Was Sophia Kerr Taylor a cruel mistress? Why did she call Susan ‘Cookie’?

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
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N.Z. House & Cottage 26. Stuart Street Terrace, Dunedin

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

STUART STREET TERRACE. DUNEDIN.

Town houses may be a modern idea but this elegant row, specifically designed as seven residential units by James Salmond for retailer Daniel Haynes, dates from 1901. As well as residents, it has housed booksellers, lawyers, doctors, cafés and music shops and includes the Dunedin office of the Historic Places Trust.

It owes its survival to John Martin and Colin Doherty who rescued it from decay in 1980 - for which they deserved a medal.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

N.Z. House & Cottage 23. Fyffe House, Kaikoura

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog

FYFFE HOUSE, KAIKOURA

Since before recorded history there were whales off Kaikoura. They mewed unmolested because Maori, who flocked to this coast for its fish and crayfish, had developed no technology that might harm them. But the whalers came in the early eighteen hundreds with their harpoons and flensing knives; the seas and beaches hereabouts must often have been a loathsome sight


Kaikoura’s first whaling station, the Wai O Puka Fishery, was established in 1842 by Robert Fyffe and John Murray in ‘Fyffe’s Cove’ (now called Armers Beach). Twelve years later Fyffe was joined by his cousin, George, who unexpectedly found himself in charge of farming and whaling operations when Robert drowned just a few weeks later.

The Fyffes’ house was built in three distinct stages. The first, a simple cottage, possibly built in the mid 1840s, was earlier known as Cooper’s House. Its construction materials were standard for the times: cob, lath and plaster, pit sawn native timbers and eucalypts. But it also had whale vertebrae for foundations!

By 1857, George had added a kitchen with a store room above; then, with his wife, Catherine, he continued the extension, at right angles to the old cottage, until they had, by 1861, completed the west wing of Fyffe House. Only two other families, the Goodalls and Lows, have owned Fyffe House since it was built. George Low bequeathed it to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust in 1981.

In the intervening years Kaikoura has grown into a flourishing tourist town and it’s difficult to picture life when it was a remote whaling station on a harsh and craggy peninsula below mountains whose snow lasts all summer.

These days Fyffe House and its genial resident curator, Bill Edwards, welcome visitors warmly while, out in the bay, the equally genial cetaceans are hunted by harmless whale-watchers with cameras.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug,co.nz
.

N.Z. House & Cottage 16. Riverlands Cob Cottage, Marlborough

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

RIVERLANDS COB COTTAGE, MARLBOROUGH

It comes as a visual relief; a picture postcard cottage crisply whitewashed, within a small garden of lawn, and floral borders that splash colour on to the otherwise dun, dried landscape of the plains east of Blenheim.
I wonder whether the builder of Riverlands cob cottage ever contemplated the possibility that State Highway One would run within a metre or so of its front door? Indeed, I wonder who the builder was - Charles Redwood or John Emmett? The record seems unclear.

Henry Redwood, Charles’s father, had arrived in Nelson in 1842 from Staffordshire. He soon took up land on the lower Wairau Plain, and by 1870 the Redwood family owned tracts that extended from the secluded inland Taylor Valley to the sea at Cloudy Bay, and included blocks in the Wairau and Awatere Valleys. Charles, one of Henry’s nine children, established the Riverlands Run of 5600 acres (2270ha): the cob cottage stands on Section 32 of that run. He had bought the plot from John Emmett in 1865 and it’s possible that Emmett had had the cottage built.

It’s two-storeyed, with a small attic bedroom. The walls, 40 cm thick in parts, are of a puddled clay and chopped tussock mixture reinforced with horse manure containing ‘undigested’ chaff (an ‘essential’ component according to one account!). Having housed members of the Redwood family and a succession of farm labourers and itinerant shearing gangs, it served as the official schoolroom from 1906 to 1909 and, at some stage, as a headquarters for bookies attending the local racecourse and a shelter for stud sheep. It did worthy war work, too, as quartermaster’s store and area base for the Home Guard in World War II.

The Marlborough Historical Society and Historic Places Trust started a major restoration in 1960, clearing overgrowth, rebuilding walls, re-shingling and furnishing with contemporary displays. The cottage was opened to visitors in 1965, since when it has been maintained with commendable care.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

.

N.Z. House & Cottage 11. The Cuddy, Waimate

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century.
I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

THE CUDDY, TE WAIMATE

The Cuddy suffers somewhat from being so picturesque. It’s the stuff that calendars are made of, thatched, honeysuckled and charming in its old style garden. But its prettiness is a fortuitous side-effect and belies its pioneer beginnings when the need for shelter far outweighed artistic considerations.

The construction, typical of the period, is of the original vertical totara slab plugged with wattle and daub, but its brick chimney superseded one of clay and stake, and its roof, when I called at the end of 1996, had just been re-thatched in English style with rushes from a local swamp (in Maori, Waimate means ’stagnant water’) and was expected to last another thirty years.* Its first thatch was of snowgrass which was later replaced by others of corn straw.

The cottage was built in 1854 by the Studholme brothers, Michael, John and Paul who had arrived in Lyttelton from Cumberland three years before. It gets its name from a small cabin on a ship and probably reminded them of their voyage. Paul soon returned to England but his brothers lived in the Cuddy for six years while they developed the 98,000 acres (40,000ha) of Te Waimate Station.

When Michael first brought his wife, Effie, home she was dismayed by the accommodation and wrote:
‘We inspected the Cuddy…The floor was of beaten clay, which was worn into depressions here and there, so that in setting a chair there was trouble in arranging the legs so as to stand firmly… There were two small windows and one large sod fireplace: above the latter M’s guns, stockwhips etc. were arranged. A couple of stools cut from the round of a tree completed the furniture. Certainly there was no room for me there…’
Effie had brought a rose from Christchurch in her saddle bag and it was planted in the garden beside the Cuddy where its scions grow to this day: her side-saddle is still in the cottage in company with some contemporary pots, pans and furniture.

The one kilometre avenue from the main road to the cottage is lined with English oaks planted in 1864. It leads also to the site of the old homestead, destroyed by fire in 1928, and the five acres of gardens containing magnificent sequoias, cedars of Lebanon, red and white pines and Oregon firs.

*The Cuddy and Rhodes Cottage, both in South Canterbury, are the only two thatched buildings in the care of the Historic Places Trust.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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N.Z. House & Cottage 9. Rhodes Cottage, The Levels

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in I997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century.
I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

RHODES COTTAGE, THE LEVELS

The starlings of South Canterbury must think that this is the largest nest in the world. On the spring day that I visited they had successfully penetrated the screen of chicken wire that covers the thatch and were cavorting inside and outside, squealing and fluttering like feathered extras in a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’.

Despite that, this fascinating cabin is well enough cared for and sits attractively, somewhat hidden, in a neat private historic reserve garden beside the modern farm house. It’s a strong building, not because it was intended to last but because of its materials: solid, vertical totara slabs lined with cob supporting substantial rough-hewn rafters and a deep thatch of wheat straw which a craftsman thatcher would have no difficulty maintaining or replacing. It’s the oldest surviving building in South Canterbury and is unique.

The Levels Station, named after his Yorkshire home, was first settled by George Rhodes and his brothers in 1851. George took his new wife, Elizabeth, whom he’d married at Lyttelton, to her new home in 1854. It took them eight days to ride from Banks Peninsula to The Levels, a journey you can do these days between breakfast and morning smoko. At first they stayed near the beach at Timaru but soon moved inland to occupy the slab hut in which they were to live until a more suitable dwelling was erected by 1856. The hut measured three metres wide by nine long. It had two rooms, with an open fireplace at one end. The floors were of clay which, I imagine, would have created a fine dust to coat clothes, furniture, food and books. I daresay, too, that it was subject to constant re-levelling for the more used areas, the doorway for example, would otherwise have soon worn into potholes.

George died tragically in 1864, having contracted typhoid while dipping sheep, and Elizabeth, with her four sons and a daughter moved into Timaru. Later the tract containing the hut passed into the ownership of the Orbell family and, in 1946, the ‘old hut’, dilapidated and propped up, was given to the South Canterbury Historical Society. The Rhodes family restored it in 1951 and it has since been further restored and maintained by the Historic Places Trust.

A romantic sidenote: it was from The Levels that the much mythologized James McKenzie and his fabulous dog ’stole’ 1000 sheep and drove them over the hills and far away towards what became Mackenzie Country.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Who Stole the Chimney Pots off Albert Park Lodge?

No. 33 Princes Street is the keeper’s lodge in Auckland’s Albert Park. It was built in 1882, at the same time as the park was laid out. It was deemed necessary to the well-being and upkeep of the park that a full time keeper should not only be in attendance at the park but should also be accommodated there because, at the time of the park’s inception, the area was subject to the delinquencies of prowling ‘larrikins’ and the depredations of roaming horses and cattle; also, according to contemporary reports in the New Zealand Herald, it was ill-used by people who would clamber over its railings rather than walk to its gates, who lay drunk under its trees, and who repeatedly stole the flowers.

One notable prosecution was that of Sir Charles Burdett, a military baronet from England, convicted of theft and imprisoned for fourteen days with hard labour. O, the joys of zero tolerance!

Some occupants of the lodge were: the City Librarian from 1886; the family of George Fillmore, Auckland City Council’s Superintendent of Parks and Reserves from 1930-1951, and Frank Fillmore, Assistant Director of Parks and Reserves. Indeed, the Fillmore family lived there for 35 years.

The ‘carpenter gothic’ cottage was designed by Auckland architect Henry Greensmith Wade and built by Wrigley and Hancock. It comprises a parlour, two bedrooms, kitchen, pantry and scullery and was, until, perhaps twenty years ago, graced by two elegant, moulded clay chimney pots of neo-Elizabethan design, probably sourced from a standard Victorian builders’ supply catalogue of the mid-nineteenth century.

The pots in place before they disappeared

Fortunately I photographed the lodge before these distinctive pots disappeared from the house. Despite my approaches to the Auckland City Council, the Historic Places Trust and the New Zealand Herald, I have been unable find out whether they were deliberately removed for safe-keeping or, perhaps stolen in a prank by students of the nearby Auckland university; I suspect the latter.

Or, perhaps, they were souvenired by the ghost of Sir Charles Burdett - who knows? If anybody does know I’d be pleased to hear from them.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Country Churches of NZ 119. Christ Church, Clifton, Southland

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

CHRIST CHURCH, CLIFTON

I could hardly believe that Christ Church at Clifton, south of Invercargill, was built in 1887. It looks new, like a replica, as if it were no older than the adjacent modern suburban houses. But it is, in fact, the oldest remaining wooden church still operating on its original site in Invercargill.

Not so long ago it was in a sorry state and heading for dilapidation but the Historic Places Trust, particularly Maureen Fox and architect Mick Hesselin, rescued it. Over the next six years, until 1999, it was faithfully restored to the design of its original architects, McKenzie &; Gilbertson.

It was then re-dedicated for the Cook Islands Christian Community to whom the tiny ex-Anglican church had been given in 1993.

© DON DONOVAN 
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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Country Churches of NZ 116. Former Presbyterian Church, Lawrence, Otago

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

FORMER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, LAWRENCE

Forgive me this flight of fancy - I wasn't at the burning of the old Presbyterian Church at Lawrence. But the shell from which the flames issue is as it was when I visited it.

It was another of R. A. Lawson's designs, built in 1886 in one of the richest of New Zealand's goldfields.

As for the fire: I can do no better than quote parts of a report from the Otago Daily Times of 1 October 1998:
'... Lawrence police believe [the fire] that destroyed the historic Presbyterian Church [was] deliberately lit. The church, built in 1886 ... has been used as a dwelling since a new church was built. The building was not demolished because it is protected by the Historic Places Trust. The Lawrence and Waitahuna Fire Brigades were called to the church at 4.15 am yesterday. They arrived to find the building well alight ... The owner... was believed to be in Dunedin and police were trying to contact... A Ford Escort van, parked outside the house, was also on fire. The church and the car were both extensively damaged and a fire brigade spokesman... said he believed the church would have to be demolished.'

But it's still there...*

* By 2008 the building had been restored and is now ‘luxury boutique accommodation, with a touch of the monastery’.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Country Churches of NZ 42. St.Abraham’s, Waipiro Bay

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

ST. ABRAHAM’S, WAIPIRO BAY

Wharfless Waipiro Bay was once a thriving community with a buoyant economy based on farming whose produce - meat, fleeces, etc - were taken by lighters to anchored ships.

St Abraham’s, which the Historic Places Trust lists as a memorial church, has three honours boards and was built six years after the end of World War 1. It is substantial but severe in plain brick and tile with raw brick for a nave.

None of the mullion-type lattice windows are coloured or stained. A large bell lies on the floor by the north door.

The foundation stone was laid by:

‘Rt Rev Bishop William Walmsley D.D., Bishop of Waiapu, April 11, 1924,
Pine Tamahori, Mission Priest; John Pigott, Vicar’.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
.