N.Z. House & Cottage 38. (Final). The Derelict

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

The book contained 41 houses or cottage. This is the final page.

THE DERELICT

Over many years, I saw this farmhouse crumble. It stood in a paddock some distance from the highway in that gentle country south of Nelson where the weather is fine most days. Having drawn it yet again, from earlier reference, I went looking for it in order to discover its history but although I searched beside the recently realigned highway and old side roads I could neither find it nor where it had been. I conclude that it decayed to the point where it had to be demolished and with it, no doubt, went another little history. That is the fate of all houses, rich or poor, grand or simple. I am pleased that I was able, in passing, to capture just a few. 

© 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
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N.Z. House & Cottage 32. Captain Simeon’s House, Lyttelton

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.

CAPTAIN SIMEON’S HOUSE, LYTTELTON

Through the early-to-middle decades of the twentieth century New Zealand paid far less respect to its minor historic buildings than it does today. In ‘progressive’ towns early cottages were often bulldozed without a thought, their now prized kiln fired bricks and kauri boards cast aside or burned, to be replaced by fresh, new houses with modern gadgets but little character. Fortunately Lyttelton, as soon as the city of Christchurch had relegated its status to that of a convenient port, could never claim ‘progressive’ as an architectural adjective and as a consequence can count itself lucky to have arrived with much of its old townscape intact at an age when we value our heritage.

In fact, in Lyttelton, charming old houses and cottages are two-a-penny. And that makes Captain Simeon’s house remarkable because it stands out from the rest as something completely different. I think it all comes down to proportion; that triplet of gables, almost too big, each with its bold sash window observing minutely the business of the port, while the downstairs rooms hide modestly beneath a shady canopy.

Built sometime between 1853 and 1860 by Henry Le Cren, a successful Lyttelton merchant, it is a surprisingly large house and has much greater depth than its front view suggests. Four sets of French doors open on to the garden, two from the large sitting room with its timber/marble fireplace surround, and others from the dining room and the study at the western end. Upstairs are four bedrooms: there used to be five until one was converted into a bathroom. (Which leads me to suspect that the morning ablutions were once performed from a rose-patterned hot water jug and bowl; that the beds stood over similarly ornamented chamber pots, and that a serious call of nature would have required a journey to the end of the back garden.)

Mystery surrounds Captain Charles Simeon; he’s hard to pin down. He came from a wealthy English family and had three brothers all of whom had much to do with New Zealand and the Canterbury settlement. John Simeon, a member of the English parliament, later to inherit a baronetcy, was a great friend of John Robert Godley, ‘The Founder of Canterbury’, and also a member of the original committee of the Canterbury Association. Cornwall Simeon owned property in Christchurch: but Charles was the only one actually to come to New Zealand. He arrived at Lyttelton in October 1851 complete with a pregnant wife, five children, a governess, cook, housemaid, footman, lady’s maid and housekeeper - a retinue described by Charlotte Godley, who accommodated them upon their arrival, as ‘alarming’!

The house that bears the Captain’s name a rewarding subject to paint, the rhythms of its shape in harmony with the colourful garden and the volcanic knob of Mt. Pleasant crouching above. Since 1990 it has been owned by Barry and Wendy Fairburn.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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N.Z. House & Cottage 21. Beach Road, Kohukohu

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.

BEACH ROAD, KOHUKOHU.

There’s sometimes a sub-tropical feel about Kohukohu; a tangible, scented humidity upon which tui songs toll from the surrounding hills: there’s a sound of running water from overgrown runnels and the shadowed sides of fence posts are padded with emerald mosses. It would not take nature long to reclaim the town.

Indeed, when I first saw Kohukohu thirty-five years ago, my impression was of neglect. Rotting timbers peeled off old houses whose mildewed windows were cracked and broken, and road seal crumbled. It seemed that apart from being the northern terminal of the Hokianga Ferry all its glory was in a past when its harbour bay bustled with the scream of milling kauri and a latter day dairy factory flourished until its closure in 1957.

But I have seen Kohukohu re-born. The colour has come back to its face. They say it’s because of newcomers with different ways of living; they’ve brought their children with them and increased the population, and they’ve seen the potential that lies in the recovery of distressed villas and cottages.

The Beach Road house - a residence expressing a certain social eminence - was built in 1889 by Fred Halliwell (who also owned Kohukohu’s first motor car in 1907). In the 1920s it was occupied by the manager of the Rangiora Timber Company, after whom came a train of owners: McArthur, a dentist; J.H.A. Skipper, printer and publisher of the Hokianga Star (who ran it as a boarding house); Doctors Rule and Alexander (in the late thirties); the Methodists; then farmer Brian Gundry, followed in the 1980s by Sue and Alan Clarkson, he a veterinary surgeon.

It’s had coats of many colours, some more controversial than others, no doubt. Not to worry, it’s the structure that matters, not its colour, and its fresh, pink coat offered an opportunity for me to use some of the rarer pigments in my paint box.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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N.Z. House & Cottage 20. Two Cottages on George Street, 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.

 

1014/1008 GEORGE STREET, DUNEDIN.

It’s not the first time I’ve painted these mirror-image cottages in upper George Street; they fascinate me. They share the busy street with brick terraces and old villas with tiny gardens of high trees and enough vintage roses to grace all the cups and saucers ever created.

On advice from her son, Gerald, No. 1014 was rented in 1985 and purchased in 1988 by Mrs Geraldine Wilson who had lived next door for thirty-three years but, now widowed, needed less space. Her family’s connexions with Dunedin go back to the nineteenth century when her husband’s grandfather James Wilson owned a nearby brewery. His son, Charles, worked at the brewery as an industrial chemist and developed ‘Maltexo’, that panacea much loved by generations of New Zealand children. It is known that many of the brewery workers lived in the area but whether any occupied these cottages is unknown.

1008 belongs to Michael Sayers of Brockville, who owns and drives a Dunedin taxi. Neither he nor the Wilsons know much about the history of the two cottages but he has in his possession the original deed of land transfer: Grant No. 116387 of two roods (half an acre or 0.2 ha), assigned to Walter Day, gentleman, in 1870. Clearly the cottages were built later. They were almost derelict in 1983 but, thankfully, are now in good hands.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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N.Z. House & Cottage 18. Cotons Cottage, Hororata

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.

COTONS COTTAGE, HORORATA

It makes a nice little watercolour but it’s important that I tell you that what you see is a very substantial restoration - virtually a complete re-building - of the original.

Having said that, it is an excellent restoration, is very faithful to its predecessor and incorporates quite enough of its ancestral genes to be ‘authentic’.

Bentley Coton (who, they say, despite his imposing name, was an illiterate Yorkshiremen) bought fifty acres (20 ha) of land at Hororata in 1864 and built the cottage in which he lived with his wife, Sarah Jane, until he died in 1913. His illiteracy was no impediment to his craftsmanship for he showed great expertise in the technique of rammed cob walling. The clay came from his own land and was mixed, as usual, with chopped tussock then compacted into boxing to make the walls.

In his blind dotage, holding out his hands, he was reputed to have said on more than one occasion: ‘They be my tools!’ With them he not only built the walls of his five-roomed cottage, he also thatched the roof with wheat straw then, later, with shingles and finally with iron.

Cotons’ cottage was used for local Church of England services until a small kauri church was built in Hororata in 1875. Thereafter the locals dubbed the cottage ‘the old cathedral’. There’s a nice photograph etched into a metal plate outside the cottage which shows Bentley and Sarah in 1910 sitting either side of the front door like bookends in a setting astonishingly like today’s, even with a backdrop of poplars.

Eroded cob can look like licked ice cream and the cottage was getting that way when it was restored by the Hororata Historical Society in 1977. Although it had a new, Canadian cedar shingled roof and concrete foundations, and although they imported some clay from Glenroy for the floor, they endeavoured to keep as much of the old place as possible and so re-cycled the cob from the 45cm thick walls and incorporated the original window frames, architraves, mantelpiece and fireplace.

So there it stands in an open paddock close by the Society’s museum which, with the cottage, makes a worthy tribute to Bentley Coton, the first smallholder in Horotata.

© DON DONOVAN 
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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N.Z. House & Cottage 7. Tauherenikau

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 COTTAGE, TAUHERENIKAU

I first saw this cottage in 1965 when with my wife Pat I was on a Sunday afternoon sketching expedition. Its symmetry and classical proportions seemed to characterize it as a typical house fit for a typically successful but modest Wairarapa farmer.

I sat in the car, totally absorbed, scratching away on my sketchpad with an old fountain pen until, almost before the Indian ink was dry, she whipped the finished drawing away and with the cheek of an encyclopaedia salesman marched up the garden path, knocked on the front door and sold it to Brian McEwan, the then owner!

We never saw him again but I never forgot the cottage and was pleased to draw it again and include it in this collection over thirty years later.

It’s not easy to get information about the cottage because, although transfers of land are carefully recorded, the fates of buildings are not. A crown grant of 166 acres was made to William Parfitt Nix and Josias Tocker, Hutt Valley farmers, on 15 March 1854. Nix died that year, leaving his son, Lewis, and wife, Mary Ann, as executors. She subsequently married Christopher Potts* to whom the title transferred in 1870. The land that the cottage stands upon was part of that grant.

The holding was broken down over time and bits were sold off, but in 1884 Potts was issued with a certificate of title to fifteen acres which included the cottage. It was registered in his wife’s name and so, when Mary Ann died in 1900 it passed to her son, William Nix. It stayed in that family until 1954. It was then was bought by John Donald who subdivided it ten years later and sold one-and-a-half acres with residence to Brian Peter Douglas Fitzgerald McEwan. Which is a long winded way of establishing that when I did my first sketch of ‘The Cottage’, McEwan had only recently bought it.

Nick and Lesley Shalders, the present owners, believe it may date to as early as 1860.

The barn, constructed of pit-sawn timber and handmade nails, boasts a long-drop and was probably a milking shed. It may be as old as the cottage.

*Interesting: When researching my book ‘The Good Old Kiwi Pub’ I discovered that the nearby ‘Tin Hut’ hotel was once owned by C Potts - the same man - a land owner of local note thus meriting the title ‘gentleman’.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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