Photoprint for Sale: Caccia Birch House (1893), Palmerston North, New Zealand

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 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: Houses In Dundas Street, Dunedin

This row of houses has some notoriety in Dunedin; one can only imagine how many university students have lodged here over the years!

This print is identical to my original drawing that appeared in my book 'New Zealand Odyssey'. Size of image is 18 cm x 29 cm .

Price is $NZ 49.00 inc. p&p in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
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N.Z. House & Cottage 30. No.259 Williams Street, Kaiapoi

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.

259 WILLIAMS STREET, KAIAPOI

State Highway No. 1 used to run through Kaiapoi but the Christchurch motorway now by-passes it. That’s not to say that the town has lost any mana - in fact it has become more interesting - but it’s a long way short of the expectations of prime-minister-to-be Henry Sewell, who observed, in 1853, that Christchurch had reached its peak, and that the newcomers were all off to Kaiapoi!

Besides its development as a port and woollen mill town, Kaiapoi’s claim to fame was the 1831 attack on the Kaiapohia Pa, nine kilometres north of the present town, by Te Rauparaha, an assault so violent that twenty years later ‘drayloads’ of human remnants of the cannibal feast had to be carted away by Canon Stack.
Modern Kaiapoi was born only ten years after the massacre and, by 1871, William Dickie, a labourer, had bought the land upon which the cottage at 259 Williams Street now stands. Despite such appalling recent events, a holding like this was considered a ‘worker’s paradise’ to immigrants from a land of inflexible privilege; three-quarters of an acre and house were deemed sufficient for a man to keep hens, a goat or sheep, and to grow fruit and vegetables for his family.

Dickie probably built the cottage but there is a slight possibility that it was already in place, erected by the former landowners ‘R.H.Rhodes and another’ as early as 1867. The central front door opens into the sitting room next to a bedroom complete with four-poster. Beyond are kitchen and scullery and, between, a narrow stairway leads to two attic rooms whose ceilings parallel the roof. From research and investigation done by its present owner, Ted McCulloch, it most likely began as a small one-roomed shed with a fireplace at one end but was soon enlarged to look very similar to its present appearance. (’Unspoilt’ is one of the descriptions most often heard.)

The cottage has had a number of owners since William Dickie. In 1925 a young couple, the Thompsons, paid £165 for it. Despite raising six children they made surprisingly few alterations beyond installing electricity and a bathroom and so, when Ted McCulloch (whose Austin 7 Ruby saloon graces the driveway)

bought the house in 1989, he found himself with a charming heritage building which he has sensitively maintained since (although he was once growled at by Mrs Thompson’s daughter for not having polished the brass light switches!) While restoring the sitting room he removed and preserved samples of twelve separate layers of wall-covering, the earliest of which were sheets from the London ‘Times’ of 1866.

© 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
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N.Z. House & Cottage 25. Woodside Manor, West Taieri

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

WOODSIDE MANOR, WEST TAIERI

‘Tis distance lends enchantment…’ My first illustration of ‘The Poplars’ was for New Zealand Odyssey published in 1989. On that occasion I could get no closer than the locked gates, from which distance it had a romantic, Caledonian promise, as if it had been transported, fully built, from some remote Scottish glen. It came to mind again when I was planning New Zealand House and Cottage.

I daresay that Ray and Eve Beardsmore’s first impression was the same as mine. But they would have been under no delusions about the restoration task ahead of them when they bought the house at auction in 1974. It had been empty since 1958, vandals had broken windows, birds nested in the rafters and cattle roamed through the ground floor. The first thing the Beardsmores did was to restore its original name, ‘Woodside Manor’, then they set out to put it all back together again - a long term project upon which they are still working.

It was built by a Scot, Francis McDiarmid, in 1866. He had bought the land unseen and had come to Maungatua on the Taieri Plain in 1848 to win his farmland from forest and swamp. He and his wife Janet prospered during the Otago gold rushes and improved their accommodation from a wattle and daub cottage to this brick, limestone and slate mini-mansion. The bricks were fired from local clay, the stone came from Oamaru and the rafters and joists were of pit sawn native rimu, but from Wales came the roof slates, and the nobler timbers were of Baltic pine; a happy combination that has fought well against time’s depredations.
Woodside Manor is a treasure house: the Beardsmores have a jackdaw hunger for collectables everything from cups and saucers to Rolls Royces and Model T Fords. They intend to leave it to the people of Dunedin - not too soon, I hope.

There’s an unsolved mystery here: in the central gable there is a stone tablet which records Francis McDiarmid’s completion of the house in 1866. Above his initials are the letters: ‘PR. OF. WS.’ I’ve found nobody who knows their meaning.

(Later note: PR. OF. WS. could mean Prince of Wales - but in what context?)

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz 
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N.Z. House & Cottage 24. Mona Vale Lodge, Christchurch

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.

ENTRANCE LODGE, MONA VALE, CHRISTCHURCH

In its riverside, park~like setting this little two storeyed house has that character which, with others around the city and suburbs, gives Christchurch its ‘English’ look. Typically Victorian, with over-decoration that should make it an architectural mess, it is in fact enchanting.

I took delight in painting it because it came as quite a departure from sod cottages and wooden villas. As I worked I thought I could feel how the mysteries, hinted at beneath its Marseilles tiles and beyond its diamond-paned gothic windows, would appeal to a child with a romantic imagination. It’s a story book cottage.

The lodge is associated with the older Tudor-revival house, Mona Vale, the entrance to whose grounds it ‘guards’. On land that once belonged to the Deans family, Frederick Waymouth built the big house in 1900 and called it ‘Karewa’. In 1905 it was bought for £6000 by Annie Townend, one of the country’s wealthiest women, and she changed its name to Mona Vale after her mother’s house in Tasmania. Aged eighteen, Annie had arrived in New Zealand many years earlier with her father, George Moore. He owned the grand Glenmark house in North Canterbury which, tragically, burned down in 1891. It’s said that, for sentimental reasons, Annie later developed Mona Vale and its gardens on the banks of the Avon in the style of Glenmark, and it was probably also nostalgia that caused Annie to have the entrance lodge patterned upon the one she had known at Glenmark rather than have it complement Mona Vale house, whose architecture is quite different.

Annie Townend didn’t have long to enjoy Mona Vale; she died in 1914. Thereafter the property passed through many hands until it was bought in 1962 by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints whose house of worship stands nearby. In the late ’60s the church decided to subdivide the property and demolish the house, but the people of Christchurch didn’t like that idea and Mona Vale and its picturesque entrance lodge were bought by Christchurch City Council. Since then the big house and its gardens have been used as a reception centre and the lodge as a residence.

© 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
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N.Z. House & Cottage 6. The Turrets, Orepuki

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 TURRETS’, OREPUKI

If the earth was flat and you had a well-developed imagination you might see the Antarctic coast in the shimmering distance for at Orepuki, on the eastern end of Te Waewae Bay, nothing impedes the fury of the southerly winds from the pole, winds which are sometimes so salt laden that the macrocarpas stretch out their long, naked, flinching trunks as if to rip their roots from the soil and escape to the north. Here, with only a flimsy yet enduring stand of hardy trees for shelter stands a most unusual house.

I had first seen ‘The Turrets’ some years ago while travelling along the road from Riverton that parallels the southern coast until, faced with the uncompromising bluffs of Fiordland, it turns north to Tuatapere. The house lay in the distance, silver against forest green like a pavilion of towered Camelot. I determined that one day I would approach more closely.

John and Glenda Watson, who have lived at ‘The Turrets’ since 1960, have raised a family of five within the sheltering solidity of its timber walls. With pride they showed me over the house and were amused by my astonishment when I entered the sitting room and saw the most unusual pressed metal ceiling with its wonderful art nouveau frieze, which, they assured me, is entirely original.

The house was built in the late 1800s by George Valentine Printz for his son, John Louis (known as ‘Barney’ for no apparent reason). Printz, born in 1833, came from Sydney, prospered as a whaler and owned 7000 acres (2832 ha) at Paihia. He fathered ten children, two of whom died in infancy, leaving five sons and three daughters. They grew up in a lively community whose economy was based upon mixed farming, saw-milling, shale oil working and the unreliable rewards of winning fine gold from the black beach sands of the bay.

The turrets were a delightful eccentricity: George Printz built houses for four of his sons; Henry’s was towerless, George’s had one turret, William’s had two and John Louis trumped them all with three. They do sparkle so when the sun comes out …
 
© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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