Donovan’s World

TERRACE STATION, HORORATA

Memories of Terrace Station in the 1960s: dining surrounded by leather-bound volumes; sleeping in ‘Little Jericho’, one of two bedrooms at one extreme of the rambling house; skating on a farm pond wearing borrowed Victorian skates from a room full of old tennis racquets, croquet mallets and hickory skis; and riding in the 1911 Clement-Talbot that was bought new and is still at the house.

Our hosts in those days were Godfrey and Peggy Hall and I particularly remember my delight when, after I had spent some shivering time drawing the house from the same angle as in my watercolour, Peggy swapped two home-spun, hand-knitted sweaters for the sketch. I still have them; I can still smell the lanolin in them, the smell of the old sheep runs of the South Island.

Since then the Halls’ daughter, Kate, and her husband, Richard Foster have taken over and farmed the land and raised a family while labouring mightily to restore and maintain Terrace Station homestead and to document and preserve its history.

The house grew piecemeal but the earliest part, pre-fabricated in Australia, was built for the Studholmes (of Te Waimate fame) in the mid-1850s. John and Rose Hall bought Rakaia Terrace Station in 1862. A pragmatic Yorkshireman, he’d arrived in Christchurch in 1852 and became so deeply involved with local and colonial affairs that he later became prime minister - from 1879 to 1882. He and Rose extended and altered the house greatly to meet the needs of their family and by 1868 the house had doubled in size, including the distinctive three front gables.

Posterity might almost have lost the homestead but, fortunately, an economic depression dissuaded Hall from building a new house and led instead to a series of practical additions that culminated in 1890 with a superb, native timber refit of the entrance hall by Samuel Hurst Seager, the eminent Christchurch architect. John Hall was knighted in 1882 and died in 1907 whereupon Terrace Station passed to his son, Godfrey, then grandson Godfrey and, now, Kate and Richard Foster. In their hands the work goes on, while, in the entrance hall, an elegant watercolour time-table (artist unknown) reminds us that life in the home of statesmen-farmers, their families and descendants requires certain daily disciplines.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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

LANGLOIS-ETEVENAUX HOUSE, AKAROA

Lured by the treasures of tourism Akaroa becomes Frencher by the day, and it is with relish that the richly Gallic syllables of ‘Langlois-Etevenaux’ are rolled out in the town.
Quite right, too; Akaroa has a unique place in the history of New Zealand and whether or not it is for commercial reasons its French colonial origins should never be forgotten.

Jean Langlois was skipper of the whaler Cachalot from Normandy who, having visited Akaroa harbour, felt that it would be a good base from which France might colonize the South Island of New Zealand. He negotiated a doubtful deed of purchase with some Ngai Tahu chiefs in Port Cooper and then sailed for France where his enthusiasm infectiously encouraged formation of the colonizing Nanto-Bordelaise Company and despatch of sixty-three migrants to Akaroa in 1840.

The rest is history: there was to be no French colony; intention was scotched by the pre-emptive establishment of British sovereignty at Waitangi. Notwithstanding, the immigrants came, and stayed. Jean Langlois’s brother, Aimable was among them. He opened the town store - the French Magasin - and he built the dolls house cottage on the corner of Rue Lavaud and Rue Balguerie that is now part of the Akaroa Museum, administered by the Department of Conservation.

It is said to date between 1841 and 1845 and could compete with Deans Cottage as the oldest house in Canterbury. There is speculation that it may have been partially pre-fabricated in France, and my instincts - having seen nothing else quite like it - support the probability that it was at least French-designed for it is wonderfully well proportioned, and its fine, inward opening, casement windows with their flanking shutters have an old world elegance.

By 1845 Langlois had left New Zealand for Honolulu. He died about 1857 near San Francisco and the following year his brother, Jean, sold the house to Jean Pierre Etevenaux, one of the original settlers from France. He, his wife Jeanne Françoise and family owned it from 1858 to 1906. Thus Langlois-Etevenaux’ House.

© DON DONOVAN

THE COLONIAL HOUSE, PIPIRIKI

Why is it that when I visit Pipiriki I feel like a trespasser? Is it because it sits on a restless river, long fought over - still fought over - in a valley whose hills and beaches have witnessed tragedies suffered by proud, sad people? Or is it because Pipiriki is a village where so many hopes have walked hand in hand with despairs like bad companions? For example there is, today, in Pipiriki, the shattered ruin of a modern tourist lodge, abandoned uncompleted. It was successor to Pipiriki House, burnt down in 1959, which itself replaced another built in 1903, itself successor to ‘primitive accommodation’ established before 1891 when tourism on Wanganui paddle steamers was becoming increasingly popular and fashionable.

For well over a century The Colonial House has mutely witnessed the ebb and flow of Pipiriki. It was built sometime after 1860 and its first known occupant was Pipiriki’s first chairman of the school committee, Reone te Maungaroa, in 1896. It stayed in his family until 1937 when it was taken over by Captain Andy Anderson a legendary river steamboat skipper who followed in his father Andrew’s footsteps (or rather, wake) as pilot of the Ongarue, a light draught steamer that carried sixty-five passengers and connected with the main railway line at Taumarunui. Captain Andy’s death, as well as his life, was patterned upon his father’s, as they both drowned, at different times, in the river on which they had made their lives’ work. Andy died in August 1958 but the house remained in his family for some years after.

Looking the worse for old age it was extensively restored from 1976; but although it was repiled, the floor levelled, it gained a new roof and lost an ugly concrete chimney, it is a faithful representation. Inside, walls were re-painted, scrim replaced, and plastic lighting fittings were superseded by old brass ones. And the garden was planted with ‘old fashioned’ herbs and flowers rosemary, lavender, violets and roses. Now administered by the Department of Conservation, it’s a local museum.

From the elegant dormers with their serpentine barge boards, Captain Anderson must often have stared south towards Wanganui along the historic river; reflecting, perhaps, upon its turbulent past: private, cryptic, secret …

© DON DONOVAN

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.

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

© DON DONOVAN

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

SOD COTTAGE, LOVELLS FLAT, BALCLUTHA

Why would I want to draw an obviously new dunny which may or may not be a replica? Because the work of anybody who has the sense of romance to carve a heart-shaped hole in a lavatory door deserves recognition! It can only be for decoration; as a peephole it would be unthinkable. Sadly, as is also the case with most country churches these days, the dunny was padlocked: that being the case it’s hard to fathom why they’re there.

The house isn’t quite what it seems, either, having been substantially re-constructed; but it is on its original site and despite its newish roof and gable-end clapboards it’s a pleasing, rustic thing for motorists to discover on the road between Milton and Balclutha. It was a sunny day when we lunched alfresco at the picnic table provided on the daisy-lawned garden shaded by a young English oak.

Nobody knows when the sod cottage was built but it’s known that Hugh Murray constructed it for John McIntosh to use as a store. It’s also known that McIntosh was appointed postmaster of the first Lovells Flat post office on 1 February 1865. A number of owners and dwellers came and went - farming folk, a widow and her young children, a Gaelic-speaking doctor from Scotland, a pair of newly weds - but as time went by its use declined until it served only as casual accommodation for itinerant farm workers, and drovers who over-nighted there while their cattle grazed nearby. It is thought that the last occupants were some people caught in a snowstorm in 1939 while returning to Milton from a visit to Dunedin.

In 1967 restoration began to the cottage whose only occupants in thirty years had been rats, mice and nesting birds. Chimneys were re-built, the wooden floor replaced by concrete, and windows were donated by a local farmer who was demolishing a house. New fences were erected, including a gate from the Clydesdale Estate, the lawn was formed and the beds planted with flowers typical of pioneer gardens. The two rooms were furnished with period pieces and knick-knacks from around the district and finally a clay-toned wash was applied to the thick sod walls.

The front door is original.

© DON DONOVAN

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.)

© DON DONOVAN