Our Historic Home

   An old photo

After several months of debate and thought we think we have identified our house in this photo from about 1900, when it was very new, taken from the top of Fort Niger, or Wharepapa, just behind us here. The original print is held in the Puke Ariki collection (A3.300).

Immediately behind the shed in the foreground is a four-roomed cottage, with a brick chimney at the far end of the gable, and another chimney on the wall this side. It has a lean-to at the back, and a verandah along the front.

The farside chimney provided the outlet for fires in the corners of the two western rooms, and the other chimney is probably for a range in the kitchen. The lean-to, which covers our present bathroom and laundry, served, we presume, as scullery, laundry and bathroom. You can see an outside toilet in the photo, between the neighbour's long-drop and a garden shed.

We presume that there was a corridor down the middle of the house, from the front door to the lean-to. Remains of the corridor are still clearly visible today. The four other rooms were probably a kitchen/dining/living room and three bedrooms, or one of them may have been a drawing-room.

Landmarks 

You can see a glimpse of Leach Street in the background, now part of the west-bound one-way section of State Highway 3 before it turns the right-angle to head south towards Hawera. Along the northern side of Leach Street runs the old railway track, which means the photo is earlier than 1907, when the railway was relocated to its present route.

Behind that are houses along Eliot Street on the site of what is now McDonald's. Behind that again are houses in Courtenay Street and a couple of two-storeyed buildings in Devon Street.

This is part of a long panoramic photo on the historic noticeboard, that includes Lemon Street further east, which enables us to pinpoint one of the houses on the opposite side of the street which is still standing almost unaltered. And the extension to the left shows Pendarves Street behind us, which enables us to confirm the positions.

Alterations

If you have visited us you will know that south-west of the lean-to, the house was extended to include the present kitchen area, and south-east of the lean-to is the flat we added eight years ago. And when the house was moved back on the section for sub-division around 35 years ago, the verandah was extended down most of the two sides of the house, and the brick chimney-stacks removed. Only the diagonal section in the corners of the ceilings now show where the western one used to be.

Before that, during the seventies, the house had been altered extensively, and at one stage divided into two flats.

We have met several people who have lived in our house previously, one of whom remembered the old glass which is still in the sash window in the front room. Another couple remembered the house as two flats. One of my U3A colleagues was responsible, with her late husband, for the modernising, shifting and renovation work in the mid-eighties.