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From issue: August 2001

Let's Look Up to Turrets

by Geoff Mew

Wellington boasts many fine examples of the turrets which adorn many of New Zealand's stylish older houses.

The elegant turret on the recently demolished Kirkcaldie House in Karori. Photo:Geoff Mew.

Turrets, towers and troubadours, a mind-picture of mediaeval romance, or today, the fairy turrets of Disneyland shown on a thousand advertisements throughout the world. Nearer to home, a phone card issue in 1997 celebrates turrets and towers. What has this to do with down-to-earth New Zealand? It is surprising to learn that in Wellington alone, there are more than seventy private houses with prominent, decorative turrets, lovingly cared-for, and that number continues to grow. There are nine distinctive styles, from the common "witch's hat" to the rare dome with pediments and they have been made from a wide variety of materials. So why were they built? When did they first appear? And where are they located?

The simple, spiky turret is really a Gothic architectural form, although its origins perhaps go back as far as the round towers of Celtic Ireland. Turrets generally stuck out from castle walls to give better visibility to the defenders and their steep conical roofs were originally designed to shed arrows easily. Narrow slender turrets and spires graced many mediaeval cathedrals. By Elizabethan times, houses were primarily homes rather than places of defence; turrets became decorative and windows replaced arrow slits. But Gothic came back with a vengeance in the nineteenth century.

An usual turret with an octagonal domed top and four pediments on a house in Kilbirnie. Photo:Geoff Mew

For some time most of the decorative effort went into public buildings, but gradually more decoration was added to private homes as people became more prosperous. This trend in Victorian England was rapidly reflected in New Zealand, at first in large country houses and later in the towns and cities. However, the turrets we know came via a detour through the western United States of America.

Many of the Wellington turret houses can be assigned to what is loosely termed the Queen Anne style. This style was made popular by Norman Shaw in England in the 1870s and spread to New Zealand about ten years later. Samuel Hurst Seager is credited with the introduction of the style through his brick-built, turreted City Council Chambers in Christchurch (1887). Besides the turrets, characteristics of the style include irregular and complex massing of other architectural elements, ornate chimneys, shingles on gable ends, and decorative crestings on roofs and/or turret tops. In fact turrets were not prominent or popular on Queen Anne style buildings in England. Yet, in cities like San Francisco there was (and still is) a profusion of turrets on late nineteenth century timber houses built for the well-to-do. The style was applied in New Zealand to both single storey villas and larger houses of two or more storeys. It lasted until about World War 1 when Californian bungalows and Arts and Crafts style houses gradually took over. As with many other styles in New Zealand, local adaptations were made according to the materials available for construction.

A bell-shaped turret on a turn-of-the-twentieth-century house in Brooklyn. Photo:Geoff Mew

A large proportion of the older Wellington turrets are made of corrugated iron, some in the form of sparrow iron, with smaller than normal corrugations. A very few are roofed with 'pan iron', flat sheets cut and shaped to the turret form. Orange tiles, Marseille or similar types, cover some turrets and date the houses to post 1900 when these tiles were first used around Wellington. These turrets are frequently capped by terra cotta finials, moulded in ornate shapes, which either match or contrast with ridging and gable finials on the rest of the roof. At least one turret, dating from 1906, has lead pressed into tile shapes as its roofing material; the rest of the house roof is corrugated iron. No slates on turrets have yet been located in Wellington although they are known to have been used in other parts of the country such as Dunedin.

Modern turrets are covered in a wide variety of materials. Long-run corrugated steel, tiles, imitation slate, plaster, glass over steel and traditional corrugated iron have all been recorded locally. Older turrets were frequently topped with either a wooden flagpole or a finial turned from wood or made from cast or wrought iron (or terra cotta as mentioned above). This type of decoration is usually omitted from modern turrets as it is difficult to maintain. The houses themselves were most commonly built from timber, some plain, others with varying degrees of ornament. Most Wellington turret houses are in the suburbs, with many occupying prominent positions such as hill tops or corner sites. The suburban locations help to date the houses, as most of the subdivision in these areas was around the beginning of the twentieth century or shortly after when tram lines were built out from the central city into what was then surrounding farmland. A lack of garages and often only footpath access also point to which are the older houses.

On a prominent hilltop house in Brooklyn a "witch's hat" turret retains its flagpole. Photo:Geoff Mew

Large houses with turrets occur on hill or ridge tops in Brooklyn and Kelburn particularly, with smaller turreted villas on the lesser heights of Kelburn and Mitchelltown (above Aro Street). Kelburn was made a very desirable place to live by the opening of the cable car service in 1902 which connected it directly with central Wellington. A steep winding road, now Raroa Road, had been constructed up from the end of Aro Street to the Karori Cemetery in 1891, but it took quite some time for subdivision to follow. Karori also has its share of highly placed turret houses (on Messines Road for example) and there is a scattering from Northland to Ngaio and Khandallah. Ridge top turrets with sea views are found from Hataitai through Kilbirnie to above Lyall Bay. Sea views are also obtained from turret houses at Seatoun (tram tunnel completed in 1906), Evans Bay and Oriental Bay, the latter having quite a concentration of turrets.

Turret houses at lower levels in the landscape are still often in prominent positions, on street corners, ridges, terrace edges or simply on large sections. The corner or central turret here often focuses attention on the house and draws the eye to the composition. Most suburbs have one or two turret houses, but there are more low level ones in Kilbirnie, Newtown and Thorndon than in the others.

Where do Wellington turret houses fit in the wider context of New Zealand houses as a whole? The vast bulk of those constructed soon after the turn of the twentieth century are clearly a town development of a style that had been popular with rich country (and a few town) landowners for some time previously. Terence Hodgson shows this trend in his book The Big House (1991). Of the thirty-six houses he selected for description, twenty-one have either turrets or towers. The tower houses generally preceded those with turrets and are mostly of Italianate style rather than Queen Anne. They predate the turrets in this study, having been constructed mainly in the late 1870s. The turret houses in Hodgson's book were built mostly in the 1890s with a further concentration in 1902. All these houses were larger than their later town counterparts, but tended to have the same geographic spread from Otago to Auckland and included the then rich farming areas of Canterbury, Hawkes Bay, Manawatu and the Rangitikei. Many were designed by the major architects of the day, based in the four main centres.

With the demise of the villa and the rise of the Californian bungalow from around the time of World War I, there seemed no further place for the turret in domestic architecture. And, in fact, there was a long hiatus in turret construction as styles evolved through Art Deco, Moderne, and the austere forms of the fifties to the seventies. However, in the eighties and nineties individualism and ornament reappeared, with the turret once again seen as providing a focal point in house design, and a possible observation room if the view is worthwhile.

A modern turret on a block of townhouses in Majoribanks Street, retaining a traditional form and elements such as a finial, but unmistakably new. Photo:Geoff Mew

Modern turret houses do not conform to a single style, but most are now two-storey and some consist of blocks of apartments. Turret roofs are simpler than in the past and seldom have finials or flagpoles. Despite this they are often brightly painted and/or built in modern materials that make them particularly eye-catching. A few have been built in traditional style, either on new houses or as an embellishment on old houses first constructed in the early 1900s. Both Ian Athfield and Roger Walker, well known for their architectural experimentation, have designed turreted apartments in
Wellington.

The fact that so many old turret houses have survived for so long is an indication of the pride that owners usually take in having something out of the ordinary. Only a few turrets are showing obvious signs of rusting away; on several the iron has recently been replaced, although the crowning flagpole has not always been put back. Some houses in areas such as Berhampore and parts of Kilbirnie look as if they had turrets once, but the turret top has gone. Photographic evidence has not yet been found to confirm that this was in fact the case. The resurgence of interest in villas and the conservation of their decoration has undoubtedly contributed to the survival of so many intact, although many are in areas where there has not been widespread urban renewal. New turrets have often appeared on sites made accessible only by modern construction methods of deep piling and stabilisation, or where former large sections have been further subdivided.

Turret houses as a group do not seem to have received much attention in the past, although Charles Fearnley, with his wonderful eye for detail, wrote about a few of them in 1966 in the Institute of New Zealand Architects journal. Only a single turret house is listed in the Wellington City Council's Heritage Building Inventory (1995), Donisthorpe in Ngaio, dating from 1906. Although this is an outstanding example, others deserve recognition too so that a cross section of styles is represented.

Geoff Mew is a member of the Wellington Branch Committee of the Historic Places Trust.