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From issue: May 2001

A House in its Setting

by Jenny Haworth

Kaikoura’s Fyffe House is surrounded by sites and structures of great historic interest.

Fyffe House, newly repainted to match the original pink. Photo: Jenny Haworth

Fyffe House, one of New Zealand’s oldest houses, was once part of a much larger complex of which only a few archaeological remains have survived. It is in an area that has been inhabited for possibly up to one thousand years so any work on the house or surrounding area produces interesting finds. While the house has long been registered as a category 1 historic place, the area around the house, which includes the Waiopuka whaling station, has now been registered as an historic area. Curator Bill Edwards has recently completed A Walking Guide to Fyffe Historical Area, building on earlier work by Michael Trotter and Beverley McCulloch. With it you can explore a changing pattern of ways of life that are older than the house itself.

The fireplace by the shore is all that remains of a former bonded store. Photo: Historic Places Trust collection

Surrounding Fyffe House are the remains of extensive Maori settlements. The Walking Guide enables you to identify terracing at the north-western end of Armers Beach where the palisades of the local pa stood. According to Bill Edwards “This area gave the Maori much of what they needed. There was fresh water from the stream, good soil for kumara and a protected beach from which they could launch theirwaka.” A very old urupa (Maori graveyard) was found adjacent to the house. “We believe Maori have been here for 800 to 900 years,” Bill Edwards continued. “Finds on the site have included an early harpoon made of moa bone and a large stone adze probably of argillite. It was probably used for carving timber.” Later whalers used the hill above the site of the pa and of Fyffe House as a lookout for spotting whales.

Fyffe House, in the years before it became an Historic Trust property. Photo: Historic Places Trust collection

In 1857, when George Fyffe was digging out foundations for the extension of the house, he uncovered the largest complete moa egg ever found. It is now in Te Papa Tongarewa but there is a model of a similar one in the house.

In front of Fyffe House stands a seawall built by George Fyffe in the 1850s. He had come to Kaikoura as a whaler but when the Southern Rights had beenhunted until they were scarce he turned to trade and farming. Near the house are the remains of a fireplace — all that is left of the bonded warehouse which was built sometime after 1869 when Kaikoura was gazetted as a port of entry.

The Pier Hotel now sits at the base of the “new” wharf (built in 1907), which is back towards the town from Fyffe House. Photo: Jenny Haworth

Further on is an early wharf. The present wharf at this location dates from 1881 and is at least the second on the site. It is believed that George Fyffe built the first wharf on the site. It was from the first wharf that he fell to his death in 1867. The present wharf was built with a government grant of 1000 pounds and at that time was the major wharf serving Kaikoura. Beneath this wharf are half circle iron rings where some of the early boats were moored.

At about the same time Fyffe was building the first wharf, in the early 1860s, he also enlarged Fyffe House. The house had started as a two-roomed cottage built for the cooper (barrel maker) at the whaling station in 1842. This so–called east wing is still intact and rests on whale vertebrae as its foundations. In front there once stood another similar cottage also resting on whalebone foundations.

In 1860 George Fyffe married and built for his new wife the two-storied west wing. Only a few whale vertebrae were used as foundations for this part of the house, indicative of the decline in the number of whales caught at this time. Fyffe probably employed a ship’s carpenter to do much of the work. The ceilings upstairs are arched, the staircase is steep and neat and the small rooms suggest cabins.

At the end of the nineteenth century the area around Fyffe House was still an important port. Sheds surrounded the wharf and the Pier Hotel stood between the wharf and Fyffe House. But in 1907 a newer wharf was built nearer the town that had grown up around the railway station and it was decided to move the Pier Hotel. It was cut into sections and moved to its present site near the new wharf.

Just beyond Fyffe House, in Armers Bay, the walking guide shows where the whaling station once stood. Whalebone fence posts mark what was a whaler’s garden. At low tide, flat deeply grooved rocks are exposed, where the whales were hauled up and their blubber cut off and melted in large trypots. Their oil was skimmed off and stored in barrels made by the cooper. The oil, which was exported, was used as a lubricant and as lamp fuel before kerosene became available in the 1860s. A whalebone marker for a whaler’s grave is another reminder of these days.

Fyffe House has been registered by the Historic Places Trust as a category 1 historic place.

Jenny Haworth is a free-lance writer who lives in Christchurch.