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From issue: Autumn 2004

Early Colonial With Hot Showers

by Penelope Carroll

New owners of a slice of Coromandel Peninsula history have set about regenerating the optimism with which the Kikowhakarere Bay house was built.

Ongoing restoration... Callaway House today. Photo: David Elliot

Coromandel Peninsula's oldest remaining house has undergone a restoration that has revolved around letting the building reflect its own stories.

Finding out those stories has been part of a painstaking process engaged in by Bill and Marije Algie in their effort to save the 150-year-old-plus timber house from an uncertain future.

The Algies' history with the house goes back years to one summer when they stopped at Kikowhakarere Bay for a swim and noticed the sagging old house on the foreshore, overhung by giant macrocarpa trees. They wondered at its history and who lived there.

The house as it was when the Algies bought it in 1997.

Years later, in 1997, they saw the house advertised for sale in the New Zealand Herald.The Algies were looking for some well-sited land with good soil and mature trees. Remembering the house, they bought the property - now registered as a Category II historic place.

"The guy who was selling the land offered to push over the house. It would have been the story of the runaway bulldozer. He couldn't understand our interest in it," says Bill Algie, an Auckland architect with a love for old houses. He and Marije live in two old adjoining terrace houses in St Mary's Bay.

Time for a break... Bill and Marije Algie on the verandah of Callaway House. Photo: David Elliot

"Part of our thinking behind buying this house is that it is so easy to push aside our heritage, to push over old houses.We have let so much go with the speculator, the developer, even the farmer who fills an old house with hay."

The Algies researched the history of the house and its inhabitants before starting restoration work three years ago.

They have discovered that Callaway House, as it was originally known, was built in the late 1840s by John Callaway, who obtained rights to cut kauri from Chief Paora te Putu in exchange for a weatherboard house. Callaway erected a sawmill, and built the chief 's house and another for the Maning family. When the Manings left the district after their young son drowned, John Callaway took over the house and it remained in the family until 1985.

A surviving piece of the original wallpaper from the 1860s, found whn scrim was removed from the walls. Photo: David Elliot

Through the 1850s, '60s and '70s, John Callaway built schooners and cutters at Kikowhakarere Bay, and a hotel and a store were established at the bottom of Callaway Lane.

During this time, he married Huihana te Awawaire. Their eldest daughter, Mary Yeoland, eventually took over the house. After the Yeoland family moved to Auckland in 1898-99, the house remained empty for several years, passing to her daughter Elvira Carter when Mary Yeoman died in 1918.

When the Carter family moved from Auckland to live in the house in 1925, there was no bathroom, but fresh-water tanks were installed outside the new kitchen. Previously, water had been fetched from the stream in the lane.

Just for show... Callaway House's only telephone which is no l onger connected. Photo: David Elliot

Callaway House was let from 1929 until 1968, when the Carter family began using it as a beach house. By then, the verandah had been enclosed, casement windows fitted and the ceilings lined with painted tarpaper.

In 1985, the house passed out of the family and, remaining empty, became increasingly dilapidated.

Now the Algies are determined to restore Callaway but allow the house to keep its character and signs of its 150-year history.

Before the Algies started work, they drew up a conservation plan following guidelines from the Historic Places Trust and the Thames-Coromandel District Council.This outlines the history of the property and why it is significant, and includes an architectural description of the house with information on design and how it might have been built.

"Having a conservation plan means that you build up a holistic picture of the building rather than looking at it in a piecemeal way," Bill Algie says.The conservation plan was quite demanding. "But it's an excellent idea because it makes you think about everything before you get started, and, in fact, it simplifies what you do. One of the concepts of a conservation plan is that you acknowledge the history of a house and then pick a period of time for which renovation is appropriate. With Callaway House, we have fundamentally been interested in the house as it was up until the 1920s, with the single exception of the garden room, built in the 1940s."

They have painted the room in a different colour to differentiate it from the earlier period of the rest of the building, part of what Algie describes as "the narrative of the house."

The patina of age and use is being respected, for internal and external construction and finishes. Parts of the house that need to be reconstructed are systematically taken apart, documented (with photographs) and, where possible, materials reused.Where original finishes, such as wallpaper glued directly to lining boarding in the passage, are covered over, samples remain. One of the early finishes was a combed timber, and the ceilings were wallpapered in the front rooms.

"We raised the house half a metre because succeeding floods over 150 years had built up more than 30 centimetres of silt. In some places, it was above the floor level," Bill Algie says.

The brick chimney was rebuilt brick by brick, using lime mortar - "We had to give the recipe to the bricklayer" - and "gallons and gallons" of borer treatment used inside and out on the old kauri.

"We opened up the enclosed verandah - we knew what it had looked like from an old photo - and we were able to use five of the eight verandah posts. They were all rotten at the bottom, so we used some for spare parts and the builder spliced them together."

French doors that had opened on to the verandah had been cut out and put into the back wall. These were rebuilt and returned to their original position."They fit like a glove."

The couple established the house had been re-roofed in 1917 with corrugated iron from the Auckland City markets.

"When we removed the iron for reuse, we found all the old brand stamps from England, Japan, New Guinea and then Australia - and Alvira Carter's name scrawled on it for delivery."
The iron has been chemically treated with a bonding sealant to keep oxygen out and prevent further rusting. The house is now waterproof and watertight.

"It is quite liveable, though, you might say, quite basic.The next stage is to finish the inside and build the bathroom."

The Algies envisage using Callaway House for visiting family and letting rooms to the public, allowing them the experience of staying in an early colonial house - with hot showers. They will build a new home for themselves nearby,"well screened by trees."

Marije Algie has plans to set up a "ladies' hours" tearooms in Callaway House:"A lot of people come down the road and have a look. It is a lovely house, and whoever built it had great optimism for the future - it is very gracious."