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From Heritage New Zealand, Summer 2004Fascinating Storiesby Wendyl NissenIt's relatively easy to compile the history of your house.Most people who live in an old house have no difficulty in accepting its need for ongoing maintenance and restoration.
In fact many people take great pride and pleasure in owning and looking after a piece of early New Zealand architecture. But a recent trend has been to go one step further, making an effort to retrace the history of that house - from finding the original plans and working out what structural changes have taken place over the decades to talking to the people and their relatives who lived in the very rooms your family does now. Compiling a house history sounds complicated, but if you live in an area where your local council has had the funds to preserve and protect plans and other records, you may be in for some excitement, if you've got the time. Martin Jones is a heritage researcher for the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, dealing mostly with registration issues. His days are spent researching houses' histories to see if they should be registered. He says there are two paths to follow. The first is historical research involving records, files and documents relating to your house from local bodies and libraries.The other is physical evidence, looking at your house for timber, paint, nails and design to help you work out the era in which it was built. Unfortunately for Kiwi house historians,we have tended to be a nation of do-it-yourselfers, which has meant the bones of many a good house have been altered many times and often not in a way that was meant to last. "The Kiwi culture of change has been alive and well since our earliest colonial days where we had to build and fix things ourselves, and our houses really reflect that," says Martin. He says the prevalence of timber housing in New Zealand has also meant it is relatively easy to make alterations,whereas in other countries it is more expensive and far more difficult to pull down a solid brick wall. "So in Europe you tend to see buildings which have kept the same basic structure for centuries, often simply because it would have been too expensive to change them." Martin says one of the best places to find physical evidence of a house is the attic,where the timber, nails and construction details are visible and rarely altered by renovation or repairs. "You can even age the corrugated iron by measurements, such as its thickness and width of corrugation, and in some cases I've found it stamped by the manufacturer," he said. Some old houses will also have the original timber shingles underneath the new roofing, which ages it well before corrugated iron was commonly used in New Zealand. "One of the main things we look for is the way the timber has been sawn. If it has been pit sawn, then the house is more likely to be early, and older houses tend to have larger timber sizes with broader and thicker planks." He says later 19th-century house timber tended to be circular sawn, with band sawing emerging in the 20th century. The shape of a roof can also give away the date of a house. Older houses, which originally had timber shingles, have a steeper pitch than roofs designed for corrugated iron. For the layperson, Martin advises starting your house research by finding old maps and documents, because these records will often give you clues as to the construction of your house. Because land ownership has strong legal validity there are always good records kept for this. A good place to start is Land Information New Zealand, which holds Crown grants and deeds records for very early periods as well as certificates of title, and associated documents post-1870s. Many of these are still kept in their original form. It is also worth inquiring after any submitted plans for subdivisions which can be in the form of deeds plans for early records, or deposited plans post-1870s. And there are also survey office plans, which are prepared by the government for roads and public works. Some of these plans are remarkably detailed and can even be accompanied by a description of the type and size of house on each section of land. Your local council is also a rich source of material, as many will hold a property file for each piece of land, but do be aware that street numbering may have changed. Information may include plans of the original building or additions, drainage plans, correspondence as well as historical valuation rolls and rates records. In some instances detailed plans were prepared of the older areas of towns and cities. Martin says it is relatively easy to access and get copies of this information, but you will probably have to visit the various offices in person. Auckland City is lucky to have a whole series of maps from the 19th century, notably, detailed ones of the inner city done by Vercoe and Harding in 1866 and the Auckland Gas Company maps from 1908 and 1912. If your house was built by the government, Archives New Zealand may hold plans for railway or school houses, and you may be in an area where a company built houses for its staff, in which case you can trace plans through the company records. The second phase of your house history involves the people who lived in it. This means approaching relatives of people who may have died, which may be off putting for some, but Martin says in his experience most people are happy to talk. "People generally have a great deal of affection for places they have lived in or have childhood memories of," he says."And often they are keen to hear what information you may have." But he says it is important to approach with respect, explain what you are doing and ask whether they would be interested in telling you about the house and any events or alterations they remember. A good place to find people is in the Wises series of street directories, which go back well into the 19th century and list residents by their street. Early directories do not list house numbers, however, so you will need a map of the street to work out which house is yours. Electoral rolls are also a good place to start and the Cyclopedia of New Zealand may provide information about when a person settled in the area or developed a particular property. WEBSITES:
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