Auckland walks: Monte Cecelia Park and Pah Homestead

Earlier this week, after a stroll around Cornwall Park and a hike up One Tree Hill, I decided to walk a little further (only 20 minutes or so) and paid my first visit to Monte Cecelia Park and the Pah Homestead. Why had I never been to this delightful oasis of green before?

Rather than prattle on about the things I enjoyed about this lovely place, let me pass on some of the history and features from the park signboard:

The 15ha Monte Cecelia park surrounds the Pah Homestead, built 1877-79 by James Williamson, a ‘self-made merchant prince’.

      This park is what remains of an initial 161ha purchase from Maori, by William Hart in 1844.

      Hart developed the farm to become a beef and dairy cattle-rearing operation. After he defaulted on the mortgage, the farm was sold in 1851 to William Brown and John Logan Campbell. The next owner was Thomas Russell, a lawyer, land speculator, businessman and strong character. ‘He never lacked enemies’ [from Monte Cecelia Our History by Graham Murdoch]. Cyrus Hailey, a dissatisfied gold-mine investor, tried to shoot Russell in the homestead in 1871.

      James Williamson bought the farm in 1877, and had a 250ha farm here, surrounding the grand Pah Homestead and its park-like grounds. Williamson had beef cattle, a dairy herd, and fields of oats. Chinese market gardeners grew vegetables for Pah Homestead and the Auckland market.

      There were two houses and several cottages for farm staff. Brick stables housed four pairs of carriage horses, teams of working horses, riding hacks, and horse-drawn vehicles. This was more than an ordinary farm – it was a living example of the colonial vision of an ideal country estate.

      Williamson went bust and lost the property. Between 1891 and 1902, it was leased to a succession of wealthy tenants. The Catholic Church then began a long association with the property in 1913.…

 

More from the signboard:

Monte Cecelia became an Auckland Council park in 2004. A leisurely stroll around Monte Cecelia now is to re-live the elegance of the high Victorian colonial era in Auckland, and to appreciate the landscaping vision that created this extra-ordinary ‘artwork of the land’.

      The park is a living collection of significant historic exotic trees, some of the oldest and biggest of their species in New Zealand.

      Among them are Atlantic blue cedar, blue lillypilly, bunya bunya, camphor laurel, Chilean wine palm, Dutch elm, holm oak and hoop pine.

      The oldest trees were planted by William Hart 1847-55, and James Farmer 1855-66.

 

Since 2010, Pah Homestead has been home to the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre, where you can view contemporary art exhibitions from the James Wallace Arts Trust Collection and from regional touring exhibitions. The homestead also includes a café and shop, so you can enjoy the art, indulge in coffee and cake, shake the moths out of your purse, then work off that cake with a stroll around the grounds and marvel at the magnificent trees, all in one action-packed afternoon. Highly recommended!

Auckland architecture: decorated gable ends

Some of the loveliest decorative elements on Auckland’s historic colonial villas appear on the gable ends above the windows.

Like the other embellishments on these villas – the lacy fretwork panels and brackets, the carved balustrades and finials (illustrated in my recent blog, Auckland architecture: the classic Kiwi villa) – the gable ends are adorned in a variety of ways and styles. Some are relatively plain and simple, others are extremely ornate.

The adornments range from fretwork panels under the gable ridges and overlapping shingle infill, to decorated stucco panels and curved timbering. In almost all cases the peaks of the gable ends are finished off with turned finials which, according to ancient wisdom, serve to ward off witches!

Here are some of the beautiful examples I’ve photographed during my walks around the inner-city suburbs of Auckland.

Auckland architecture: the classic Kiwi villa

One of the things I enjoy most about walking around the streets of inner-city Auckland is the architecture, in particular the feast of old villas that still grace the streets of suburbs like Parnell and Grafton, Ponsonby and Herne Bay, St Mary’s Bay and Grey Lynn.

Many moons ago, I owned and lived in one of them, in Ponsonby, in the days before they became the heart’s desire of the trendy young professionals with more money than sense who are willing to pay in excess of a million dollars for what is basically a small old wooden cottage. 

I suppose I should be grateful to those wannabe social climbers as at least their aspirations ensure the continued existence of these charming pieces of New Zealand’s architectural history but I can’t help but despair at how they gut the interiors of all remaining traces of the villa’s past and preserve only the facades, in the same way the developers of the late twentieth century gutted Auckland’s old office towers and hotel buildings.

Luckily, I only see the exteriors during my meanderings so I can fool myself that their interior heritage features remain intact. Luckily, too, most of the exterior ornamental elements on these old villas are to be found around the front entry porch or surrounding their generous verandahs or adorning the gable ends, so are easily viewed by the pedestrian.

I’m no expert on architecture, so here, briefly, is what those who are have to say about these charming old villas (Patrick Reynolds, Jeremy Salmond and Jeremy Hansen, Villa: From heritage to contemporary, Godwit, Auckland, 2012):

The villa as a style in colonial New Zealand assumed the dress of the Gothic revival, but fused this with the classical language of Italianate architecture, hybridising both styles into something unique to this country. (p.23)

The villa went through several phases covering the early and late Victorian eras (up to 1905), Edwardian (until 1910) and finally ‘transitional’ as it began to absorb elements of the bungalow style, and as a style of building it expired around 1920. (p.26)

At the height of the villa building boom, a dizzying array of fretwork, embellishments and bay window styles were available, used on both large gentleman’s residences … and on more modest buildings. (p.60)

Cast iron decoration

Above and below, wooden fretwork and friezes

Sometimes manufactured from cast iron, more often carved in timber, the embellishments you are likely to spot on these charming old villas include delicately designed fretwork brackets on the verandah posts, lace-like fretwork friezes and geometric lattice infill running along underneath the verandah roof edges, finely turned balusters on the verandah railings and fancy finials on the gable ends.

According to Stuart Arden and Ian Bowman in The New Zealand Period House: A conservation guide (Random House, Auckland, 2004, p.206), during the mid to late Victorian era and the Edwardian years, these ornamental elements of the villa’s architecture would have been highlighted by the paint colour schemes:

Complex styles usually picked out trim and framing elements. Veranda posts had brackets and mouldings of contrasting colours to posts; finials were a contrasting colour to their brackets; doors had the panels a lighter colour than the stiles and rails, and gable framework was a contrasting colour to the filigree details between. Cresting was generally dark, brackets under eaves could be a different colour to the cornice and the eaves another colour, usually light.

Sadly, many of Auckland’s old villas are nowadays painted in single, stark colours – plain white seems to be a particular favourite, which only serves to display their owners’ ignorance of the history of their property.

Stark white and characterless

Though there are already some restrictions in place, personally, I’d like to see Auckland City Council place much more emphasis on preserving the city’s built heritage, by more stringently limiting and controlling the alterations owners can make to heritage properties. Hopefully, then, what remained of the city’s colonial architecture would be preserved and conserved for those strolling the city’s streets in the future to enjoy. 

For images of the decorative gable ends of colonial villas, see Auckland architecture: decorated gable ends.