Future of Wellington’s Oldest House in Doubt

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31110, 13 July 1966, Page 10

Future of Wellington’s Oldest House in Doubt

"The Free**’ Special Service WELLINGTON, July 12.

Wellington’s oldest house, which has stood on the corner of Grant road and Park street for about 120 years, has a future as shaky as its foundations.

The City Council has decided that the corner on the main route to Wadestown, needs widening. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust has listed the old military cottage as a building which, because of its historical past, it is desirable to retain. The council is determined, however, to widen the corner at the expense of the dilapidated cottage. Already the owner of the property, the council has offered the cottage to the Historic Places Trust provided it is removed to another site.

The council is willing to meet part of the cost of removal by making a donation to the trust.

The problem facing the trust is that the cottage is so rickety and rotten that if dismantled, it could probably never be re-erected in anything like its present condition.

Although the cottage is listed by the Historic Places Trust as a place of importance, its history is vague. Nobody knows why or when it was built.

The secretary of the Wellington regional committee of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (Mr A. A. St. C. M. Murray-Oliver) said it was generally accepted, however, that the cottage dated back to at least the mid-1840s. He said it was certainly the last survivor of a group of four cottages stretching along Grant road, and although it had been considerably modified in minor paints it was

mainly structurally the same. The cottages were probably built for the non-commis-sioned officers of the military who were brought to Wellington only four years after the Colony was founded to safeguard the European population during the Maori troubles in the Hutt Valley. The little buildings were sited at Grant road because of their proximity to fresh running water—the Grant road spring rises directly opposite the remaining cottage—and the military barracks, which were in Fitzherbert. terrace. Records show that in 1846 there were 800 redcoats in Wellington. The Maori troubles faded, and in 1896 the Army relinquished ownership of the cottages.