Temuka’s historic 1870s courthouse sells for $365,000

The five-bedroom historic Temuka home, filled with vintage paster cornices, and hand-painted stained-glass, which went on the market in February has sold for $15,000 above the $350,000 asking price.

Built in the 1870s as the local courthouse and jail, the building was moved to its current location in 1900 and turned into a private home. It was bought the Pollards, a local family, in the late 60s and used as a family home until it was put on the market in February after matriarch Daphne Pollard died.

As a child, Daphne used to walk past the grand old home and never imagined she’d get to live there. The property had the same effect on the new owners, Christchurch-residents Julian Thomas and Debbie Rae.

“Every time we went through the town, I would say, ‘Where’s my house?’, because it was my dream house,” says Rae.

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Both Thomas, who is a glazier by trade and runs a rental property maintenance business, and Rae had admired the home any time they passed through the town. When they saw a “for sale” sign outside, they stopped to have a look through the windows at the empty house. When they saw the ornate decoration inside they were determined to own the house.

In 1900 the building was converted into a seven-room home by local widow and proto-reno fan Elizabeth Arbuthnot-Jones. She died just two years later, in an accidental drowning on the Te Ngawai River, and the home was sold by her executors. An advert for the sale appeared in Temuka Leader in 1902.

It was bought by Alice Bates whose husband Charles was a painter and decorator. It’s thought he was responsible for the ornate ceilings and cornices throughout the front part of the home, and also that the couple used the property as a showcase for their decorating business.

The roof space above Bate’s beautiful mouldings hides the last remnants of the home’s courthouse origins: varnished tongue and groove boards that follow the pitch of the roof, and traditional black steel support rods, “a bit like a church interior”, Pollard family spokesperson, Chris Pollard told Stuff back in February.

In the room the Pollards used as a living room, landscape vignettes dot the mouldings. They were painted by local artist Theo H Goy, a member of the Otago Art Society, who often exhibited his work at the Bates’ shop in town.

Thomas and Rae, both vintage home enthusiasts, who say modern homes “give them chills”, knew they’d found their dream home.

The couple own a piece of land on the West Coast, and were planning to move a 1930s building Rae owns in Hokitika onto it, to be their “semi-retirement” home.

“I’d made enquiries about doing that, and it was all looking OK, we’re chugging along with it,” says Thomas, who runs a rental maintenance company in Christchurch.

“Then she sees this house, and she says, ‘I love it more than my own house’. So we put hers on the market.”

Unfortunately the Hokitika house didn’t sell in time for the Temuka sale.

“We were getting a bit desperate, the old time was running out.”

Undeterred, Thomas put a small commercial property he owned in Christchurch on the market, and it sold in about a week and a half. They were able to pull together a $365,000 offer, which the Pollards accepted.

More than 120 years after the home was first moved to the location it’s in now – by traction engine, no less – it will be moved again. This time seven hours away to Westport, via the Lewis Pass, “in a couple of years time”, to the piece of land Thomas and Rae own there.

The couple plan to renovate it back to it’s 1902 glory.

“We will be keeping with the theme. It’s a vintage house so we want to stick with that. We like that vintage country look so we’re not going to ruin that by modernising it,” says Rae.

While it’s “a wee bit of a shame” that the home will be leaving Temuka, “because of the history of the house and where it sits now. It’s a real icon in Temuka,” says Thomas. The couple’s plans will give the building a fifth life.

“But we’ll restore it as much as we can [on the new site]. And we’ll work together with the movers when the time comes to make sure we can do it with as little damage as we can.”

They have extensive plans for the home that include making the most of the period details, but that’s all a couple of years off yet.

In the meantime, when the keys are handed over next week, Thomas and Rae plan to spend “a couple of nights there, on a mattress on the floor” to soak up the ambiance, and “think what we’re going to do first and how we’re going to do it”.

Then they’re going to give the home a spruce up and a lick of fresh paint to protect the woodwork, and probably rent it out for a couple of years until they read for the big move.

“We’ve got the gardens and trees – It’s a lovely property, on a slight hill, and there are sheep, it’s rural,” says Thomas. “The house will look stunning, because as you drive up the road you’ll see the house sitting on the land.”