Shifting history: Senior citizen on the move
After 150 years of farm life, Manawatu¯ ’s oldest building has been shifted to a new waterside home in Foxton, where it will become a museum and gallery.
The 1869 cottage was moved from its original site on a farm south of Foxton yesterday morning, attracting crowds of onlookers.
After being hydraulically levered on to the back of a specialised truck from its hilltop spot on Newth Rd, the farmhouse was driven down State Highway 1 and into Foxton’s Main St.
It then wound down a narrow service lane to Harbour St, beside the Foxton Loop waterway.
New owners Jim and Sarah Harper began rescuing and restoring heritage buildings after shifting to Foxton from Wellington.
‘‘I thought the old cottage was just too cute [for the community to loose].
‘‘It’s amazing inside. It feels very European with those steep stairs and the long hall and rooms off it. It was like entering English history and seeing what they had brought over,’’ Sarah Harper said.
‘‘It’s an amazing building. In Foxton, there’s dozens of old buildings and only a few are designated [heritage buildings],’’ Jim Harper said.
The building now sits on the same block as the town’s replica Dutch windmill, new $8.6 million cultural centre, and iwi art and flax galleries, and will be a commercial art gallery with historical museum-style history displays.
Sarah Harper said it could take 18 months to open, but they are relaxed about the timeline.
‘‘It’s reputedly – and I think the legend’s right – made from one totara log, retrieved from the Manawatu¯ River,’’ Jim Harper said.
‘‘It must be true, because all the timber is totara, even the doors, which is unusual. It’s homebuilt, because in those days you had to do it all yourself. It’s very well engineered. It’s solid as.’’
The house was the home of shipbuilder George Nye and his wife Eliza. George built several prominent buildings in the town, was a whaler and te reo translator, and served as Foxton’s mayor for two terms.
‘‘They lived in the cottage until the early 1900s. It was called Sunnyside Farm ... It had the largest vineyard in the central North Island in the 1880s, with thousands of square feet of [glasshouses] and all sorts of hothouse plants, and it was very widely visited and a very profitable operation,’’ Jim Harper said.
‘‘It’s in very original condition inside. We’ve got to strip it and repaint it, and we’re finishing off all the original wooden fittings and replacing most of the windows in the northern side, and that’s pretty much it,’’ he said.
Central House Movers foreman Matt Nairn said the cottage was a special find.
‘‘It’s great – it’s a bit more of Foxton’s history being revamped. They are not normally this old, and the old ones are normally rotten.
‘‘But this one is in good condition.’’