Houses full of treasures
The article about stuff found during a couple’s house renovation (TDN, April
7) brought back some memories.
I spent a few years doing up old houses in Wellington and had some great finds. One had been lived in for many years by an old spinster, one of Wellington’s characters, who rode a bike everywhere. She was a dressmaker and was well known for altering military uniforms during the wars and making theatrical costumes.
When I took an auctioneer there to look at some of the built-in furniture he bent down and picked up a couple of buttons off the path and said, ‘What’s this?’ I replied there were biscuit tins full of them. We took them to the tip. When he told me what just one was worth I gulped. Fortunately we still had the hatboxes full of lace – which he said was irreplaceable.
Another one was above Wellington Airport, with secluded access and lived in by a couple since it was built.
When the carpet was lifted, underneath were newspapers as good as the day they were printed. The house was built in 1938 and the newspapers were full of news leading up to World War II.
I sat all day reading and gave them to the Alexander Turnbull Library.
In the basement were crates of empty bottles. Right at the back one contained three bottles of unopened New Zealand wine. They were dated
1886. I contacted the vineyard, one of New Zealand’s first, and they were overjoyed to get them back - especially as it was their centenary year. They told me they were the oldest unopened bottles to be returned and could possibly be the oldest such in New Zealand.
When I moved up here I relocated a house from Opunake. Behind the fireplace I found a couple of photos of a young Indian family, which, having an Indian dad, intrigued me. Inquiries proved them to be a doctor and family whose home it was for years when he first came to New Zealand. He was overjoyed to get them back.
Over the last few years I have worked as a volunteer at the hospice depot.
I’ve been amazed at some of the old stuff that arrives. Oak picture frames that, when you remove the print inside, contain a photograph of a family. Or one in particular – a young, proud soldier heading off to World War I. What stories could it tell, I wondered. How long did his mum have it hanging on the wall? Did he even come back?
There have been albums containing family histories. One, I recall, was of a son from almost the day he was born, with intimate details, milestones, school reports, copies of university degrees. Kept all his life – at least until his parents passed on.
There was far too much for the hard working hospice volunteers and staff to spend time sorting through, but sometimes I felt sad when I saw them going into the rubbish skip.
John Leith, Oakura