LIVING HISTORY
KATE SHEPPARD HOUSE
Kate Sheppard may have been a trailblazer for women’s suffrage, but it was only 25 years ago that anyone recognised the heritage and significance of her Christchurch home. Certainly, Julia Burbury, who in 1985 bought the 1880s house with her former husband, had no idea that the rambling villa and its huge gardens on the edge of the University of Canterbury had such an important provenance.
“I was a young mum with two small children, and I was just wanting a property for me to get stuck into the garden,” she says.
“We’d looked over this amazing garden and lovely looking villa. There were huge trees, a tennis court, swimming pool. The house didn’t even go on to the market; it was a private sale. But there was nothing to say it was Kate Sheppard’s house.”
It wasn’t until Pam Wilson, from the then Historic Places Trust (now Heritage New Zealand), started digging for the suffrage centenary in 1993 that the family realised how important their house was.
Sadly, there are no photographs of Sheppard and her band of women in action around the table in the grand dining room.
A fire in the local council offices in the 1950s destroyed any original documentation on the house.
It is known that she and her second husband, Walter Sheppard, lived there from 1888 until his health issues forced them to move in 1902.
The petition and its signatures supporting the right of women to vote were famously pasted on to rolls of wallpaper, to be rolled out with a flourish on the floor of Parliament.
When Julia renovated the back of the house, turning original kitchen and utility rooms into the present kitchen and bedrooms with en suites, researchers found samples of original wallpaper (now preserved and covered up), but nothing to do with the petition. The new kitchen, with high atrium ceilings over the casual dining and living area, was supervised by well-known architects Warren and Mahoney.
Julia was careful to retain the early mouldings,
‘I think Kate would have approved of my work on the house and garden.’