Telling story of St Heliers
Days of farmhouses, cowsheds, and seaside baches for wealthy, writes Robyn Welsh
High up on its perch behind established trees, this heritage home has a lot to tell about the early history of St Heliers. It was built in 1900 as a small farmhouse, when baches in the area were the retreats of wealthy city escapees arriving at the St Heliers beach pier by sea.
As little houses do, this one grew and grew, as evidenced by the multiple rooflines of the wings that span its original oblong form.
By the time engineer Alan Titchener and his wife Margaret bought here in 1954, the kauri and rimu house with its sash windows, scrim and sarking walls, linoleum flooring and outside toilet was in full flight as four flats.
In 1963, Alan and Margaret took their three children to the United States for his year-long sabbatical, but not before they’d engaged Chrystall Architects to convert the house back to a family home.
It was Lillian Chrystall, a pioneering female architect on the cusp of award-winning success, who designed the interior refit.
Beneath existing board and batten ceilings and behind panelled doors, Lillian’s design aesthetic is most evident in her decorative use of timber.
Alan’s daughter Janet Titchener points to similarities with the work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, examples of which she saw while living in the US, where she trained as a doctor.
“This is incredibly reminiscent of that, especially in the use of timber downstairs, the posts and the battens,” she says.
That downstairs area opens into two bedrooms/studies, one of which was the garage, complete with rimu panelling.
Upstairs the original lounge, front door and kitchen are now a large bedroom and a sunroom/ bedroom.
The new lounge and adjoining dining area are near the separate kitchen that still has its 1960s laminate bench.
A dishwasher is in the adjacent laundry, which still has its original enamel tub.
Janet remembers when her family returned from the US in 1964 to a half-completed house, in which her father’s subsequent handiwork included much built-in shelving.
He also dug out the basement, heaping the soil on to the front yard and, in the process, burying the old cowshed beneath what is now a flat lawn.
“At least that’s my memory of it,” says Janet. “We all helped and we were paid a penny to carry the scoria up to make the driveway. I had the happiest childhood in the world here,” says Janet.
In the 1980s, Alan altered the house to put in the double-storey, two-bedroom flat. The Titchener family home is on the market for the first time in 64 years.