Marvellous, purposeful pole house
Nothing is quite straight or serious in the 1980s pole house Laura Borrowdale shares with her daughters and partner. As told to Kylie Klein Nixon.
Teacher and author Laura Ann Borrowdale was living in a small Ōtautahi-Christchurch townhouse with her two primary school aged daughters and partner, award-wining playwright and performer Dan Bain, when she saw the listing for the 80s pole house in Cashmere. On a whim she put in a ‘‘low ball offer’’ and was delighted and surprised to get it.
Now this self-proclaimed ‘‘not terribly serious person’’, is the keeper of a ‘‘giant, grown up tree house’’, that has changed the way she sees herself and her work.
Laura Ann Borrowdale
It just has a really lovely atmosphere. You just walk in it feels cool and calm, and I guess not too precious. It’s not a highly polished house, it’s just a fun one. It feels like a giant, grown up tree house, and that feels quite delightful.
I am not a terribly serious person, and I really like that element of play inside the house.
There are these ridiculous telegraph poles up through the home, and they’re structural, they’re not there for decoration, if we took them away the house would fall down. Nothing’s quite straight, but it’s got these beautiful golden, honey, wood tones all through it, and just really unusual shapes. It’s marvellous.
As far as I can tell the house was built in about 1988 by an architect called R W Williamson.
The plans say Williamson Pole House, which is also the name of my Instagram for the house, but I can’t find anything about him, so I actually don’t even know if that’s the architect or the original client that it was drawn for.
It used to have a terraced swimming pool, which we only discovered once we started digging and hit concrete. Then we found something in the council’s papers that referenced it.
There are some quite unusual rooms in the house.
The main body of the house has two legs that come down, one wraps underneath the sitting room to my partner’s study, and on the other side of the house it drops underneath the garage to a laundry, a lavatory and this other room we never knew the purpose of. When we found plans it was described as a changing room.
The house is made from quite rough board and baton, and these telegraph poles are, I’m pretty sure, actual telegraph poles – quite industrial materials really.
There are not that many pole houses in Christchurch, but somehow I’ve managed to find a bunch of them. There’s another one in Hoon Hay, that I looked at before my townhouse and I love that.
There’s something about the style of them that have a cabin in the woods feel. Particularly
this house it’s like a cabin in the canopy because the surrounding trees are so established that they’re all you see out the windows.
Living here made a massive difference during lockdown.
We were in a tiny house for the first one [in 2020]. The second one in this much larger house actually gives you space to work. Before it’s always been working on the kitchen table. So I really do recognise the privilege of actually having a space I can dedicate to my writing practice.
There were times during the last lockdown where I was like, ‘‘where the hell are the children?’’ I couldn’t see anyone, I couldn’t hear anyone – it was quite an unusual experience.
In the little house, everything was so contained and everything had to be quite purposeful.
I collected lots of little whimsical things for the little house. The element of play comes out differently here. I’m buying ridiculous chairs quite frequently – nothing I buy is new or expensive, but I scout for stuff.
The other day, Dan said, ‘‘Look, it’s your money. You can spend it on what you like, but we just don’t actually have room for any more chairs.’’ I don’t know why it’s chairs that I’ve picked, but in this house there are a lot of chairs.
The wood in this house is warm, but the ceilings are really high.
It’s a flipping massive house. The spaces are a decent size, but feel significantly larger just because of the height of them. So, I don’t know that you feel super cosy. I think you feel really comfortable in the house, and that’s because there’s a lot of breathing space.
I feel incredibly grateful and lucky to have it.
Living here is kind of a double-edged sword.
I’m also aware, living in a house like this, there’s lots of inconvenient things about old houses. They’re always cold, or drafty, or they’re oddly laid out or whatever. But it’s still a really beautiful place to live. And I, I often feel really awkward about it, because why do I deserve this?
Then, I increasingly see the house as an expression of myself, I feel like I fit it, and that it matches me in a way that works really well.
I feel very comfortable in the space. And I do feel quite gracious in it, I feel like I can be generous, and I can offer because there is enough of the house and I’ve expanded to fill the space, I guess. You can be hospitable and welcoming and open armed because you’ve got the space to do it.
I would like it to be our forever home, but I’ve said that before.
I’m a bit of a moverabouterer. My children and my partner would definitely like this to be our forever home, I think, and I would like it to be also. I don’t know how I would get more lucky, and I don’t really want to test that.