Munro’s mid-century Maples uncovered

Originally credited to her husband, it was Margaret Munro who designed ‘the Maples place’, writes Kylie Klein-Nixon.

The first time owner Michael Bayly saw the property on Wai-iti Tce, it was like walking into a fairy tale; he knew it was the one for him and his family.

He’d walked past it with wife Donna Alley, daughter Michaela and dog Poochini, many times on the way to visit friends who live nearby. Surrounded by milliondollar houses and lush Christchurch gardens, however, he never really imagined it would be theirs. Then it came up for sale.

‘‘Not a word of a lie, I opened the front gate, and I stood looking at the pathway with the three maple trees, and I fell absolutely head over heels in love with the place. I really didn’t give too much of a damn what the house looked like.’’

The house, a ‘‘modest’’ 1950s home, had plenty of its own charms, as well as an intriguing story it would take Bayly moving in to unravel.

In 2008, it had been completely refurbished, reconfiguring the original two-bedroom – one-music room layout into three bedrooms with a more modern kitchen layout, without losing too much of the home’s mid-century storybook appeal.

With it’s steeply gabled roof line, whitewashed walls, and long, meandering path up to the door, it looked like something from The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen.

Magical as it was, the home stayed on the market for ‘‘quite a long time’’, until Bayly and Alley discovered damage the home had sustained in the 2011 earthquakes might mean it was more achievable.

‘‘We adored the neighbourhood – it was our dream destination, and we actually truly didn’t even consider that it was going to be a possibility. We were very fortunate to buy it.’’

It was after moving in, before works to fix the earthquake damage got under way, when Bayly started to do a little digging that he discovered the home’s historic importance, having been built by one of Aotearoa’s key, early female architects, Margaret Munro.

Munro, who had trained with the legendary Kiwi Arts and Crafts-style architect Cecil Wood in the 1930s and 40s, had a unique style of her own.

A mix of the influences she encountered working for Woods, her mores hark back to Georgian and American colonial designs, as well as 30s moderne and the openplan style of Scandinavian midcentury – all of which was on display in the home.

‘‘She had a passion for opening the living spaces and orientating the house so that those spaces opened into the garden, which was quite a modern attitude for her period.

‘‘That is certainly something that is front and centre in our home, and a quality that we love about living there. The indooroutdoor journey is seamless, and the garden and maple trees are an integral part of the living-dining space.’’

From the outset, Bayly says they knew they were going to have a big job getting the house in shape, but ‘‘Christchurch is a very specific place’’.

‘‘The reason the vendors were struggling to sell it is that there was funding in place from EQC, which is great. But [the nature of the work needed] made it extremely hard to sell the house.

‘‘We were turned down by seven banks and insurance companies because it was all outside of their risk parameters.’’

Tenacious, Bayly kept trying, because when it comes to banks, ‘‘no doesn’t always mean, no’’.

‘‘We just had to talk to the right organisation.’’

The works, which took about three or four months, were ‘‘quite major’’, involving substantial structural work that saw part of the external foundations and the open-plan dining area demolished, to remove the concrete slab below.

But not even that could keep the family from living in their dream home.

‘‘We ended up living in the bedrooms and hallway for about seven weeks. Cooking on top of the washing machine and dryer, eating sitting on stools in the hallway with plates on our laps, which was fun.

‘‘Now it’s all done, all completed, we have what is, ostensibly, a perfect home.’’

During the works, they discovered the home’s original plans ‘‘hiding’’ in a cupboard. The architect’s name on the plans was Robert Munro, Margaret’s husband, who she went into business with in 1947 following Wood’s death.

It wasn’t until a neighbour told them she’d found their home’s twin on Helmores Lane, that the real architect became clear.

‘‘I was driving down Helmores Lane on day and was like ‘holy hell, it really is’.

‘‘It has very similar architectural details on the gate, pillars in the balcony, same roofline, same terrace, very closely related. I looked at their property and found that it was heritage listed.’’

Bayly discovered that the home on Helmores Lane had been designed by Cecil Woods as his retirement home.

Further investigation took him to the vintage architecture firm, Warren and Mahoney, where ‘‘a very, very pleasant gentleman’’ added the final pieces of the puzzle.

‘‘[He] said, ‘Oh, well, I don’t think that Robert Munro designed your house. I think it’s possibly

Margaret Munro, here’s a 140-page thesis on her’.

‘‘I got my little gold mine back.’’ Written in 1993, the thesis by Art Historian Mary-Ann Duffy has a section about a home on Wai-iti Tce called ‘‘The Maples’ place’’, built by Margaret Munro in 1954 for a Mr and Mrs FW Maples – the owners’ names on Bayly’s plans was the same. There are even three maple trees in the garden.

‘‘I romantically thought that perhaps they were ex-pat Canadians, because there’s also a lot of Canadian timbers in the home – we’ve got Canadian cedar tiles, the beams throughout the destruction of Canadian Oregon which is very unusual.

‘‘But that doesn’t appear to be the case. It just must have been a passion of theirs. The home was designed specifically for them, for their very specific needs.’’

The music room itself had had a raised stage that was about a four inch within the space and it was shaped like a grand piano’s lid, which is where they’d had a piano – another instance of synchronicity for Bayly and Alley, who met through musical theatre.

Comfort approved by every resident, even Poochini, ‘‘The Maples’ place’’ now suits the Bayly-Alley’s very specific needs.

‘‘You’ve got to get your dog’s approval if you’re going to live somewhere, because they spend more time there than anyone else,’’ says Bayly.

‘‘We knew that there was something really special about the house and there really is.’’

PHOTOS: STACY SQUIRES/STUFF The house that Margaret Munro built in 1954 for Mr and Mrs Maples.

Michael Bayly, Michaela Bayly, Donna Alley, and Poochini the cavoodle, outside the home built by Munro. The vintage, arts and crafts gate shows Munro’s influences and training under Cecil Woods.

The home was reconfigured to make the layout a little more modern, bringing the kitchen into the living space, but it was otherwise sympathetic to the midcentury design.

Though modest, the home was designed for living in, with great flow between the living spaces.