‘Everyone knows of Trevellyn’
Four women sift through photographs of those who once stood in their place.
Among them are black and white portraits of nursing staff and sepia-toned snapshots of staff dress-up parties.
For Annette Chandler, Joyce Gallichan, Heather Blackburn and Elizabeth Green, the images act as a reminder of Trevellyn in its early days.
Trevellyn Care and Village in Victoria St, Hamilton, is in stage one of an $85 million redevelopment that will bring it up to modern standards and significantly expand what it offers to residents.
Chandler, Gallichan and Blackburn are health care assistants at the village, while Green is a laundry assistant.
They have 132 years experience at Trevellyn between them.
Gallichan started there in 1974 and was hired right off the bat. So too was Green, who walked in off the street looking for a cleaning job.
‘‘I just wanted a job so I could buy a new car,’’ Chandler said.
Trevellyn began as one of Waikato’s old homesteads in the area between Fairfield Bridge and MacDiarmid Rd in Hamilton.
It was named Trevellyn by Bill and Hilda Hume, who bought the property in 1906.
It was on-sold to Presbyterian Support in 1954 and in the following year converted into a 12-bed rest home opened by Hamilton MP Hilda Ross.
It was bought by Oceania Healthcare in 2005.
The redevelopment began on the south end of the site in January and stage one is scheduled to be completed by August 2019.
Stage two will see the current building replaced with 133 apartments and a 1400sqm community centre.
‘‘It’s exciting because we need a new rebuild but it is sad,’’ Chandler said. ‘‘Everybody knows Trevellyn.’’ In her time with the village, Chandler has dabbled in roles in the laundry, kitchen, housekeeping and caregiving.
She and the others have witnessed some people who used to work at Trevellyn come back to live as residents.
The ladies have also participated in a decent amount of strikes, one of the most notable being over the laundry’s sluice machine. The workers won, and Trevellyn quickly upgraded its laundry equipment.