CHANGING TIMES

A move from Sydney to Martinborough led a homeowner to this adaptable abode

One woman’s adaptable abode in Martinborough.

Sarah Hensley lives in a house of two halves. The front part of her artful Martinborough cottage was designed for a couple to live in, or in Sarah’s case, “one woman and her cat and dog”. The back half is for guests, with a separate entrance, “so when friends are staying or the kids are here, as they were in [the 2020] lockdown, it expands. And then when it’s just me, it gets cosy and manageable again.”

That’s not the house’s only clever feature. While it’s 40m long, it’s only one room (6m) wide. The rooms are linked by a long corridor to the side, which Sarah uses as a family photo and art gallery. It’s a bit like living in a railway carriage, she admits. “It’s like a house that’s been put through a hot wash, really. Everything is here. Tiny little laundry, tiny little loos. Everything you need but probably half the size that it would be in an older house.”

Clinical psychologist Sarah spent 20 years in Sydney, raising her family (she has three children – Jono, Alex and Juliet) in a large Federation villa. She returned to New Zealand two years ago, choosing Martinborough because her father and both sisters live there so it’s “the place that most feels like home”.

House-hunting from Sydney proved a challenge. Sarah had looked at a few places before the real estate agent mentioned a new listing not yet on the market. “I think it might be what you’re looking for.” Built in 2006, the house was designed by Bonnifait + Giesen Atelierworkshop Architects. Sarah only had an hour to look around before she flew back to Sydney but she knew this was the one. “It really was the light that struck me. It was on a sunny still November day and all of these doors were open to the garden and that quality of the New Zealand light…” It was golden and warm, open and quiet, she says. “I knew when I saw it that I could live here and that it would work.”

Time – and lockdown – have proved her right. “Everything I’ve discovered about this house since then has delighted me. How beautifully things have been done; how carefully they’ve been thought out.” Each room has its own vista into a corresponding garden

RIGHT The dresser in the dining area of Sarah Hensley’s home was specially made to fit the space by Yoyo in Wellington and stained to match the dining table; above it is a painting by Wairarapa artist Stephen Allwood. FAR RIGHT The dining table was an important part of family life in Sydney: “It’s one of those tables where people studied for exams, there were Christmas dinners, we played Monopoly, babies were fed at that table,” says Sarah.

ABOVE Sarah and cat Fang under Piera McArthur’s Dinner with the Bishop: “That’s the perfect place for it as it’s an oil painting and it doesn’t mind the sun coming through.” RIGHT The hallway to the open-plan living area is a great gallery for five generations of family photographs; although the steeply raked ceilings made with French poplar caused headaches for the builder, they add a sense of space.