House beautiful
Our 50 years in Larnach Castle
It was a Kiwi road trip that ended with a young couple buying a castle. In the summer of 1967 a pregnant Margaret Barker and her then-husband Barry toured the South Island in a Combi van. When the Wellington couple’s spluttering VW arrived in Dunedin, they headed for the Otago Peninsula; home of Larnach Castle. Barker, now 74, knew nothing of the castle or its builder, William Larnach – who shot himself himself with a revolver in Parliament buildings in October 1898 – before visiting the historic homestead.
The castle was closed that time, but when Barry returned later, he expressed to the owner an interest in buying the local landmark.
‘‘He said you can have it and that is what happened. It happened on the doorstep,’’ says Barker.
‘‘My mother was horrified, but my father thought it was a good idea.’’
Within a fortnight the couple had left for a new life in Dunedin.
Set among 14 hectares, the 43-room castle – built by Larnach in 1871 for his beloved wife, Eliza – featured Italian marble, Venetian glass and cobblestones from Marseilles.
But by 1967, it had seen better days.
The young couple did not do due diligence on the property, bought for an undisclosed sum, but had no regrets when they moved in in March, that year.
‘‘It was big and mysterious – there was a lot of unknowns.’’
And they were not just buying a castle, but ‘‘buying a liability’’. That included a kitchen without a floor, plumbing that didn’t work, a lack of fresh water, and electrical wiring that ‘‘kept on blowing up’’.
Daughter Sophie was born six weeks later, and the young family found themselves in a cold, wet, castle with young child and a Dunedin winter fast approaching.
But the pair could see the potential in the property, and it’s potential as a tourism destination.
But their plan to restore the historic building was going against a trend of knocking old buildings down. Dunedin’s famous stock exchange fell to the wrecking ball of ‘progress’ in 1969.
Barker’s son Norcombe grew up around the castle – and still lives nearby.
He remembers being sent ‘‘down the well’’ on occasion, a process that involved sticking a foot in some looped rope towed by a tractor in order to retrieve items lost by tourists.
The well was ‘‘shaped like a sherry bottle’’, and one of the highlights/lowlights of his exploring was seeing a ‘‘rat with mould on it floating in and out’’.
As a child, Norcombe, now 48, knew if it was raining outside ‘‘it was raining inside’’.
‘‘Our job was to run to the kitchen and grab the pots and pans, because it used to leak everywhere.’’
One of his mantras that he learned over time: never annoy parents who have an actual dungeon at their disposal.
Norcombe slept in many different rooms over time, as the castle was renovated in stages, but the downside was he was always in the worst room.
As a student in Wellington, Norcombe had Larnach Castle as his address on his driver licence.
It did not help when it came to buying alcohol, however, as proprietors simply did not believe he lived in a castle.
Norcombe returned to the family business to become an executive director around the time his parent’s marriage ended. Barry Barker died in 2007. Norcombe had a goal of realising the castle’s massive potential.
However it required a large amount of money to re-position the tourist attraction to a high-end market, which was attracting visitors from England, Australia, and increasingly China.
The decision to invest in the castle transformed the business, raising the business turnover from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to a multi-million dollar business employing almost 100 people.
‘‘We are a conservation and restoration project and we balance that by being an economic entity.’’
And the key lesson when contemplating buying a castle?
‘‘It is not the buying, it is the keeping."
Keeping the property watertight was an enormous undertaking, but the building itself was ‘‘very well built’, and has met 100 per cent of the earthquake code.
The garden presented a different challenge. Larnach had the soil scraped back to the bluestone rock and planted shelter trees right up to the house.
Now the castle’s grounds are recognised as a ‘garden of international significance’, with Margaret Barker still taking tours.
Despite people talking about the castle being haunted, and in the process attracting the attention of an American ghost hunting tv show, Norcombe only experienced a few moments he couldn’t explain, among them, an occasion on which
We are a conservation and restoration project and we balance that by being an economic entity. Norcombe Barker
his normally quiet dog began barking behind a door.
While working on reception one day an ashen faced man claimed he had been spooked by the ghost of Larnach himself.
Margaret Barker says the ghostly moment that stood out for her was during the castle premiere of a play about Larnach: Castle of Lies.
That night a storm whipped though Dunedin, and the moment Larnach shot himself a ‘‘bright white flash of light’’ lit up the room.
But rather than the work of special effects, the key moment coincided with a flash of lightning from outside.
Meanwhile, the business bought a neighbouring property, now converted into luxury accommodation and which had attracted VIPs, not that Margaret and Norcombe are in the business of naming names.
‘‘We have had a few, and we have to keep our lips sealed,’’ Barker says.
Both mother and son say their time at the castle has made them appreciate what is so much more than ‘‘old building’’.
‘‘Larnach is part of our colonial history,’’ Norcombe explains. ‘‘It is the founding of a young country’’.
But as a castle it is no longer alone.
Norcombe says the marketing for Larnach Castle has changed in recent years, partly driven by a castle being built at Riverstone, near Oamaru.
So that catchphrase ‘‘New Zealand’s only castle’’, has been tweaked to ‘‘New Zealand’s castle’’.
‘‘That gives a sense of ownership,’’ Margaret Barker says.
And the family’s ownership of the castle will be celebrated in a special ‘50 years at the Castle – the Barker Story Exhibition’, to be open to the public on March 3.
‘‘It has been quite a journey,’’ Barker says.