‘Spaceship’ and Kate Sheppard’s resting place get heritage status
An Area 51 Futuro House and the Christchurch cemetery where suffragist Kate Sheppard is buried have been awarded heritage status.
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga has listed the rare UFO-shaped Airbnb in Ōhoka, one of the only Futuro houses left in New Zealand, as a category-one historic place.
Futuros have an international following. Only about 100 were ever made, 12 of those in New Zealand. About 68 remain today, and ones in good enough condition to stay in are a rarity.
Submissions about whether to list the flying saucer-like building were overwhelmingly supportive, said senior heritage assessment advisor for Canterbury and the West Coast Robyn Burgess.
“The listing proposal captured people’s imaginations,” Burgess said. “Judging by the feedback we’ve received from a wide range of people, the feeling is that even buildings that have a distinctly futuristic feel to them – and which are comparatively young in age – can very much be heritage buildings.”
Developed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen, they were intended to be easy-to-relocate ski huts, but the ellipsoid capsule became more suggestive of a spaceship. The structures are made of 16 fibreglass-reinforced plastic segments bolted together, which was technologically advanced for the 1970s when Futuros began to be manufactured by a New Zealand company. In 1974, two Futuro houses were showcased at the entrance to Queen Elizabeth II Park for the British Commonwealth Games in Christchurch.
Owner Nick McQuoid acquired a Futuro house in 2018. It now sits as his pride and joy in Ohoka as an award-winning unique New Zealand Airbnb, following a meticulous renovation.
Addington Cemetery, Christchurch’s oldest public cemetery according to Heritage New Zealand, has also been listed as a category-one historic place. Established 165 years ago, it is the final resting place of prominent Cantabrians such as leading suffragists Kate Sheppard, members of the Deans family, politician Tommy Taylor and wealthy philanthropist Allan McLean.
A dispute over religious burial beliefs was one of the driving factors behind its creation, Burgess said.
There was dissatisfaction that all burials at Christchurch’s first cemetery – the Barbadoes St Cemetery – had to be conducted according to Anglican rites. Anglicanism was no longer the only denomination in town when it came to burials.
So the city’s second cemetery in Addington was created, and advertised in the Lyttelton Times of 1858 as a public cemetery “open to all persons of any religious community and to the performances of any religious service at the burial, not contrary to public decency and good order”.
The Presbyterian Church of St Andrews in Christchurch was instrumental in its establishment and initially called it “Scotch Cemetery”, as Christchurch’s Presbyterian community was predominantly Scottish, Burgess said. It’s located in a mostly residential area in a traditional garden cemetery setting, featuring a tightly spaced grid pattern of rows, plots and narrow paths.
Burgess said it reflects the “craftsmanship of monumental masons”.
The cemetery was declared closed in 1980, though it has become a much-valued place in the city with generations of family plots and burials spanning mid-Victorian, Edwardian and mid-20th century periods all on a single memorial.
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is flexing his authority over this coalition Government. The NZ First leader has compared the prior Labour government’s co-governance policy to “Nazi Germany” and questioned National’s sacred promise to voters – tax cuts.
So how long will Prime Minister Christopher Luxon let this go on for? The answer is: As long as Luxon wants the coalition Government to hold. Because this is quintessential Peters strategy, and all indications are he will continue on accordingly. “I’m very comfortable with the coalition agreements, arrangements that we’ve got with each other,” Luxon said at a media conference yesterday.
On Saturday, Peters gave a speech blasting the “culturally woke” opposition parties, and reporters he wrongly alleged took “bribes”. He said co-governance policies – that Labour was pursuing to give Māori a governance role in the administration of certain public services – was akin to what was seen in “Nazi Germany”, because it was based on “racial preference”.
Luxon, in response, said what he has said previously when Peters has lashed out: “I don't agree with those comments, that’s not something that I would express ... I don’t think those comments are very helpful”.
Yesterday, Peters continued to put his fellow National Party Cabinet ministers in something of a bind with a version of “I told you so”.
“I said last year, what was going on, that what was being told to the New Zealand people in that campaign in terms of the fiscal health of New Zealand was demonstrably wrong ... It’s no surprise to me that somehow all of a sudden, we’re talking about a fiscal hole,” he said on RNZ.