Living in a piece of Hamilton's history
Frankton’s Railway Village is more than 100 years old. Its occupants tell Jo Lines-MacKenzie why they think it’s a special place.
Faced with a shortage of housing, the answer was clear. Prefabricated houses by the hundreds, churned out of factories to standard designs.
Workers and their families soon filled them in the heart of a growing commercial hot spot and a new suburb was born.
Sure the houses all looked alike, but their occupants had a roof over their heads and soon the houseproud residents in their distinctive architecture were a community.
Auckland 2021? Try Hamilton’s Frankton Railway Village 1920.
A century on from the beginning of a unique New Zealand architectural style, those who today call Frankton’s railway houses home are staying true to its roots in an age of increasing urban intensification.
The village, nestled near the North Island main trunk line on the western side of Hamilton, came to be when the Railways Department became one of New Zealand’s largest house-builders and landlords early in the 20th century.
The department had bought or built houses for stationmasters and other staff since the 1870s. But by the 1900s it faced a serious accommodation shortage, especially in the North Island.
After World War I the department decided to establish a modern sawmill and kitset house factory at Frankton Junction, using rimu and ma¯ tai timber cut from its own central North Island forests. The factory eventually employed more than 60 workers and even had its own plumbing department to produce baths, sinks, pipes and spouting.
By the time the factory closed in 1929, it had produced 1400 prefabricated houses, as well as pre-cut timber for wagons, signals, office furniture, stockyards, sheds, huts and other buildings.
The railway houses were identical apart from their dimensions, which differed according to employees’ rank, and some variations in their front porches and roofs. About a hundred remain in Frankton.
‘It’s just a nice old home’
An orange brick path leads you past the white picket fence and through the much-loved garden to Rona Hodges’ Frankton railway cottage.
The 74-year-old Hamilton woman has lived in her Weka St home for more than 30 years and is passionate about her slice of New Zealand home-building history.
She’s had a long love affair with Frankton, with her nana having lived nearby in Somerset St.
‘‘When I was young I used to stay at her place quite a bit before it all changed,’’ she says.
‘‘Weka St was all gravel and all the houses looked the same and I got lost. My father came and rescued me and found me walking around the streets.’’
These days Hodges feels the Frankton Railway Village is a forgotten area of Hamilton.
‘‘It’s a shame as this is the largest settlement of railway houses left in New Zealand, and people don’t seem to think these houses are worth much.
‘‘I’m not talking about monetary value. These houses are 100 years old, they’re on wooden piles, they are wooden construction and most people have looked after them,’’ she says
Hodges believes Hamilton seems ‘‘hell-bent on pulling things down if they are ancient’’. It upsets her. ‘‘They [the cottages] are under heritage protection, but once they go that’s it.’’
Hodges proudly shows a curious reporter through the house that at some stages has played host to 43 people at one time.
‘‘We have left most of the house as it was,’’ explains Hodges with a few concessions to modernity. ‘‘The bathroom was brought inside, and we put a window in the lounge. We still use the coal range every day. It’s just a nice old home.’’
Value in heritage protection
Just a stone’s throw away in a parallel street are Joelle and Owen Cowley, who are just as proud of their investment in a Frankton railway cottage.
They moved into Pukeko St 16 years ago and raised their two sons – Josh, 16, and Max 13 – there. ‘‘We were pregnant with Josh and needed a house, basically,’’ Joelle recalls. ‘‘I bought a magazine called Loot on the way home from work and I saw this house in it.
‘‘So I showed Owen, and we made a viewing. We walked in the front door and out the back and said, ‘Yep.’ ’’
The place was rundown after a decade as a rental. ‘‘They had a hole in the kitchen floor where they used to push the scraps through for the chickens. It’s still there – we kept it as a feature. But it was a mess,’’ Joelle says.
They paid $141,000 in 2004 for the property, but Owen says with the market hot these days they would probably get at least four times that amount if they sold.
‘‘A real estate friend believes it could be up around $700,000. At the moment if someone wants it they’ll pay, basically,’’ Owen muses.
The latest housing market data from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand show the median price in Hamilton has climbed 14.9 per cent on the previous year, hitting $695,000.
With heritage protections on the suburb, it’s also a relief for the couple knowing that no-one is going to buy next door and put up 10 apartments.
‘‘You can’t be built out. And as things go on more, it’s going to get more and more valuable because of that,’’ Owen says.
Over the past 16 years the couple have put plenty of work into renovating their forever home. Internal walls have been removed, the back slightly extended and a deck and garage installed.
Owen is a self-employed painter and Joelle works at a Hamilton dental practice. They say last year’s Covid-19 lockdown helped them to finally finish the project.
‘‘It was the painter letting me down,’’ Joelle says, laughing.
‘‘So during lockdown we thought, ‘This is our chance.’ So I painted all the weatherboards, and Owen came around and did all the tricky windows, and we finished. It was a good feeling.’’
As with every Frankton railway cottage, planning rules mean the front of the houses can’t be altered.
This rule has seen the Cowleys go a step further by ensuring everything they’ve done is in keeping with the style of the era.
‘‘The garage has the same wide weatherboards, the same Dutch gables on the roof,’’ Joelle says. ‘‘The furniture is recycled wood from what we took out of the house – the bar stools, the finishing lines around the windows.’’
Owning a 1920s home is of no concern to the couple over a newly built house. ‘‘They just knew how to build them back then. They’re built on a pile, and it’s just sitting on the ground,’’ Owen says.
‘‘But when we built the garage, we had to dig out the whole area, fill it with sand, compact it down. And the house is just on piles. You could just about play marbles in there – it’s pretty straight.’’
The Cowleys have three bedrooms, a bathroom and a couple of spacious living areas after extending the back of the house slightly.
‘‘They look quite small, but they aren’t that small once you get inside. We have made ours bigger, but a normal one is deceiving – they look small but are a reasonable size,’’ Owen says.
Community vibe
A few doors down, first-home buyer Courtney Cribb has settled into her home. It’s been nearly three years since the 28-year-old and her partner shifted into their Pukeko St home, having bought it for $500,000 in 2018.
‘‘We had been looking for quite some time, and we weren’t having any luck,’’ Cribb says.
‘‘Driving around one Sunday, we saw the sign outside. We were like, ‘That is quite cool,’ because we like character homes. So we rang for a viewing, and we fell in love with it.’’
They, too, have three bedrooms, a spacious living and kitchen area along with a big garage and a sleepout on their 822-square-metre section, which they wouldn’t get now unless they opted for a lifestyle section.
‘‘The village itself is really cool, because [elsewhere] everything now is tiny sections and homes without that much personality.’’
Cribb, who plans on staying put for some time, likes the sense of community the Frankton Railway Village creates.
‘‘We know our neighbours really well; we swap fruit. It’s something you always worry about, especially when you are buying, because you can’t just go somewhere. So having good neighbours is good for us.’’
She also enjoys the fact that the front of the houses have to be retained. ‘‘I love that they all look similar. I think it’s cool in this little village that they all look like they all belong together. I think it would be weird if someone drastically changed the frontage of one.
‘‘We are quite old souls at heart, so it’s quite cool to have old things like that.’’ She admits that a lot of her friends would love to live in the area.
‘‘It’s a shame as this is the largest settlement of railway houses left in New Zealand, and people don’t seem to think these houses are worth much.’’
Rona Hodges
Proximity to CBD
Harcourts real estate agent Himanshu Adhikari says there has been an increase in interest in Frankton’s railway houses. Like the rest of Hamilton, they have increased noticeably in value over recent years.
‘‘Perhaps to a greater extent for these homes than compared to the general market, given their character and heritage appeal; large, family-friendly, mostly freehold sections; and close proximity to Frankton Village and the CBD,’’ Adhikari said.
He cites an example where a home in Kea St sold for $321,000 in April 2017 and by October it sold again for $631,000.
Another in the same street this month sold for $662,500 – a 145 per cent increase on its $270,000 February 2014 sale.
He says variations in size, content, presentation and the ability to add further value greatly affect the sales price. However, fairly presented three-bedroom Frankton railway cottages are sitting in the mid-$600,000s to early $700,000s range.
Adhikari says buyers are mixed. First-home buyers are looking to make their way into the market, but developers and investors are also looking for an opportunity as they recognise the area is appealing to potential tenants.
The daily commuter train between Hamilton and Auckland, which is scheduled to begin in April, is also an extra drawcard for the suburb.
It’s not hard for Adhikari to see why Frankton and neighbouring Dinsdale are increasing in popularity.
‘‘They are close to the CBD, close to employment in Frankton’s commercial and industrial sector, close to retail and hospitality options and general public amenities, making it a popular suburb to live in or to invest in.
‘‘I believe investors have speculated the market and taken advantage of upcoming changes in infrastructure.’’
National significance
The Hamilton City Council’s principal planner, Alice Morris, says Frankton is significant to the city’s heritage and also nationally because of its links with the historical development of railway settlements in the 1920s.
‘‘The Frankton Railway Village was established under William Ferguson Massey, the then railways minister; it was the largest and most complete settlement scheme to be developed in New Zealand before the advent of state housing.’’
Although Frankton Railway Village houses aren’t scheduled as heritage buildings, they are managed under the planning provisions for the Frankton Railway Village Heritage Precinct.
‘‘There are controls over the location and type of additions and alterations that can occur to the buildings, demolition of dwellings and site redevelopment.
Morris says it’s important to retain the precinct through the retention of the original style, setting and scale of each site to protect the identified heritage values of the area. ‘‘Without these provisions, the form, house design and intensification could be substantially modified, resulting in the loss of an area of Hamilton that is a unique part of Hamilton’s history.’’
The Railway Village has been identified and protected by Hamilton City planning provisions since 1992.
The village was also formally identified as a historic area by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga in 1994.
This covers houses on Pukeko, Kea, Weka, Makkomako, Kaka and Kereru streets, Moa Crescent, the east side of Rifle Range Rd and the north side of Massey St.