As part of a series of visits to Auckland’s heritage homes the MOTAT Society’s June Excursion was a tour of Highwic, which overlooks Newmarket, considered to be one of New Zealand's finest Carpenter Gothic houses: a unique rare example of an architectural style usually found on the east coast of America.
Highwic was originally built in 1862 as an eight-room home by Alfred Buckland - a colonial settler, auctioneer and by the 1880’s one of the largest private landowners in Auckland - for his wife Eliza and their seven children. They had two more children before Eliza died of pneumonia in 1866. The following year Alfred married Matilda Jane Frodsham, formerly Eliza’s companion and 20 years his junior, an arrangement said to have been made between the ailing Eliza and her young friend. Matilda and Alfred added eleven more children to the Buckland family (nine of whom survived to adulthood) and as the Buckland family grew so too did the house - extended in 1874, 1883 and 1884.
Highwic, surrounded by extensive gardens, features a large room capable of holding balls, a boy's dormitory, seven bedrooms, a laundry, kitchen, scullery, coach house, a billiard house, and a service yard. Two inside bathrooms were added with baths, hand basins, flushing toilets and hot and cold water on tap in the early 20th century. Today Highwic is displayed with much of its original 1880’s furnishings, some of which have been provided by descendants of the family from as far away as Australia eg the billiard table.
Occupied continuously by descendants of the Buckland family until the late 70s Highwic was then jointly purchased by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust/Pouhere Taonga and Auckland City Council to save it from subdivision. It is now listed by Heritage New Zealand as a Category I structure and opened as a historic house museum in 1981.
Words by Jodie Cawthorne
Photographs courtesy Bruce Wild
A few notes on the architecture of Highwic from Bruce Wild:
The house (originally on five acres of land in the name of Mrs Buckland) is set on high rocky ground above the commercial district of Newmarket where the stock yards were back in the day.
The approach to the house is from Mortimer Pass, now straddled by the Westfield shopping mall. The path and driveway lead to the main front door on the east side of the house and the stables respectively.
The house is of colonial gothic style with steep Welsh slate roof shingles and vertical kauri board and batten cladding. The many layers of paint cannot conceal the texture of pit sawn timber planks where a stroke of the saw rips the timber about an inch at a time.
The outlook from the house, over the tennis court to the north would have been expansive to the harbour and beyond but is now constrained by commercial development.
The house is of necessity two storey to accommodate such a large family with servants and uses the roof space as dormitory type sleeping space and social space. The additions to the house are interesting in that they were built against the original external walls to the west, closing off the view from several bedrooms to offer only a view of roof.
The large “ballroom” of the house is very south facing and when candles were the light source would have been very dark and cold. The social activities of the family would have given it strength, noise and fun.
In a small bedroom upstairs above the main entry a daughter, Florence, has scratched her name in the window glass.
The kitchen is a brick building, for fire resistance, originally separate from the house but progressively closed up by additions which form a service courtyard. The water catchment from the roof being contained for house use in a tank built over the dairy and larder to keep these rooms accessed from the courtyard, cool.
The house and gardens are well maintained inside and out by Heritage NZ (including heritage consultants to research paint colours and features of the house and gardens.)
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