100-YEAR-OLD HOUSE NOW MODERN OFFICE

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28619, 23 June 1958, Page 12

100-YEAR-OLD HOUSE NOW MODERN OFFICE

A wooden single-storey house in Heathcote street, Christchurch, almost 100 years old, is beirjg reconstructed into a modern block of offices for a nearby factory. The house has had three different •owners since it was built and has also been used as a school and a police station. The house is believed to have been built by Captain Thomas Buxton; a Tasmanian, who traded between Australia and New Zea-

land. Captain Buxton settled in Christchurch with his family about 1860. In 1863 he was engaged by the Canterbury Provincial Council to take supplies to establish a depot at Greymouth. His ship, the Wild Wave, was only the third to enter the Grey river. When first constructed the house faced Ferry road, but in 1925 it was moved to Heathcote street. A large factory now stands on the. original site. Timber from Sweden and Australia was used in the construction. Features are the delicatelycut mortise and tenon joints and many dowels, typical of the period. Square-headed nails were used? Clay was piled between ’he stone foundations and fhe floorboards, a practice of the early days as a protection against draughts. Materials for the house were brought up the Heathcote river in small vessels, which berthed at a pier, known as the Bollard Anchorage, not far away. Another house of similar construction. said to be even older, stands nearby. The reconstructed house, when finished, will have modern “picture” windows made of plate glass.

Some solar flares are estimated to release in 20 minutes the energy of a thousand million of the. latest known hydrogen bombs The only case where two different snices come from the same source involves the nutmeg tree, which grows wild and under cultivation in most narts of the East Indies. The tree yields annually five to six pounds of nutmeg and one-half pound of mace, both of which come from the fruit which is about the size of a peach.