Attractions At Spreydon Home

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31865, 18 December 1968, Page 20

Attractions At Spreydon Home

If children had a vote they would join ‘ the older young-at- , heart and at election ! time put Mr R. H. ' Stillwell on every local ij body in Christchurch, j, not just the four on which he serves now.

Mr Stillwell has an interest in the progress of Christchurch as a city councillor, in the welfare of the aged as a member of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, in public health as a Drainage Board member and in getting people to and from the city as a member of the Transport Board; but his abiding interest is in getting people to share his joy at Christmas. For the fourteenth year in

succession he has decorated and illuminated his home, and tonight he will be there to meet the first of his guests. Last year he had them in thousands—more than 12,000 signed his visitors' book, and they were only part of the crowd. Mr Stillwell is asked what motivates his desire to entertain, and sometimes whether it is to encourage votes. His answer is that he has always been a showman, albeit at times only part-time, that he made his money as a showman and entertainer and now, in his seventies and in retirement, wants to share his enjoyment in showmanship. In the last few years, Mr Stillwell has travelled widely, and wherever he went he looked for attractions for his home to brighten a Christchurch Christmas. His house at 70 Selwyn Street is an

.average suburban home fori most of the year, but at Christmas and the New Year] it achieves a place in the I albums of many overseas visitors.

“There’s a little bit of . . . in everybody’s heart,” might fit Mr Stillwell’s garden after he has apologised to the Irish, who will find plenty of greenery. There is a Dutch windmill, an Oriental garden, a New Zealand corner, a Churchillian display; all vying with Bethlehem crib scenes to form - a “You name

it, I’ve got it’’ display. Mechanical toys from several parts of the world will be wound up, lit up or battery charged, by Mr Stillwell for the next few weeks and in leprechaun-form he will also be attepding his theatrette—a converted garage—where the attractions for children are so many that to

I describe any of them would be like giving the solution of •|a murder mystery novel in a [review. ■' Mr Stillwell is not young, but He has mixed the hew

with the old everywhere. In the ' theatrette there are photographs of Queen Victoria and of Mr Stillwell’s earliest show enterprises in 1919, near mini-skirted dolls. Inside his home, alongside Japanese battery-operated toys is a toy estimated to be nearly 100 years old. This, a gift from a.90-year-

old Christchurch man, gives Mr Stillwell as much fun as any of the expensive toys he has bought overseas. Enclosed in a glass-fronted case, a puppet girl goes through convolutions and trapeze acts that would defy even Vera Caslavska and all is operated unseen by sand falling as in an egg-timer.