Mill House up for auction

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33694, 18 November 1974, Page 19

Mill House up for auction

City folk who dream of a secluded retreat in the country, away from it all, seldom achieve the actuality. Building something is not allowed because of town-planning, and existing houses often have too much land going with them.

If an old house with a not-too-large section can be found, the building may well be a wreck, not worth restoring. So the process has started in reverse—old houses, if sound enough, are being moved from town to the country, subject, however, to rigid requirements by local councils. It is rare for a sound old house, on about an acre of ground, to come on the market, and rarer to find one on a stream, 25 miles from Christchurch, over tar-sealed roads to a metalled lane well away from the traffic. Such a house will come up for auction .on November 23. Owned by Mr A. H. Stone, it is Mill House, built in 1872, and one of the few reminders of the days when Brookside had two stores, two bakehouses, a flour-mill, a pub, a creamery, three churches, and a coach-building factory. OLD-WORLD GARDEN Mr Stone, a retired Railways carriage-joinery foreman, bought the house in 1969 and redecorated the five lower and two upstairs rooms. The exterior weatherboards, still showing the saw marks, are as good as new, the kauri doors and double-sash windows faultless tributes to the old-time craftsman. The solid floors are held by square-cut nails. Mature ash and lime trees, and a pair of what Mr Stone says are “Chilean trees of ■some sort,” frame an oldworld garden and lawns. To one side is a huge oldfashioned jasmine, to the other fine old pear and cherry trees. The mill generated its own electricity, and the house had power long before the rest of the district. At the rear is the Irwell River which, 50 yards downstream from the house, was put into a race to drive the mill’s water-wheel.

The land is part of one of the eight pastoral runs into which what is now Ellesmere County was divided in the 1850 s. Its original owners were R. J. S. Harman, a

senior partner in a Christchurch financial firm, and Cyrus Davie, who had been chief surveyor for the Provincial Government. Much of what is now Irwell-Bropkside district was in this run, extending to Lake Ellesmere. Harman and Davie started selling the land in the 1860 s. Brookside got its name from T. W. Brooks, who settled there in 1865.

In 1868, Harman sold a block to Charles Withell, who leased an acre or so on the Irwell River to John Cole, a flour-miller who had run mills at Kaiapoi and on the Heathcote River at the Lincoln Road bridge.

Cole built his mill and the mill house in 1872. In 1891, Withell leased the mill property to George Trapnell. Withell sold to George Heslop, the Irwell miller, in 1916. Rupert Trapnell became the owner in 1941.

The mill ceased operations in 1945, was pulled down, and a big auction Sale held to clear its usable timber, fittings, and corrugated iron. The mill house was owned by Joseph Brooks from 1946 to 1964, Mr Stone buying the property from his estate in 1969.

The property yielded an unexpected dividend. While clearing the river, Mr Stone found scores of old bottles

— glass and stone ink ones, coloured medicine ones, and a great variety of shapes and sizes used for soft drinks. This “junk” is worth almost its weight in gold in the antiques boom. RIVER TREASURES The river also gave up a beautiful pewter shaving mug and what could have been a coffee pot, also in pewter, decorated with repousse work. Unfortunately, it lacks a bottom and a lid. The garden even has an old hand-pump — but it will not work.

Antique furniture from the house, the bottles, and other bric-a-brac, will be sold at a separate auction.