Past reclaimed: old and new blend

Press, 14 December 1983, Page 16

Past reclaimed: old and new blend

In Residence Patricia Herbert PROPERTY REPORTER

Mr George Rawstron, managing director of a Christchurch real estate office, is a raven with a discerning eye and excellent contacts.

He has used both to build a house almost exclusively from recycled materials on a waterfront section at 107 Main Road in Redcliffs. It is an amalgam of all that was best in colonial and Victorian architecture.

Many of the items he acquired through the good services of a friend in the construction industry who tells him when likely buildings are about to be reduced to rubble. He declined to name his contact because he was concerned that he might be harassed by members of the public if his identity was known.

The panels flanking the entrance were removed from the old Chalmers Ward in the Public Hospital. The timber has been stripped and refurbished and the glass replaced with heavy plate for authenticity. The doors similarly restored, came from the Norwich Union building at the corner of Manchester and Hereford Streets when it was demolished two years ago. They are built of solid kauri from which Mr Rawstron scraped off numerous coats of paint to expose the wood.

The entrance foyer leads into the en-suite master bathroom, the guest room, the bathroom, the kitchen and the lounge. All of the doors came from the former Supreme Court building and some show evidence of cell padding. Other finds are:

• A Gothic-style window rescued from the old National Bank just before the bulldozers moved in a year ago. It has been cut in half and fitted into the lounge wall to overlook the estuary and Shag Rock. • Timbered stairway bannister and railings from the Chalmers Ward. They lead to the “play-room” in which a cool atmosphere is created by soft jade walls, green lights hung low over the full-size billiard table and an old-fashioned ceiling fan reminiscent of the movie “Casablanca.”

• A complete five-panel bay window with floor to ceiling frames taken from the Norwich Union building. • A very old brass shower and tap unit in the en suite bathroom, “the prize of a visit to Australia.” It is

complemented by a freestanding claw-foot bath resurfaced in post box red with a matching hand basin and a toilet with a copper cistern.

The floors in the foyer, dining room, kitchen and bathrooms are surfaced with Welsh slate tiles acquired, with the exposed roof beams, when the School for the Deaf building at the foot of Evans Pass in Sumner was knocked down in 1981. The exterior and some interior walls are built of recycled bricks, some of which Mr Rawstron picked up from the School for the Deaf. The rest he got when the old tramway sheds were demolished more than four years ago. He hand-cleaned all 20,000 of them.

Also from the tramway sheds, he acquired the heart rimu beams used for the remainder of the ceilings. An acknowledgment of the debt hangs over the dining room door: a shield donated

by the former manager of the Christchurch Tramway Board. The success of the interior decor lies in the painstaking attention to detail: All the window and door fittings are old brass; the beams and uprights on the verandah are rough-hewn. Mr Rawstron spent 720 hours hand-adzing them. The parts which were built new — not retrieved from demolition sites —

have been designed to complement the rest. The rear dining room wall is made of specially-run larch to blend

in with the recycled timbers. The house also features a number of stained glass windows in period style and colour, one decorating the pantry door. Some touches show the love and care of a pet project. In the kitchen are two nooks recessed into the walls to display those bricks with date stamps on them; 1885 being the earliest. The room-layout has been organised to capture the sun and the view. A verandah, made from materials collected when Moore’s Garage was pulled down to provide car-parking facilities for the Town hall, overlooks the estuary, as do the lounge, kitchen, dining room and master bedroom.

Mr Rawstron draughted the layout himself and the draughtsman who completed the plans incorporated many of his ideas and had a clear prescription to work with. The rooms have been built to accommodate prized pieces of furniture, to allow for easy movement in the main living areas and to create an informal atmosphere. “We don’t believe in having a parlour. Every part of the house is used,” Mr Rawstron explains.

He knew what he wanted — an old character home with all the modern amenities — and that is what he got.

It has a floor area of about 2200 square feet and from the 10-foot studs to the Oamaru corner stones, lintels, sills and window surrounds, it exudes a rural atmosphere.

Mr Rawstron was a farmer before he entered the real estate business. He owned a holding at Teddington where he built a homestead of soil cement bricks he made himself and was featured on the television programme “Of Course You Can Do It.” Although he did much of

the work on the Redcliffs house, he also employed tradesmen — “the best available” — and says that the success of the project is due in large part to their professionalism. He has no idea what the development has cost him — expense was never a consideration.

Elaborate landscaping plans have been drawn up but the section still looks more like a construction site than a suburban garden. Flower beds, made from old railway sleepers, have been planted recently. The foreground of the property is being prepared for a lawn, and rocks from Mr Rawstron’s farm quarry line the water’s edge. There is still a lot of work to be done. The property is called “Delabole” after a slate mining area in Cornwall from which Mr Rawstron’s family came.

Photographs by RICHARD SIMPSON