An archaeological treasure hunt  

The refurbishment of Allendale House has been an archaeological treasure hunt for conservation architect, Peter Reed, of Salmond Reed Architects.

22/6/11
While roofers have been replacing the more than 100-year-old slate roof on the Trust’s traditional home at 50 Ponsonby Road, Peter has been piecing together the building’s history to ensure the results are as historically accurate as possible.

The story begins - and ends - with the finials that crown the rooftop of the house. Peter was sure they would originally have been coated in gold leaf, just as contemporary grand houses of its periodin Europe were. However, the intervening years had stripped away any evidence to verify his hunch.

“We decided instead to just settle for a deep blue paint finish,” he says.

Then the story took a surprising turn when the roofer who worked on the building 20 years ago gave Peter a part of the ironwork found in the guttering at that time. There, still embedded in the metal, were the tiny flecks of gold that gave Peter his proof. The finials can now be coated in gold leaf.

“It’s about the most durable coating you can put on metal,” he says. “It’s so thin that it’s only worth a few dollars, but it will last for at least 50 years.”

More treasures turned up in the old house’s attic – including a complete cast-iron cresting which once ran along the ridges of the bay window hipped roofline. These appear in a photograph taken in 1952.

“What’s remarkable is that those roofers must have gone to considerable trouble at the time to remove the cresting and then transfer it into the attic,” Peter says. “It could so easily have been discarded instead.”

The architects were also convinced that the original house would have been furnished with wooden venetian blinds, but again all evidence of them had been cleared away over the years – until one complete set was found in the attic, still with its original colours intact.

More history was uncovered when an original fireplace was discovered in the reception area. “The original fireplaces are such a feature of the house that, where we can, we’ll expose the hearths and leave them looking like the fire’s ready to be lit,” Peter says.

As well as the new slate roof, work on the building includes upgrading the air conditioning system, installation of a fire sprinkler system, a solar-heated hot water system and a rainwater harvesting system. All of these features make Allendale House as eco-friendly as possible.

But, there is a final chapter in the finial story: On the very day the turret finial was remounted, it was stolen. As unlikely as it sounds, three young men climbed the scaffolding at three in the morning and wrenched it from its mounting. A passer-by observing them climbing back over the safety fence tried, but failed, to convince them to leave the finial behind.

However, they did agree to pose for a photograph. This photograph has since appeared in the New Zealand Herald under a caption ‘have you seen these men?’ In the meantime, the finial was discovered in bushes on a neighbouring property and the neighbour, recognising where it had come from, has returned it to the Trust. The Trust expects to be back in the building in the first half of 2012. Until then we have a temporary home at 8 College Hill, in Auckland’s Freemans Bay.