Guide to Duart House – Jim Watt and Anne Ford Anderson

Recorded by Jim Watt and Anne Ford Anderson

Jim Watt: Today’s 18th September 2008, and I’ve just arrived at the front door of Duart House in Havelock North.

Anne Ford Anderson: Welcome to Duart House; would you like to have a tour?

Jim: I’d love to see over. You’re ..?

Anne: I’m Anne Ford Anderson.

Jim: Anne, how do you do? My name is Jim.

Anne: How do you do, Jim? And in case you haven’t read everything out there, this house was built in probably 1882 by Allan McLean who’d come out from Scotland, probably from one of the little islands off the Isle of Mull; and he met and married Hannah Chambers who was a local girl; and her family had a lot of land, so that’s where he got all the land which originally went right down to Te Aute Road, and you’ll see the map upstairs, about it. And they had this house built; we’re not quite sure who the builders were. They moved in, and they had I think about five children. We’ll have a look around now, at this large room.

Jim: We’re just moving left from the front door into the large living room.

Anne: Yes, which … once upon a time the end room was separate, but over the years the division has been taken off because we have functions here – weddings, dinners, parties and so on, and once a month there’s a ladies’ dinner club meets on the first Tuesday of the month, and we have sixty people seated, and a speaker, and the most delicious dinner. The chandeliers were made within the last fifteen years, I think, by [someone who] was a member of the Duart House committee at the time. And there was a very large double-trunked tree hanging over the lake at the back, and we got the Council to chop it down at vast expense; and he took some of that and made these chandeliers for this room and the hall, and it just makes all the difference to the place. I can’t think of his name for the minute.

Now the paintings you see were done by Thompson Pritchard who was a Havelock man, born in 1878. He studied painting all round the world, and ended up in California. He died in 1962, but in his latter years he decided he’d like some of his work to come back to Havelock, where he’d come from. So he wrote a series of letters to the Council, and eventually twenty paintings came out, and we have I think, fourteen. They’re very good – they’re all insured and alarmed. They all have water in – sea, lakes or rivers – and we’re in the throes of getting the paintings cleaned; we’ve had about four cleaned now, which also is quite expensive.

Well he built the house, Alan McLean, and he was known as Tuki, ’cause he was farming on the land, and that came from the Tukituki River. When he died, and his wife, it became a school for boys and girls for [from] 1915-21. And then the Greenwood family rented it and then leased it until the 1970s when Mr and Mrs Greenwood had died, and the family eventually sold it very reasonably to the Havelock Council, as it was then.

They didn’t at first know what to do with the house; they even thought of moving it, but fortunately a few wise people formed the Duart House Society, and they used to do the garden and the housework, and made curtains and all sorts of things, and lease it. And we have kept on doing that. And nowadays the Council does all the grounds.

We have a resident housekeeper – we made a flat for her upstairs – who does the housework and does the bookings.

Jim: When the McLeans first purchased the property, this would’ve been a fairly open landscape with no trees?

Anne: Bare, and he wanted it left bare, like … the Isle of Mull is bare, which you’ll see pictures of upstairs; he wouldn’t allow his family to make a garden, so they had to wait ’til he died. And he died round about 1902 I think; after drinking too much he fell into the fire here in this room, got badly burnt and died as a result of that.

There are today relatives living, but they’re not interested in Duart House unfortunately; [the] same thing’s happened in Auckland with Alberton; there are Kerr families who are not interested in Alberton either. [Chuckle] Goodness knows why. Well, shall we move on?

[From] time to time our president is very good at getting grants of money from various people, and we have got new carpets downstairs and new tables and chairs in that little room at the end, which are used for functions.

Jim: And curtains?

Anne: Curtains, yes, in the last couple of years.

Jim: The place is very well-presented, isn’t it?

Anne: It is really, yes. Yes, and very well looked after.

Now we can move through into the hallway and the dining room.

Jim: Sometimes known as the Panel Room, I think?

Anne: Yes. Yes, these walls have been very over-varnished, and a few years ago we got an antique restorer to come, who sanded it down over quite a long period and put various antique oils on, and it used to have a beautiful smell for some years, but I think that has gone. As you can see there are more Thompson Pritchard paintings in here.

When we have our dinner club, we come in here first and we have wine, and talk to our friends; and when we go into dinner the committee has seated us, each month in different places. They have a system of moving it round so it doesn’t get cliquey; you’re always meeting new people, which is nice.

And all the furniture in this house is not the original furniture; it’s lent by the Napier Museum. And the pianos – this one belongs to Duart House, but the one in the little front room belonged to music teachers because one of the things that happens here is music exams in the big room, and nobody else but music teachers can use this piano.

Jim: We’re going up the hall and turning left into the music room.

Anne: It’s a few years since I have been to Duart House – but I don’t recall a room on the left. I thought there was one on the right, but I might be getting confused with Larnach Castle – I have been there more recently!

This little room, which is sometimes used for small committee meetings, and other small meetings … I don’t quite know what. There aren’t any Thompson Pritchard paintings in here, but some are by a local artist, Rush, I think. I’m not quite sure which ones.

Jim: I noticed there are sprinklers in every room, so the house is well-protected from fire.

Anne: That’s right, yes it is. And of course it’s been through the 1931 earthquake without any damage.

Now we’re going upstairs … new carpet continues upstairs.

Jim: And these would’ve been the bedrooms for the family in the past?

Anne: That’s right.

Jim: We’re in the hallway upstairs …

Anne: Yes, and on the left there would’ve been two bedrooms; but those are the living room and the bedroom for our caretaker. On the right would’ve been one of the main bedrooms, which we’ve had made into a Victorian sitting room, with more Thompson Pritchard paintings, and various things lent. And this cabinet full of things from India was lent, and now donated, to us by Mrs Lusk, who came out from Canada. But before she came out from Canada she had worked in India with a missionary and his wife; the photo is in there. And somehow she acquired all those things, and she’s left them here, which are interesting to look at.

The machine up top is one of several machines in the collection here …

Jim: Sewing machine?

Anne: Sewing machine. And I looked up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and sewing machines first appeared at the Paris Exhibition of 1860, [and] of course been considerably refined since.

Jim: This is quite a Victorian room, isn’t it, with the rifle over the doorway, and the paintings?

Anne: [The] chaise longue; and I think that may be the lady gliding down from Camelot in that picture, [chuckle] I have been told.

Jim: The spinning wheel …

Anne: And some old bellows. And that piano – it’s almost a spinet; what’s it’s make?

Jim: It’s a Broadwood.

Anne: Yes, so it is. Mmm. [Plays a few notes] Yes, and an old organ that somebody has either donated or left; and an ancient writing desk with a few old things in.

Jim: They were quite wonderful bits of joinery, weren’t they? With the drawers down the side, and the ink stands, and …

Anne: Yes. These old bellows – a lot of children don’t know what bellows are, of course, now. And here’s a New Zealand Chronicle; from … ’Catastrophic Volcanic Eruption in Rotorua Area, Mount Tarawera … June 1886.

Jim: Okay – so that’s of the same era as when this was first built …

Anne: Yes, that’s right. And what’s this book? ’The Haunted Man’; ghost bargain, Pears Annual. [Chuckles]

[I’ve] come across all these children’s clothes; people used to make clothes like that by hand, even when I was young. And they were lent to us, but I don’t know if the owner is still alive … Mitch Tucker … old Montgomery family heirlooms.

Behind you here you’ll see pictures of Duart Castle in Scotland; very bare around it – I suppose there would be the odd bit of heather. And one side goes straight down in to the loch.

Now the James Bond film ’Entrapment’, which you can get on a video – he had made his Burglary Hill headquarters at Duart Castle, so I went to it to see what it looked like. And it’s not very large really, not much larger than this house, I would say. That is the crest of St George’s School underneath.

Jim: That was the school that was here?

Anne: Yes, from 1915 to 1921; and there is [are] some photos of pupils there, and some pictures of the old gardens around … [of] course the gardens have changed a bit over the years. Someone who has been to Duart Castle left us this little book about it.

Jim: So Duart was the home of the ..?

Anne: Of the McLeans. And it is the headquarters of the McLean clan now; and that is the current laird, Lachlan McLean. And it was his grandfather who restored the castle because at the beginning of the twentieth century it was a ruin as a result of battles. And he made it his life’s work to restore it, and it’s now lived in, and people can go round … this is the man who restored it, Sir Fitzroy McLean, 10th Baronet.

Jim: So this is on the Isle of Mull?

Anne: That’s right, yes. And there is a map somewhere here … if they saw ships coming up there they would light a bonfire, so the nearest castle would see, and they’d light a bonfire; and they’d all light bonfires so they’d be warned that possibly enemies were coming – or visitors. [Chuckle] They wouldn’t know.

And there’s a lady in Havelock, Mrs Brown, whose daughter is married to a man who lives on the Isle of Mull; and they know the McLeans, and go there, and she has donated us these photographs. That’s the current Lady McLean; I think that’s the Women’s Rural Institute going to the castle; and that’s Princess Anne and Lady McLean walking along; and that is the grave of Lord McLean … [the] flowers on his grave on the island. And she also gave us this drawing of the castle; and I suppose it’s understandable that he wanted this place not to have a garden, to look a bit like that.

And that up there is the map of all the land he used to have, and now there are only three acres remaining, ’cause after he died land was sold off.

Jim: That’s the Duart Estate in November 1898 …

Anne: Yes, yes. It would be just before he died, I think.

On the left in here is the bedroom; I used to wonder why curtains around four poster beds were for warmth before the days of central heating, but someone suggested to me that they were to prevent vermin falling on people in bed. [Chuckles] Having a roof over them and …   Anyway, and as you’ll see, it’s a bit smaller than modern beds, because people did not grow so tall in those days. Once they came out to this side of the world with the sunshine, and grew their own food and so on, the descendants grew much taller.

Over here we have a copy of a woodcut by Rosa Bonheur who was a French female artist in Paris in the 1860s. She did a lot of drawings of horses, horse fairs and suchlike. And down below is a selection of the sort[s] of things that would be on Victorian dressing tables, including a razor strop …

Jim: Manicure sets …

Anne: That’s right, yes. That’s the razor strop, and that’s to keep your veils in. [chuckle] ’cause they wore them in those days. And there we’ve got a bedside candle, and ’Martin Chuzzlewit’; oh, that’s by Dickens.

Jim: And a bell.

Anne: Yes, to summons the servants. This is quaint, somebody has left us; it’s a dolls’ clothes box … ’To grandmother’s dolls’ clothes box, Aunt May’; one of the Greenwoods. Fancy that! We used to have a drawer full of Victorian underwear, which was of course all made by hand and quite interesting, but I think that belongs to Cary Greenwood and is not here at the minute. We’ve got a bowler hat up here, which you don’t often see.

Jim: Would this be a Scotch chest?

Anne: Quite possibly.

Jim: With the drawers all the way to the top …

Anne: Yes, but you see those in antique places generally, and in England too, although I say all the furniture comes from the Museum in Napier, so … couldn’t answer that one.

Oh, here’s a nightie made by hand …

Jim: A lot of stitchwork in them, wasn’t there?

Anne: Isn’t there? Yes. But of course they had no telephones or cars; they didn’t rush around like we do. And people used to write letters every day, you see, as a way of communicating. My late mother-in-law … every morning after breakfast she sat down and she answered her letters, and you know, she could write the most interesting letter when she hadn’t been out of the house for three weeks, about all sorts of things [chuckles] that she’d seen through the window, and …

Now next door on the left is the nursery; and a beautiful ball dress from the Museum on the left, too; and an old-fashioned cot. I should think it could’ve been quite dangerous – [the] child might’ve got its head stuck through some of the …

Jim: Frames in it?

Anne: And there’s some old books behind here; now my old half-brothers used to have those Chums Annuals and things like that – had quite good adventure stories in.

Jim: Chums, and BOPs – Boys’ Own Papers …

Anne: That’s right.

Jim: And the old paintbox.

Anne: I had a paintbox like that once, did you?

Jim: Yes, I did. And of course a wonderful highchair here that would collapse into a rocker.

Anne: Yes. Now we’ll go down to the last room on the left, which [movement noise on recording] … collection of genetic [genealogical] material. An ex-member of our Duart House committee, his hobby was genetic [genealogical] work, and he asked if he could store his things here. So this is all the …

Jim: Genealogies …

Anne: Genealogies of the families …

Jim: I’m looking at one here – ’The Genealogy of Families’ – James Franklin and Elizabeth Mary; Phoebe and [?] Francis Richard; Maria and William Edmond …

Anne: And this is Knapp and Simmons. He’s Mr Simmons, I think. I think his wife might’ve been Knapp, and there’s all this beautiful china from there.

Jim: Yep – Simmons Trust …

Anne: Simmons; Mr Simmons …

Jim: On loan to the Society.

Anne: Yes, well he’s now in Summerset Hospital, but he’s still … All these old photos are from local farms and suchlike; not all named, unfortunately. This behind us, I always think is particularly interesting; Doctor Reeve who died recently [at] just under a hundred – his father was also a doctor in the Gisborne area, and he had this portable operating table made to take round in his buggy so he wouldn’t have to strain his back working on low beds.

These are photos of early settlers … two Nairns. I used to wonder why old photographs were always so serious, and someone explained the cameras in the old days – you had to keep absolutely still for several minutes for the photograph to be taken; and also, an artist said to me that you get more idea of character from a serious face than from a laughing one. And that’s an interesting point, because nowadays all salespeople have to have smiling photographs taken, don’t they?

Jim: Yes.

Anne: Here we’ve got … there’s a bit supposed to be out of an American spacecraft; various bits and pieces that various people have left us. There is another section downstairs out at the back, which isn’t strictly speaking Duart, though it’s here and it’s all the sort[s] of things that used to be used in wash houses and houses generally, and farm machinery and so on from the early 1920s.

Jim: And that’s the Dorward Museum, downstairs out the back of the house?

Anne: Yes, yes, yes – Bill Dorward … he’s no longer on the planet … he left that.

Oh, then there’s the tower; a lot of Victorian houses had a tower to get a slightly better view, and if you climb up there there is really a lovely view out to Napier and the mountains. And someone once said to me, “Oh, it’s like Switzerland, isn’t it?” But that’s really the main part of Duart.

Jim: It would’ve been a magnificent view when it was first built.

Anne: Yes, it would.

Jim: And now with the trees, it’s lost some of the …

Anne: Mmm, but you can still see the mountains and Napier.

Jim: You can.

Anne: The Council looks after the house very well, and does any repairs that are needed.

Jim: So it’s owned by the Council, but it’s tenanted by the Duart [House] Society?

Anne: Yes. And we make a certain amount of money, but not a fortune; and succeeding mayors are quite happy for us to go along like that, rather than turn it into a bed and breakfast or business place or anything, ‘cause it has great value to keep it as it is – it is the only historic house that is open locally. And the garden is always open, to be roamed around, and there is a lake at the back too, where sometimes there are swans on the lake.

Jim: And I notice that the house is open on a Sunday morning on the first Sunday of the month?

Anne: That’s right, yes, and if you have visitors staying, it’s quite good to bring them here. [Chuckle]

Jim: Anne, thank you for your time this afternoon …

Anne: Been a pleasure.

Jim: I really enjoyed looking around with you.

Anne: Thank you very much.