This text that follows is the content of the attached PDF.
The section on which Te Whanau Private Hospital is sited is part of suburban section 62 of 15 acres of the Horowhenua Block also known as The Levin Village Settlement, Township of Levin. The sections were open for selection by ballot in 1889. The prices per acre were $8 to $10, slightly more on deferred payment.
[Left is a picture of the house as it looked during the second world war.]
Mr Henry William Hope was the first owner in February 1890. It was sold to Mrs Emma Brignell Ostler in 1891 and sold to Mrs Minnie Martha Hudson in 1892.
The section must have been fully paid for originally to have changed hands so often. On deferred payment residential qualification and improvements were required to hold the land.
Mrs Mary Ann Bowen, mother of the later famed Miss Emma Bowen, bought the section in 1902. She sold seven acres off the rear and the front eight acres to Mr Valentine Thomas Hitchings later in 1903.
There is no record of a dwelling being on this section up to this time unless it was of a small or temporary nature.
Built after 1903
On local knowledge Mr Hitchings built the main part of the house some time after 1903 but probably not long after. He was what was then termed ‘a retired English gentleman’.
Mr Charles Welby remembers passing the house early in the century and seeing the land being prepared for the front lawn with a horse drawn roller. The horses had thick padding on their hooves to prevent the soil being kicked up.
In 1917 Mrs Helen Gorringe bought the property. Her husband, Frank, and his brother, owned a large area of land in the Mangaweka district which they had cleared of bush earlier. She had the tower room built over the maid’s room which led off the north end of the verandah as a sewing and observation room.
Mrs Nan Erskine (nee Taplin) had been told in earlier years that Mrs Gorringe at certain times of the day waved to Mrs Eliza Shaw in her house in Queenwood Rd now Martino’s Catering Lounge. The area between the two houses had less houses than now.
In 1939 Mr Alexander Walter Parton bought the property of five acres and the house. Mrs Gorringe sold the other three acres on the east side in 1940.
Mr Parton had a career as a sanitary inspector in earlier years and had been sanitary inspector in Canberra, Australia. This role would have helped him in later years in finalising Levin’s sewerage scheme. He was a poultry farmer in a small way.
Elected to council
He was elected to the Levin Borough Council in 1944. He was a strong advocate of the unimproved rating system. The system of rating was then on capital value. This meant that any building and the section were valued for rating purposes. Bare land even with a house on a large block of land was rated low. There were many blocks of land from one to 20 acres with and without houses on them. A few cows would be milked on them either by the owner or rented out for milking on.
There was no incentive when the rates were low on land to subdivide into house sections which as Levin was expanding were badly needed.
The unimproved value rating system on land only was adopted in Mr Parton’s first term. He was elected to the council again in 1947. The new system of rating had been justified by the greater number of sections available.
Mr Parton stood for Mayor in 1947 but was not successful, but was in 1950. He strongly pushed for the sewerage system. This had been in the planning stages for several years but it had its stops and starts. Mr Parton had the honour of digging the first sod of the system in 1953 (with a mechanical digger).
Mrs Margaret Gordon (nee Parton) has related stories of the house. During the last war under the Emergency Precaution Scheme (formed in case the Japanese invaded N.Z.) the house was designated as a surgical hospital with the fowl houses also to be used as wards.
Mrs Bowen’s large house on the west side (now the east side of Karaka Crescent) was to be the maternity hospital. The women’s section of the E.P.S. had prepared large quantities of surgical dressings.
In 1940 the Levin Player Readers had a reading on the lawn on tarpaulins borrowed from the railway station.
When the Partons arrived on the property they were puzzled by the strange fruit growing on a pergola. These were Chinese gooseberries (kiwifruit). The feijoas also puzzled them. The property was named then Green Gates.
There was a further subdivision bringing the area of the property to about three acres. The property was sold to Mrs Agnes Murray Taplin in 1947.
Mrs Nan Erskine (nee Taplin) of Taupo has described the property. The curving drive came in from the east side (now flats) to in front of the house then round the west side to an asphalted area behind the house, said to have been used for washing horse vehicles. The drive was lined with daffodils. There were 13 outside doors and she said it was like being a jailer going round at night checking they were locked. There was a very large kitchen in the house. A tennis court was on the east side of the house.
There were more subdivisions in 1955 and 1957 bringing the area to slightly under ¾ of an acre. Some boarders were kept at first by the Taplins and then five flats were rented with communal services and laundry in a large shed at the rear.
[Left is a view taken from Miss Bowen's house on the west side about 1950.]
A syndicate bought the property in 1973 and installed service rooms on the verandahs without altering the main rooms.
Mr David Stuart Cairns bought it in 1983 and is altering it to be a private hospital.
There were originally about 11 rooms in the house of 4000 square feet. There were verandahs on either side at the middle of the sides which have had rooms extended into them or new rooms built in now. There is a wide entrance foyer with a ceiling of stained timber with the boards angling in from the four sides. The central wide hall leads on to what was originally the service area and now to the hospital service area.
Originally there were five chimneys for fireplaces and stove. These had their tops knocked off in an earthquake in the early 1940s and were later removed. In the hall are two wooden archways. The stud is over eleven feet. There are bay windows in the two front rooms. The old windows are of the slide up and down type and most of these have been retained.
Matai flooring and Rimu framing are in this house. The interior four-panelled kauri doors and wide skirting boards have been retained. The exterior cladding is of old rusticating type. The roof is of corrugated iron and formed of a complicated gable type. A tower of two storeys is on the north west corner.
At the rear-yard is a large building originally a coach house and stables, later being garages, etc. It has now been renovated for laundry purposes.
Except for the rear part of the house which is fitted out as hospital service rooms and that ceiling and walls have been relined, painted and papered much of the old character of the house has been preserved.
Handwritten note at the bottom of the article; “Omitted, Agnes Taplin sold to John Green 1956. Sold to syndicate Norman Nicol + Selwyn Spicer 1973. Then to David Cairns.”
Thanks to Mrs Gordon, Mrs Erskine, Mrs Rowlinson and Mr David Cairns for help in research.
