Fairholme homestead to be auctioned
Built in 1869 by Sawmiller Thomas Baigent, Fairholme has only come up for sale once before in its 143 year history. Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
The “Grand Old Lady” homestead of East Takaka, Fairholme, will be offered for auction on 19 November, in only the second time it has come up for sale in its 143-year history.
One of the joint family owners and current occupier of the house, Victoria Westerink, said it hadn’t been a case of wanting to sell the family home, but she had needed to come to a settlement with her siblings, Kim and Dale.
Their late parents, Merrin and Ben Westerink, fulfilled their dream in 1986 when they purchased Fairholme (also known as the Baigent homestead) for $100,000 at public auction.
“It was mum’s dream in particular to own it, and she waited 10 years for the house to come up after it became vacant. It was in such poor repair when we moved in, but mum’s renovation endeavours over the next 20 years, along with some very creative gardening, transformed the place into something highly liveable.”
The spacious 10-room house, which includes two bedrooms (one with ensuite) upstairs and three below, is finely sited on a slight slope at the very end of the seal along the East Takaka straight, and overlooks the Takaka Valley. It currently carries a Category 2 rating with the Historic Places Trust, and comes with two hectares of rambling gardens bulging with East Takaka history. A brick oven bakery can still be seen remarkably intact in an outside shed, and even the original horse stables are sturdy.
On the advice of film-maker Gaylene Preston, Merrin preserved what remained of the old East Takaka Post Office, which was based at Fairholme between 1903 and 1919. It is now an artistic façade in the garden. She also “planted” many artworks around the grounds, including many carved Oamaru stone and ferro-cement installations that can be seen today. The soaring specimen trees that also define the property include four prominent Douglas Firs, oak trees, magnolias, rhododendrons and sprawling walnuts, along with an “old varieties” orchard with plums “to die for” and an 80-year-old, heavily fruiting persimmon growing through the deck.
Constructed almost entirely out of borer-resistant heart totara, with mortise and tenon timber joints a feature of the workmanship throughout, the house was built by sawmiller Thomas and Alice Baigent in 1869, and was extended in 1900 as their family grew. Their third child, Eva Alice Baigent, never married and lived at Fairholme for 102 years, only shifting to the Joan Whiting Rest Home after a fall, and died there aged 105. On behalf of the family that had occupied it for 135 years, Eva’s nephew Ray Baigent put the house up for auction in 1986. The event attracted over 200 registered bidders, most coming for the contents of the house and sheds, which were offered separately in 600 lots.
A Nelson Evening Mail story of that day described the bidding, which was conducted in a social atmosphere in the front grounds of the house. The Women’s Division of Federated Farmers was kept busy serving cups of tea and sandwiches during the six-hour sale, which raised an additional $26,000.
Not long after Merrin moved in, she opened the two front rooms of the house as an art gallery, extending that to an upstairs room in 1991. Under the Westerinks’ ownership, the space hosted many art events, including sculpture symposiums and Bay Art. Merrin’s son, Dale, who now lives across the road on 10 hectares subdivided off the homestead, said it was sad to see the homestead go.
“But it’s also time to move on, let someone else take it to a new level. There’ll be another family out there who will make a great go of this grand old place that was once our home. We used to get people randomly calling in and saying, ‘What a great old place. If you’re ever selling...’. It was a real privilege to live there for the years that we did.”
Fairholme will be viewable in a series of weekend open days leading up the auction, starting from Labour Weekend.
Gerard Hindmarsh
