Jackie Gillies + Associates initially prepared a Conservation Plan for all nine buildings on the property, followed by a re-use analysis and proposals for repair and re-instatement of the original guest house use in Paradise House.

We have beeen involved in the conservation project for several years and the opening of the guesthouse was the culmination of much had work by Jackie Gillies + Associates and others. The pictorial set that accompanies this article illustrates the difference that many years hard work have given to this building.

Paradise House is located some 20km beyond Glenorchy on the edge of Mount Aspiring National Park. It was originally built as a retirement home for New Zealand’s first architect, William Mason, in 1883.

The building was subsequently run as an early tourist guest house, it has remained a focal point for wilderness-based holidays and retreats. Paradise House is one of nine Category I registered NZHPT buildings on the property, which is now operated by the Paradise Trust, following the death of Dave Miller in 1998.

The winter weather of 2009 brought about a series of slips from the road edge down into the canyon below. The natures of two of these slips, where a portion of the road’s width was carried off, led to emergency maintenance being commissioned. An archaeological investigation was necessary during this maintenance.

At both sites, the cliff face that rises from the road surface does not rise perpendicular to the road, rather at an angle of 40° back from the vertical. Trickles of water coming down these slopes are a permanent feature. The slope of the cliffs are a natural phenomenon rather than one created by 19th c. road engineers and appear to be made of a harder packed schist than the vertical cliffs that surround both sites. However, it is evident that in the case of one of the slip sites it appears that a large portion of schist that made up the cliff above the slip area parted company with the mountainside, possibly causing the winter 2009 damage to the road.

The artefactual material recorded on this site shows that several attempts had been made in the recent past to ameliorate erosion damage to the wall in this section.

On initial observation these efforts were indicated by the presence of three lengths of iron of about 2 meters in length; these blade-shaped objects have been identified as coming from a recent type of road-grading machine. Two of these were in-situ on a line with the base of the existing wall, the third had fallen out with the slip.

There were further attempts. A railway iron, almost certainly a vestige of the line of telegraph poles, whose construction began in the 19th c., that ran down the gulley to Skippers, was uncovered running along the width of the slip above the grader-bars. The text stamped to this railway iron identifies it as having been made by the Barrow Haematite Steel Co. Ltd. of Barrow-in-Furness, in the northwest of England, possibly in 1904. By the mid-1870s this steelworks at Barrow was the largest in the world. The stamp indicates the grade of steel weighing 56lbs of steel per yard, putting the total approximate weight of the artefact at 127kg.

Further investigation revealed that above this railway-iron, further attempts had been made to prevent slippage by the insertion of iron rods into the hillside. It is possible in older photographs to identify many more of these rods running the width of what would become the slip area. The three rods that survived the 2009 slip were bound to each other and the rock of the hillside by metal wire.

Once the remaining portion of the road surface was scraped away by maintenance machinery, it became quickly clear that the level road terrace created by the original road engineers in c. 1888 at other parts of the road did not apply to this site. When partially cleaned up, the well defined edge of a cut into the bedrock becomes evident. The cut gradually tapers from its widest point at road level (a radius of about 2.2m from the centre of the slip), down to about 1m radius at the lowest level that the mechanical digger could reach.

This cut, which was behind the now missing retaining wall is likely to have been a geological anomaly in the country that the road was to pass over, requiring a retaining wall with a fill to bring the level up to a parallel with the road. However, the nuances of the unstable schist, led to an accelerated erosion at this point, with much of the original fill being washed out, leading to subsidence and a gradual failure of the dry stone wall; this would have precipitated the unsuccessful attempts in the 20th c. to provide stability with the materials recorded at this site. Finally, the loose schist above the site was washed down in the winter rains of 2009, carrying any remnants of the wall with it.

The brief was to repair and restore the exterior of the building in such a way that it retained all its aged features while creating a totally contemporary interior.

The bays of the seven horse stalls were used as the basis for any subdivision of the interior space and numerous original features such as the posts and beams as well as saddle racks were retained.

The two lean-to additions at each end were too badly decayed to retain, but their footprint and form were re-instated to provide new bedrooms and bathrooms.

In November 2009, Jackie Gillies’s design was selected for an NZIA local award for a heritage building conversion.

More detailed information on the award can be found here.

The building was subsequently run as an early tourist guest house, it has remained a focal point for wilderness-based holidays and retreats. Paradise House is one of nine Category I registered NZHPT buildings on the property, which is now operated by the Paradise Trust, following the death of Dave Miller in 1998.

Jackie Gillies + Associates initially prepared a Conservation Plan for all nine buildings on the property, followed by a re-use analysis and proposals for repair and re-instatement of the original guest house use in Paradise House.

As of November 2009, remedial work on the buildings has been completed and some decoration to the interior has commenced.

Conservation and repair works were designed in close consultation with NZ HPT, and work started on site in early 2009. It is the intention of the Trust to carry out conservation work to all 9 buildings on a phased basis going forward.

The farm and its lands were at the centre of the disastrous Fruitlands Estate orcharding  enterprise which ran from c. 1915 to the end of the 1920s.

On the date of its registration by the NZ Historic Places Trust, February 2009, the HPT described the farm and its buildings as having  ‘aesthetic, archaeological, architectural, historical, and technological significance. Its outstanding setting and place in the landscape makes it a special local landmark.’

Many of the buildings are in a very parlous state and Jackie Gillies & Associates is developing plans for their conservation and eventual re-use. As of November 2009, a conservation plan is due to be produced. Meanwhile design concepts and measured plans are being developed.

The building has continued to play a central role in Dunedin city life to this day, hosting a wide variety of events and gatherings.

The Town Hall is a beautiful example of the neoclassical style and retains an impressive number of original features, including ‘Norma’ the concert organ (a public favourite).

Modifications to the building are now necessary in order for it to function as a modern entertainment venue, and Jackie Gillies + Associates has worked closely with the design architects and with DCC in order to find a solution that allows the heritage values of the Town Hall to be retained and highlighted.

A Conservation Plan was produced initially, followed by a Heritage Impact Assessment, and Jackie Gillies + Associates continues to be involved with the project on a consultancy basis.

Once designs for the new building were finalised, an archaeological assessment had to be made for the NZHPT to issue an authority to disturb, damage or destroy potential 19th century features. In November 2009 Jackie Gillies + Associates produced this archaeological report on the 19th and 20th century history of this site for submission to the HPT.