Five Central Otago heritage farm buildings dating from 1864 have been rebuilt and restored with roof rust and quirks retained to show they have stood for more than a century.
Sometimes, the wonky, wavy or rusty is wanted, in an historic sort of way.
NZX-listed Winton Land owns the 160-year-old Ayrburn hospitality precinct in Waterfall Park beside Millbrook Resort, its new precinct opened on December 9 and where it is in the process of spending $200m-plus but is only 20 per cent done.
Limewashed schist stone exteriors, blackened steel and stained vertical cedar and beech are hallmarks of the buildings on the 60ha farm which Winton chief executive Chris Meehan said is one of the earliest in the area and which he bought from the late Adrian Burr.
Simon Glass, Cook Brothers Construction business development director, said that the business started work on some of the buildings in October 2021.
Glass lives near Ayrburn and is Queenstown-based “so it’s a job I visited quite a bit during construction. It’s a fascinating job. I don’t get to a lot of our jobs often, but because it’s an amazing development, I went there often.”
Many Cook staff had worked at Ayrburn in the last three years, up to “40 of our own people but we have around 80 people working for us in Queenstown”.
The builders and other tradies worked to plans by Sutherland Architecture Studio and heritage advisors. Glass said these were essential in the work which has preserved as much original material as possible.
Some parts of buildings were demolished and then rebuilt. Walls are schist stone with a cement and sandstone mortar with limestone blended into that which gives it that light colour.
Plans for the deconstruction and reconstruction were to honour the buildings’ historical significance, Glass said.
Buildings were surveyed and then foundations were created, in some cases by digging down, although Glass said other methods were used.
New concrete pads were also poured around existing walls and those walls were then tied into the new pads with steel. That steel is visible in interiors but is incorporated into the fit-outs. Then, in the case of The Woolshed and The Manure room, the steel runs up to the roof and holds the pitch of the roof up.
Lasers mapped features like the sag in rooftops to ensure changes mirrored the old.
Rooves, for example, are now three layers, but made to look like they were never altered:
Reuse of existing materials was paramount and the buildings were mapped and catalogued so that various stone, shingle, timber floorboards and columns or beams, were either restored in situ or returned to their original locations.
Work to about 70 per cent of the original schist walls was designed and completed so they could remain.
Meehan said Southland farms yielded older materials needed for the work.
“All the older buildings - we’ve basically had to take them apart piece by piece to get them up to the earthquake code, then put them back together again. We’ve been very careful to use all the original material and in some cases, we didn’t have enough of those. We’ve run around Southland, down at Winton where I was born and other places to buy old woolsheds and old barns.
“Some of these farmers must have thought we were bonkers when we turned up to buy the old corrugate sheds which had been decrepit for years.
“We took that material - timber, iron, old widows - and put them into Ayrburn.”
Glass said work, included significant underpinning, repointing of the stone walls and installing through bolts connected to pattress plates.
New structural elements have been hidden or incorporated into designs so they looked like they were part of the original.
If new materials were needed, they were either selected based on being easily distinguished as new like black steel, or the same species of timber, based on analysis of original timber species.
Built from local schist stone, with floorboards refurbished and reinstated. Has a central steel-clad fireplace and outdoor fireplace, Southland beech ceiling linings, reused and repurposed corrugated iron and a collection of harvested and repurposed timber claddings along with a cobbled timber floor in the bar area.
The lean-to side of this building facing Mill Creek was demolished and rebuilt but made to look old, Glass said.
“We took three-quarters of this building down and rebuilt it. We surveyed the roof line which sagged over the years and then rebuilt the new roof with the steel structure back to the same shape it used to be,” Glass said.
The original cart shed is built into the earth bank and has original timber posts and beams.
The old farm’s local drinking spot is now a wine bar selling Ayrburn’s locally produced wine. The ‘Leaner Bar’ is made from burgundy marble with a red leather curtain backdrop with an illuminated cloud light.
The building’s name is from the early 1900s when Australia banned manure exportation around the same time New Zealand had prohibition. Ayrburn owner William Paterson converted a spare barn into a manure stockpile building, then used that seemingly undesirable space to store alcohol, knowing the smell would deter people.
Another company, The Builders, did the restoration of this building named after former farm owner the late Adrian Burr. Glass said work there was similar to what his company has done elsewhere.
This is a small cocktail bar with an external terrace and fireplace and a potbelly inside. It was the first residence of settler William Paterson and his family.
More recently it was a utility shed but now has flamboyant decor. Giant clamps were used to hold schist walls together while new foundations were dug.
“We just strengthened this building and did seismic strengthening. The interior is all lined and tiled, like milk bars. It got new windows and door but all to look how it was,” Glass said.
The boutique ice creamery is another restored historic stone building. Now internally clad in indigo painted tile work depicting the old scenes from the Paterson family’s journey to and settlement at Ayrburn.
This is a new building, Glass said, partly built into the ground but the entrance above ground.
“We piled into the hill, dug it out, built the new concrete building there then put the dirt back over the top to make it look hidden into the hill, like the barrel rooms you see in France.”
New building under construction by Cook Brothers to be a bakery, deli, florist, butchery and pizzeria. Like the Barrell Room, this is designed to look old and is being built with the same materials as the original buildings.
A project being carried out by The Builders, restoring the original 1860s U-shaped wooden farmhouse built by Scottish settler William Paterson. It is yet to be finished, so is not listed as in the group of five already restored buildings.
The Herald visited Ayrburn courtesy of Winton Land.
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