111-year-old Whanganui building on the way to Stratford to become family home

A 100-plus-year-old house is being prepared to be moved from Whanganui East to Stratford. Photo / Bevan Conley

A historic Whanganui house is being prepared to make the journey from Whanganui East to Stratford after the building’s owner gave it away for free.

Dean Butler owns the 330-square metre building and said it was originally built in 1912. It was a farmhouse at first before being used as a retirement home.

In the 1980′s, it was converted into four rental flats before finally becoming a one-bedroom rental for the last 10 years.

Butler has owned the property for two years and had been looking for a way to free up the land the building sits on, as it had begun to fall into disrepair and had sat empty for the last year and a half.

“The house is just too big for its section, basically, and it did have a lot of neglect in it. It did have good flooring and a new roof - that’s about it.”

It was estimated the cost of demolition for the house would be around $50,000.

“I’d rather give it away than demolish it,” Butler said.

“I advertised it as ‘free to take away’.”

Eventually, a couple from Stratford agreed to take it off Butler’s hands.

Since then, the couple has been doing the necessary paperwork to get the house from Whanganui East to Stratford, where they plan to renovate it and turn it into their family home.

“They’re a couple with two daughters, and they’ve been living in a tiny little flat for the last year and a half,” Butler said.

Due to the building’s size, getting it ready for the move to Stratford has been an involved process, with the roof having to be taken off in two pieces to pass height restrictions and the building itself being broken up into three pieces.

The parts of the building will be heading up to Stratford this week, with its new owners keen to start work.

With the nearly 1000sq m property free of the building, Butler said he plans on dividing it up into two sections to sell on to housing developers.

“I’ll subdivide it and there’ll be two good sections to build on. They won’t be cramped, they’ll be just under 500sq m each.”

The sections were ideal for the major builders in the city, he said.

Finn Williams is a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle. He joined the Chronicle in early 2022 and regularly covers stories about business, events and emergencies. He also enjoys writing opinion columns on whatever interests him.