KEY POINTS:
52 HINEMOA STREET,
BIRKENHEAD POINT
It has surveyed the land and waterscapes from Herne Bay around to Little Barrier Island and across to the Coromandel Peninsula for more than 120 years. Even so, there's not a great deal that Deirdre and Roger Marbeck don't know about the history of their home.
Although the chatelaine hasn't discovered a photograph of the house as it first appeared to Birkenhead Point residents in 1884, she does have copies of early library photographs of the then scantily populated locale, a mass of pictures of the house's transitions at the hands of its last three families, including hers, and the For Sale advertisement from the NZ Herald of November 23, 1909, in which early owner, Edward Skeates of Skeates Bros Jewellers, Queen Street, identifies Birkenhead as "that BEAUTIFUL, SUNNY and HEALTHY MARINE SUBURB" and declares the outlook from his English-style home to be "one of the loveliest from any PRIVATE RESIDENCE IN THE WORLD".
How could Mr Skeates part with such a gem? He had decided to build "further back in the country", although the then chez Skeates was virtually a rural retreat, furnished with stables, two paddocks and a large orchard. The property, his ad suggests, would make an ideal gentleman's or convalescent home, high-class boarding establishment or ladies' college.
The price was £3300, or £2500 without the paddocks.
Last century, the house had a few frights: it was converted into nine flats in the 1940s and advertised "for sale or demolition" in the 1970s. Without robust local opposition, it could have been replaced with a multi-storey apartment block. It has lost its original tower but clung to a fair-sized chunk of its land - big garden, extensive lawns, off-street parking for at least six (plus a double garage) - and it's never looked so good.
Sunlit, high-ceilinged, equipped with four bedrooms and three living rooms, it has been home for a decade to Roger, third and final generation of the Marbecks record shop ownership (sold last year), Deirdre, their three children and German shepherd, Guinness. But their plans to extend and reconfigure it were slow to pass through council and, by the time they were approved, the week the house went on the market, a child had left home and the others wouldn't be there for too much longer.
Their alterations have been cosmetic. A previous owner spent 10 years restoring it from a warren of flats to a family home, making the original downstairs ballroom, now a formal drawing room, his living quarters while he did so. The Marbecks, who had admired the house when they lived nearby, bought it from its subsequent owners in solid, perfectly habitable condition. They've repainted, removed a drawing room wall, stripped and polished the kauri boards on floors and the handmade, hung kauri staircase that curves from its base between the drawing room and master bedroom and its adjoining lounge up to the family room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and three bedrooms, each of which opens to a balcony.
A rear staircase connects the kitchen with the downstairs laundry. They've added extra french doors, period fire surrounds, a custom-made front door with leadlight panels of Art Deco design and an outdoor seating area nestled among mature trees. Deirdre has planted cottage garden borders, a lush vegetable garden and climbing roses.
And, she says, her home is marvellously central: reached via the first motorway off-ramp across the bridge. There's a ferry and boat ramp at the bottom of the street and it's handy to supermarkets, schools and Birkenhead Village's cafes and shops.
