Renovation work in historic Whanganui apartments uncovers glimpse into building’s past

Trudy Reeves at the Braeburn Apartments with the hidden coal range found behind one of the buildings walls. Photo / Bevan Conley

Renovation work at the historic Whanganui Braeburn Apartments has unveiled a time capsule from the building’s past.

Building owners Trudy Reeves and Scott Phillips were working in one of the building’s ground-floor apartments and found a more than 100-year-old coal range sealed away behind one of the walls.

Reeves said they had been curious about the source of a strange smell coming from inside the apartment and wanted to pull down the hardboard wall covering it as it was aesthetically unappealing.

“It was certainly a shock to have been renovating and finding that on the inside,” she said.

Along with the range were a boiler to the side and a drying rack hanging over it, with meat hooks still dangling from the rack.

The range was most likely put in the room when the building was constructed in 1915 as the Braeburn Hotel, meaning it would be 108 years old.

The discovery had left Reeves with questions on how the giant cast iron cooker had been put in the building in the first place.

“Did they build the building around this? How did they even get it in from the road?” she said.

There were even more secrets hidden inside the stove, as its compartments had been filled with random objects from the time when it was covered up.

Those objects included newspapers, shoeboxes, cigarette packages and an empty box of Cadbury Roses chocolates, all of which were preserved by being hidden within the range.

Some of the items found in the hidden coal range. Photo / Bevan Conley.

According to the newspapers left in the range, it had been hidden away since 1963.

Reeves said it would have boarded up in an effort to make as many rooms as possible within the building.

“They just threw things in there and boarded it up,” she said.

Whanganui Regional Museum’s archivist Sandi Black had gone to the building with the museum’s collections manager Trish Nugent-Lyne to examine the range and said it was an incredible find.

“The find was somewhat out of the blue and a pretty interesting story that it was just covered up [and] hidden behind a wall,” Black said.

After taking a look at it, she was sure the range was original to the building and would have been used to cook food for the guests staying at the hotel.

“It’s massive ... so we’re thinking that that was used to cook all the food on.”

Fortuitously the museum had recently acquired the first guest book from the Braeburn and, from it, they could confirm the hotel opened on November 1, 1915, and served breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Black said it was in great condition for its age which was due to it being sealed off so well.

“It was decommissioned some time ago, but because it was boxed off so nicely there wasn’t all that much accrual of dirt on there, it was a bit dusty and a couple of pieces had chipped off but on the whole, it was still pretty good,” Black said.

Due to its size, the museum had no plans to add the range to its collection, but staff had taken photos of it and would add them to the archives, which Black was grateful for.

“It’s all part of building the picture of what was going on, so now we can add the coal range to that too,” she said.

Reeves said she and Phillips had no plans to get rid of the range and weren’t sure if it could be removed given the part of the building it was in.

Instead, they wanted to clean it up and turn it into a centrepiece or console for the apartment.