Stansfield House (Former) is a refined two-storey Arts and Crafts timber-and-shingle style house, occupying a prominent corner site on Arney Road in Auckland’s fashionable suburb of Remuera. It was constructed for Ida and Harry Stansfield in 1913, at a time that Arney Road was considered ‘the most elegant residential thoroughfare in Remuera’. The residence is a major and substantial design by the well-known architectural partnership of Bamford and Pierce, a practice responsible for a number of other important Auckland residences including Coolangata (1912) - a notable Remuera dwelling demolished in 2006. Noel Bamford and Hector Pierce both trained in the office of the renowned English architect, Edwin Lutyens, an experience that is said to have been highly influential on their future careers.

Remuera has been associated with the settlement of rich and successful Aucklanders since the middle of the nineteenth century. From about 1900, the palatial houses of the wealthiest settlers of the 1800s made room for the smaller, but often grander townhouses of the city’s commercial and professional élite. During the 1880s, the site of Stansfield House was occupied by well-known solicitor Robert Browning and his wife Kate (nee Buckland). In 1912, part of the Browning property was sold to Ida Stansfield. Ida’s husband, Harry Stansfield, was a highly skilled mining engineer.

As designed by Bamford and Pierce, Stansfield House had an L-shaped plan. It was clad with weatherboards on its lower storey, shingles on the upper storey and Marseille tiles on its sloping roofs. The ground floor contained three reception rooms, each with a fireplace, behind which ran a corridor or gallery. A rounded portico, with a small verandah above, marked the front entrance. The house was orientated to the north to maximise views of scenic Rangitoto Island from its drawing room, open verandahs, principal bedrooms, and sleeping porch set in its sloping roof. A service wing at the rear created a semi-courtyard, and contained the kitchen and laundry, with servant’s bedroom above. The residence also incorporated a large garden.

The design exhibits similarities to a number of other Bamford and Pierce houses. Although of similar scale to the former Coolangatta, Stansfield House - with its sweeping roofs, large gables and exterior treatment - is more cottage-like. A large rounded bay window in the drawing room and the ‘Juliet balconies’ were similar to those in the house designed for Dr Alexander Kinder in Parnell. The Stansfield house was recognised as architecturally important soon after its completion: it featured in the Building Progress in 1914, and in the Ladies Mirror in 1922.

In 1928, the property was purchased by Isabella Whitelaw, a single woman. In 1931 Isabella sold the house to her sister Enid, who was also unmarried. After 1940, the house passed through other owners, including the major Pacific trader Alexander Bell Donald junior, who owned the property between 1953 and 1978. Alterations were made in the 1950s-1960s, and again in the 1980s. More recent modifications have included the removal of the rounded portico; and construction of a substantial two-storey extension (to the north), a new garage and porte cochere and the reversal of a number of earlier changes - open verandahs have been reinstated on the ground and first floors.

In 2015, the house remained in use as a private dwelling.