The colonial cottage located at 9 Bruce Terrace (on the corner of Aubrey Street and Bruce Terrace), Akaroa, is one of two neighbouring cottages built in the mid-1850s by early Akaroa settler and hotelier, Captain James Bruce, for his extended family. The cottage pairing is considered to be among some of Akaroa’s most important historic groupings. The cottage has aesthetic, architectural, cultural and historical significance.

Akaroa Harbour is a large, long harbour on the southern coast of Horomaka/Te Pātaka-a-Rākaihautū (Banks Peninsula). Tuhiraki (Mount Bossu) is the kō (digging stick) of the famous Waitaha explorer Rākaihautū. Akaroa was occupied by iwi such as Hāwea, Waitaha, Rapuwai, and Kāti Māmoe prior to the southern Kāi Tūhaitara migration to Canterbury. Te Ake was one of several Ngāi Tahu tūpuna (ancestors) who claimed land during this migration, placing his tokotoko at the head of the harbour. Akaroa continues to be a renowned mahinga kai (food-gathering area) for the local Kāi Tahu hapū based at the small kāika of Ōnuku which is located just to the south of Paka Ariki, Akaroa township.

By the early nineteenth century, Akaroa Harbour had become a favourite port of call for whaling ships. French whaler, Jean François Langlois became involved in land transactions in the area in the late 1830s, which eventually lead to the founding of the Nanto-Bordelaise Company and ultimately, in August 1840, French (and some German) settlers from the Comte de Paris landing at Paka Ariki/Akaroa. While the British had already annexed New Zealand by the time the settlers arrived, most stayed on and settled in the area. In the 1840s, the northern part of Akaroa was known as the ‘French Town’, while the southern part was the ‘English Town’. The latter was where Dundee-born former whaler James Bruce decided to establish one of Akaroa’s earliest hotels (Bruce’s Hotel, early 1840s) and settle both himself and eventually the family of his late sister, the Donnets. John Donnet (also spelt Donnett), a cooper and seafarer, had married Bruce’s sister, Margaret, in Scotland. In 1855, after Margaret’s death, the widowed Donnet and his five daughters and a son-in-law emigrated to join Bruce in Akaroa. Bruce had two identical cottages built on his town sections 75 and 76 in the mid-1850s, one for Donnet’s married daughter (Bruce’s niece), Isabella and her husband, engineer William Fogie Bruce (no relation) and the other for John Donnet and his other daughters. It would appear that this cottage (List No. 1722) was the one occupied by Isabella and William Bruce, since it was conveyed to them in 1860.

Situated on the corner of Aubrey Street and Bruce Terrace, fronting Aubrey Street, the original timber cottage, consisting of four rooms (two up, two down) with lean-to is still readable, but has been altered over time with the early addition of bullnosed verandah, a relocated timber addition to the south and smaller timber addition to the north. Like many other early Akaroa cottages, including its neighbour to the east, a notable feature of the original cottage, is the steeply pitched (now corrugated steel-clad) roof with a sharp triangular cross-gable (called a fronton in French) that is flush with the main elevation.

After the unmarried James Bruce died in 1858, Town Section 75 was conveyed to William Bruce in 1860 and, at the same time, the neighbouring property was conveyed to John Donnet. In circa 1922 the house was extended to the south by a large addition that is thought to have been another cottage shifted from William Street. A small addition to the north dates from the late twentieth century. Both this and the cottage at 9A Aubrey Street remained on the same Record of Title until 1992, when a cross-lease was established – both being on part of Town Sections 75 and 76.