The former Headmaster's House in Timaru was built to house the principal of Timaru Main School, for many years the largest primary school in the town. Now only the former Headmaster's House remains of the original nineteenth century school buildings. It is a fine example of domestic Gothic Revival architecture and a distinctive landmark in the town. The origins of Timaru Main School and the associated Headmaster's House lie in the 1859 decision by the Anglican Church to appoint G. Masterton Clark to establish a school in the Timaru area. It was run from a small cottage, then a former woolshed and adjacent cottage, which was not, as the Education Commission pointed out in 1863, waterproof. As a consequence the school moved into a purpose-built schoolroom in Browne Street. From 1865 there had been much discussion about making the Anglican school in Timaru non-denominational but nothing happened until May 1870 when, with the agreement of the Anglican Church, a committee of community representatives was elected to run it. As well as the desire for a non-denominational public school, there was an on-going concern about the site of the school. Early Timaru was divided into two parts, Government Town and Rhodes Town. While the school was situated in the Government Town it drew most of its pupils from Rhodes Town. Eventually, it was agreed to purchase part of 'Wilson's Paddock', a block of land bounded by North, Theodosia and Arthur Streets and Grey Road in Rhodes Town. Four acres were bought from the Rhodes brothers for £300 and, once building had commenced on the schoolrooms, further adjacent land was purchased to provide a playing field and entrances off Theodosia Street. Timaru Main School remains on this site today. It took the school committee six months to find suitable plans for their school and tenders they could afford. Eventually F.J. Wilson was hired as both architect and builder and work began on the school in September 1873, with the foundation stone being laid in a ceremony on 16 December the same year. When it opened in October 1874 the Victorian Gothic stone school building was recognised as both the most impressive and costly structure in Timaru at the time, and as the first school building in 'non-combustible materials' in the province of Canterbury. In the same year as the school building opened the Timaru Main School committee began arguing with the Board over the proposed headmaster's house. Although the 1863 Education Ordinance had required each school to build a master's house, the 1870s ordinances did not specifically spell this out, but it was assumed each school would do so. Since 1873 it had been a condition of any grant for buildings made by the Board that it had to approve both the site and plans of them. The Committee desired a bluestone house, built in stone quarried from Woollcombe's Gully, to match the school; the Board believed that a cheaper timber dwelling would be equally suitable. Agreement over this had not been reached by the time the Board was abolished under the Education Ordinance of 1875. The Board was replaced by a Secretary of Education and a change was also made to the rate required from the local community for the erection of new school buildings, from one-sixth of the cost to half. It also became possible for the Secretary to strike a rate, which he did in Timaru at the level of a shilling per pound. Understandably this was not popular with the citizens of Timaru and a storm of protest arose, so effectively that in the end Timaru did not pay even one-sixth of the cost of the new infants' school, headmaster's house and janitor's cottage. Tenders were finally called for the Headmaster's House in 1877. In 1878 tenders were called for the finishing of the house and in that tender notice the architect was identified as Thomas Cane (1830-1905). Cane was appointed the Provincial Architect for Canterbury in 1875 and in that role would have been responsible for all school buildings. When the provincial system of government was abolished in 1876 Cane went into private practice. His design for the Headmaster's House in Timaru is Gothic Revival in style and owes much to the domestic architecture that developed out of the ideals espoused by the Ecclesiological Society - that is dwellings Gothic in detail, but adapted for nineteenth-century domestic needs and made from local materials. Evolving as it did from church architecture it is unsurprising that this style is commonly associated with vicarages of the period. However, the Ecclesiological Society also advocated the Gothic style for both schools and school houses. The Headmaster's House consists of two double-storeyed gables, which run back from Arthur Street and a third gable, perpendicular to them, which forms the rear of the house. While three sides (east, north and west) are built of bluestone with Oamaru stone facings and quoins, the south side at the rear is brick. It is believed that at one stage it was planned to extend the house to provide rooms for boarders and the rear wall was constructed from brick with this in mind. The front entrance porch situated between the two main wings is timber, Gothic in design, and creates a highly distinctive entranceway. A cross on the top of the entrance porch's arch reinforces the architectural connection between the Gothic Domestic style of the house and church architecture. The interior on both floors is divided into four rooms of roughly equal sizes with a central hallway and staircase. These have timber floors and are lined with lathe and plaster. A notable feature of the hallway is the pointed timber arches which divide the main entrance area from the staircase. The steep gabled roofs are covered with corrugated iron and four chimneys decorate the roofline. A contemporary newspaper report described the house as being 'in a style totally different...' from any of the other school buildings and sarcastically went on to remark that 'extra school accommodation will soon be required, and we have reason to believe that the additions will be executed in concrete picked out with yellow firebricks...cob with a thatched roof...an elegant but inexpensive building of corrugated iron [and] a canvas pavilion.' ['Notes', Timaru Herald, 21 December 1877, p.3] Both the house's size and style clearly reflect the contemporary status of the headmaster within the community. Completed in 1879 the Headmaster's House remained without a headmaster until 1885, as the then headmaster, James Scott, a bachelor, preferred to continue boarding and receive an annual boarding allowance of £50. Instead the Canterbury Education Board rented the newly completed house to its Inspector, Henry W Hammond, for £100 a year. Once Hammond was replaced by W.J. Anderson halfway through 1885 and a new headmaster, John Wood, began in 1886 the building became used for its intended purpose. It housed a continuing succession of headmasters until the end of 1975, when the principal resigned to take up a position in Nelson. As the house was old and the maintenance requirements were getting more expensive the Board decided not to make it available for the next principal but to transfer the land and house to the Crown for disposal. However, it was quickly decided that the house and land should be offered to the neighbouring Timaru College who accepted it gratefully with plans of using the house for senior students' classrooms. By 1977 only the ground floor was being used, due to concerns over the house's structural safety. The house was threatened with demolition in 1978 and again in the 1980s. In 1988 Aoraki Polytechnic, as Timaru College became known, handed the building back to the Department of Education because of continuing concerns over the threat to the children in the neighbouring crèche should the chimneys of the house collapse. During the time the Headmaster's House was under threat in the late 1980s the Bluestone House Trust was established by concerned locals with the aims of preserving, restoring, maintaining and improving the house. Eventually it negotiated a license-to-occupy agreement with the Ministry of Education and Aoraki Polytechnic and took over the building in 1990. The Bluestone House Trust then turned its efforts to maintaining and restoring the house and in 1991 found its first tenants in the Working Weavers Co-op who established a gallery and workspace in the house. Currently it is tenanted by SPELD, the Specific Learning Disabilities Federation. The former Headmaster's House in Timaru is the last surviving nineteenth-century building of the Timaru Main School and possibly the oldest extant headmaster's house in the country. It is a rare example of a bluestone building still standing in Timaru. It is also a fine example of Gothic Revival architecture used in a domestic dwelling, a style popularised by Pugin and closely associated with the Ecclesiological movement of the Victorian era. This style included Gothic forms but adapted to suit the needs of a domestic dwelling. The house is an important work of Cane's, one of Canterbury's prominent early architects. Closely associated with Timaru's largest primary school, it also has a long history as a family home. As one headmaster, Mr J.A. Johnson, said 'Ten of the happiest and richest years...were spent as headmaster of the Main School; my two daughters were born in the master's house...' [Souvenir of the Jubilee of the Main School Timaru October 1924, p.83] It is one of the finest headmaster's houses in New Zealand and the only one to be registered as such by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust Pouhere Taonga. The local community has a strong association with the house, most notably expressed during the 1970s and 1980s when the house was under threat.