Early history of the site
Ngahere is situated in Epsom, a short distance from the base of Maungawhau (Mount Eden). Maungawhau has a long history of human occupation. The renowned military engineer, Titahi of Ngati Awa, built a large pa there, believed to have been occupied for several centuries up to the late 1600s. Maungawhau was part of the broader Auckland isthmus taken over by Ngati Whatua in the early eighteenth century. No Maori occupation of the mountain is currently known immediately preceding Auckland's founding as colonial capital in 1840.
The Rockwood Estate (1865-1907)
Located a few kilometres to the east of the colonial settlement of Auckland, Epsom was subdivided into farms following the transfer of the Waitemata-to-Hobson and Waitemata-to-Manukau blocks in 1841. The area became renowned for its fertile farmland and large country homes. The land later occupied by Ngahere was part of a Crown Grant made to Scottish-born William Aitken (1826-1901) in 1865. Here he constructed the two-storey house Rockwood, one of a number of homesteads built in Epsom in the mid-to-late 1800s. Aitken, a land agent, invested heavily in land and enterprises in the northern province and was considered to be one of Auckland's most financially successful early settlers.
On Aitken's death in 1901, Rockwood passed to his niece Jeannie Stirling Richmond (1854-1917) who had lived there as child and who returned with her children in 1886, the year of her husband's death. Jeannie's husband John Richmond (1845-1886) was a founder of Auckland law firm Hesketh Richmond in 1870. He was well-connected, having served his articles under his relative Thomas Bannatyne Gillies (1828-1889) who later became a Supreme Court judge.
Taking over Rockwood in 1901, Mrs Richmond made substantial changes. Subdivision of the estate began within the decade, hastening Epsom's evolution from a loose community of country estates to a suburban residential area.
Construction of Ngahere (1907-8)
Upon the marriage of two of her three daughters, Mrs Richmond commissioned Auckland architect Frederick Noel Bamford (1881-1952) to design a house on the estate for each couple. In 1914, the architect's brother - lawyer and academic Dr Dean Bamford - was to marry the second of Mrs Richmond's daughters to wed. Located within the western part of Rockwood's grounds, Ngahere was built in 1907-8 for Margaret Richmond (1884-1972) and her husband Donald MacCormick (1870-1945). MacCormick, a bank employee, was the son of barrister John MacCormick, an inaugural member of the Council of the New Zealand Law Society in 1870.
Ngahere was constructed on the east side of Mountain Road, north of the rear drive to Rockwood. The house stood within its own setting, a site of less than 0.4 hectare not formally delineated until 1923.
Constructed with a timber frame and cladding, the one-and-a-half storey, Arts and Crafts-inspired Ngahere is one of the earliest known surviving buildings designed by Bamford. After studying architecture in Auckland under Edward Bartley in circa 1902, Bamford worked in the office of English architect Edwin Lutyens (later knighted) a leading exponent of the English Domestic Revival style. The first of four young New Zealand-born architects to study under Lutyens, he returned to New Zealand in 1906. The other Lutyens protégés were Hector Pierce (1879-1918), Bamford's business partner who returned in April 1907; William Gummer (1884-1966) who studied under Lutyens in 1911; and Roy Binney (1885-1957) who returned in 1912, but lived permanently in England from the late 1920s. The firm Bamford and Pierce - formed before March 1908 - drew on aspects of the English Arts and Crafts tradition to formulate architectural designs for a New Zealand context.
The Arts and Crafts movement, a major influence in the works of Bamford and Pierce, emphasised a return to nature. This was generally expressed in a commitment to suiting a building to its site, to the use of local building traditions, and to use of natural and local materials. Bamford's use of stone for Ngahere's foundations wall and a connected outbuilding suggests an acknowledgment of the site's volcanic character. The cladding was timber weatherboarding, the prevalent vernacular material in the Auckland area. The roof tiles were probably Australian.
Ngahere's low-sweeping, complex roof form, steep gables, tall brick chimneys and multi-paned casement windows reflected Lutyens' influence. The house adopted a variation of the butterfly floor plan.
Popular for Arts and Crafts residential designs in England in the 1890s, the X-shaped butterfly plan traditionally had wings projecting symmetrically at angles from a central core. The concept, combining ideas of modern functionalism and notions of the picturesque, was an appropriation of the palazzo plan, modified to gain solar access and views. The style was popular for Edwardian country houses, a dwelling type for which Lutyens became particularly well-known.
Ngahere's comparatively complex design was a major departure from the predominant New Zealand house style of the time, the villa with a central passageway. The elevations to Mountain Road and Rockwood's driveway were designed to maintain privacy. The more open northeast elevation overlooked the garden.
Internally, Ngahere's rooms were accessed by a broad short corridor in each of the two wings off a small manorial-style hall and drawing room in the hub of the house. The front door opened into the north corridor, off which was a cloakroom with a lavatory. The staircase, obliquely located towards the corridor's south end, provided access to the attic level containing a sewing room and bedroom. The drawing room opened onto a wide recessed porch, deeper and shorter than the villa verandah, and of sufficient size for use as an outside room. Linked to the garden by brick steps, Ngahere's porch facilitated a degree of indoor-outdoor flow later considered integral to the New Zealand lifestyle.
The south wing of the house contained two bedrooms, a bathroom and a dressing room. In the north wing was the dining room, separated from the service area by a small servery. The remaining service rooms were a kitchen, larder, scullery and maid's room. A single-storey L-shaped building - containing a washhouse, a boot room, and a fuel room - was connected by a porch, effectively creating a U-shaped courtyard.
As well as its exterior, Ngahere's interior detailing including its window catches and beamed ceilings was also Arts and Crafts-inspired. Its broad, front door incorporated a shallow-pointed arch, a reference to the movement's Gothic Revival origins. The newel post at the foot of the stairs was full height. The balustrade was of plain timber slats. Three subsidiary newel posts terminated in carved finials, each of a different style. Rooms reflected a classical simplicity more commonly found in English architectural styles adopted in New Zealand a decade or more later. Ngahere stood within an area of shrubs and trees within wider Rockwood grounds which were laid out in trees, lawns, and a network of winding paths and carriageways.
Bamford and Pierce partnership (circa 1908-16)
By early 1908 Bamford had formed an architectural partnership with Hector Pierce. The butterfly principle adopted at Ngahere was subsequently used for the plan of a cottage in Domett Avenue (1910-11). Both houses were a significant contrast to the more traditional designs produced by the partnership for Bishopscourt (Record no. 103, Category I historic place, 1909-10) and other houses at this time. A fireplace and newel posts at Bishopscourt invite comparison with features at Ngahere. Also known as Neligan House, the brick Bishopscourt was the partnership's most prestigious commission.
Like other dwellings designed by Bamford and Pierce, Bamford's Ngahere reflected the rurally-focused, English Arts and Crafts movement that particularly appealed to those in New Zealand who saw themselves as building a new Britain. Patriotic sentiments were high as the colony achieved Dominion status in 1907, the year of Ngahere's design. The Arts and Crafts style which fused Edwardian concerns about status with matters of beauty, was one of two major architectural styles embraced. By contrast with the English Baroque Revival style, Arts and Crafts ideals continued to influence domestic architecture in New Zealand into the 1920s. Aspects of the Arts and Crafts movement became discernable in residential design around the turn of the century, notably in the work of Hurst Seager in Christchurch and, from 1904, in the designs of Dunedin-based Basil Hooper.
By 1912 the aesthetic had become a significant influence in certain Auckland circles. In 1914, Ngahere and another residence designed by Bamford and Pierce for a Remuera site in circa 1911 were the subject of a pictorial feature in the building trade magazine monthly New Zealand Progress. In the same issue were two Arts and Crafts-style residences designed by fellow-Lutyens' protégé William Gummer, who later lived in Ngahere.
In New Zealand, those with money gravitated to traditional English architectural styles. Renowned for its fine residential works, Bamford and Pierce's practice benefited from the architects' strong family networks with sections of Auckland's social, professional and business elite. Clients, such as the medical practitioner Dr Kinder (House 1 St George's Bay Road, Record no. 2634, Category II historic place, circa 1912), were officeholders in the Church of England and its associated charitable boards including the Melanesian Mission Trust and the Leslie Orphanage Trust. Pierce's late father, George, was also prominent in Diocesan affairs. Several commissions appear to have had Hesketh Richmond connections including houses at Domett Avenue (1910-11) and Gilgit Road (circa 1914-15), the latter designed for Dean Bamford and his wife. As the president of the Auckland Law Society (1912-16), Bamford was a prominent member of the Auckland bar. Edwin, the Bamfords' father, was the District Lands Registrar, Auckland's senior public office-holder in surveying and land matters.
Other residential commissions included Coolingatta in Remuera Road (1911, demolished) for a surveyor; houses for two stock brokers (Dilworth Avenue, Remuera (demolished), and Pencarrow Avenue, Mount Eden, circa 1910); and for an accountant (Brightside Road, Epsom, circa 1915); a land agent (Domett Avenue) 1910-11; and a mining engineer (30 Arney Road, Record no. 604, Category II historic Place, circa 1911). These were professions that flourished during Auckland's decades of economic growth following the depression of the 1880s and early 1890s.
Later occupation and ownership (1917-2009)
After Jeannie Richmond's death in 1917, Rockwood estate's subdivision into suburban residential sites accelerated. In 1920 a number of new sites were created fronting Mountain Road. Ngahere was formally subdivided from the Rockwood estate and transferred to Margaret MacCormick in 1923. By 1925, it was being rented out to the noted architect William Gummer and his wife, Edith. The Gummers were recently married and had their first child while living in the house.
William Gummer was an associate of Ngahere's designer, Noel Bamford, with a similarly strong association with Lutyens. Shortly before occupying the house, Gummer had gone into partnership with C. Reginald Ford (1880-1972), giving rise to one of the Dominion's most prominent architectural practices of the 1920s and 1930s. Gummer and Ford were responsible for some of New Zealand's largest and most complex projects. In 1925-6, Gummer was involved with the construction of the high-profile Dilworth Building in Queen Street, Auckland (Record No. 4600, Category I historic place); and the Remuera Public Library (Record No. 115, Category I historic place) which won a New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) gold medal. He also undertook designs in 1926 for the Auckland Railway Station (Record No.97, Category I historic place). The latter structure, held to represent 'a new departure in monumental civic architecture in New Zealand', was also awarded an NZIA gold medal shortly after its completion in 1930.
Gummer evidently lived at Ngahere while overseeing the building of a home for himself and his family, known as Stoneways. This was located a few doors away in the Mountain Road subdivision and was under construction in 1926. Designed by Gummer, Stoneways is considered to reflect Lutyens' influence in its use of a complex but lucid plan, which linked wings placed at oblique angles. By 1927, the Gummers had moved to their new residence. Ngahere was tenanted by a Mrs Elizabeth Burlington.
In 1935, two residential lots were subdivided from Ngahere's grounds. The house was transferred in 1950 to one of two family companies associated with further development of the wider estate, which saw Rockwood's rear drive formed as Rockwood Place.
In 1962 Ngahere's curtilage was further diminished. Ownership of the house passed to an Auckland medical practitioner. By this time the ground floor layout had been modified to accommodate new ways of living, including an absence of domestic help which had eventually disappeared from New Zealand households by the Second World War (1939-1945). A new kitchen occupied the former larder and scullery, and the former kitchen and maid's room became a family room. A shower, a time-saving device enhancing personal hygiene, replaced the bath. Fireplaces in the ground floor bedrooms were removed.
In 1970, new owners converted the linked utility building into a garage. In 1974 Ngahere was bought by Donald Kenderdine and his wife Shonagh who later became the first woman Judge to sit on the planning bench in New Zealand. The house changed hands in 1978. Upper floor accommodation was extended by the addition of a bathroom and a bedroom, necessitating the creation of new dormers. The former service area was remodelled into an open-plan kitchen and family dining area, flowing into an enlarged family room in the former courtyard. A garage was constructed adjoining Rockwood Place. The single-storey utility building was demolished, although the laundry chimney was retained for a fireplace in the new family room. In 1995 a small shelter was added to the main entrance and a lych gate created on the Mountain Road boundary. A stone boundary wall may also date from this period.
The property changed hands again in 2001. An upper floor extension to provide a further bedroom with a new dormer enclosed one of the chimneys, reducing its visibility. The property remains in use as a private residence.