This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1980. The following text is from the original Building Classification Committee report considered by the NZHPT Board at the time of registration. DESCRIPTION: "Clifton" was built for William Telford who was born in South Australia and came to New Zealand with his parents in 1861. Telford's father, also called William, developed the property in the early 1860s before building a homestead at Otanomomo in 1869. Upon his father's death in 1888 William junior took over the running of Clifton, whilst his brother Thomas assumed control of the Otanomomo run which is now occupied by the Telford Farm Institute. At first William Telford lived in his parents' original home at Clifton but after this had been sold with a large proportion of the estate to the government in 1913 he decided to build the present homestead. Standing on approximately five hundred hectares of farmland, the homestead was unoccupied between c1963 and 1975 but it is now owned and occupied by Ken and Kate Telford who are the fourth generation of Telfords to live in the house.

This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1980. The following text is from the original Building Classification Committee report considered by the NZHPT Board at the time of registration. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Located approximately 18 kilometres west of Balclutha, "Clifton" is an outsize bungalow style building within which thirty rooms are arranged around an internal courtyard in a symmetrical U-shaped plan. The principal elevation faces north and overlooks an attractive garden and large lawn. The facade is symmetrical about a broad verandah supported on brick columns. This verandah shelters the centrally-placed front door and is framed by bow windows with snub-nosed gable roofs. Above the verandah a centrally-placed broad gable breaks through the roof line, serving both to assert the symmetry of the elevation and its length. The main roof forms of the house are hipped but these are articulated by snub-nose and regular cross gables which nevertheless reinforce the essential horizontal appearance of the building which is characteristic of its overall bungalow style. Also characteristic of the style is the manner in which the roof timbers extend externally below the wide eaves, creating a decorative effect. The central gable of the facade encloses a large room which, with its large window and bordering infill of vertical exposed timbers on the background of the brick wall, fulfills an architectural function within the facade composition, rather than a practical one within the house. Overlooking both the front garden and the internal courtyard, it was to have been a billiard room. It was never used as such, and now serves as a guest bedroom. Access to this room, and the adjacent box room, is by way of a half-turn stair which rises from the hall below. On the ground floor of the house the front door opens into an entrance foyer which is flanked by a smoking room and a guest bedroom, and which in turn opens into a very large entrance hall which is thirty-two metres in length. As well as serving as an informal meeting and circulation space, the hall leads on to the two passageways which run at right angles to the main wing, providing access to the rooms of the east and west wings. The hall, which is panelled in red pine to door height, has a beamed ceiling also of red pine, and features two large arched windows filled with coloured leadlights, which is executed to an outstanding Art Nouveau design which is unusual because of the large size of the two windows and the brilliance of the colours used. These windows face the courtyard between the two wings of the house. On the south side a covered walkway acts as the fourth wall of the courtyard, shielding the nearby outbuildings from view. The west wing originally housed the servants, and it has a dining room, servery, kitchen scullery, pantry and four bedrooms. The east wing has been modified to create a new dining room, kitchen, pantry and laundry from three of the eight bedrooms in the wing, thus allowing the west wing to be abandoned in favour of the rooms with more modern amenities. Elsewhere the house is as built, including in the north-east corner of the house, a master bedroom with an en-suite dressing room which features a finely crafted built-in wardrobe and dresser unit. MODIFICATIONS: c1975 - Bedrooms (3) in south-east corner of house converted to serve as a dining room, kitchen and pantry/laundry. Darkroom in east wing, converted to a shower.