Historic Significance

Historical Significance or Value Dicky Sayer's Slab House (colloquially known as Sayer's Slab Whare) is believed to have been built circa 1860 by Richard 'Dicky' Nicholas Sayer. It is now a very rare example of the type of split batten habitations built for European settlers in the Wairarapa from the mid 1850s onwards. Born in Wellington in 1844, Sayer moved to the Three Mile Bush district circa 1859, just as public works were retrenching. For a time he is believed to have lived in this structure, earning a subsistence living as a hunter. Sayer married in 1864, at which time he probably extended the whare to the north-west. He died in 1902. The simple building, altered in several phases and connected to electricity in 1930, and which suffered damage to its stone chimeny (replaced in brick) in the 1942 earthquake, currently stores firewood.

Physical Significance

Sayer's Slab Whare was designed in the Victorian Colonial Simple Box House style of the period 1837-1870, and is technically known as a Slab House because of its form of construction. Style and construction indicators are: - Plain Georgian styling with gable ends and symmetrical arrangement on the east elevation of a centrally placed door with flanking windows on either side - Steeply pitched gable roof form - Lean-to addition (1864) on the rear west elevation, with external doors on the northern and southern ends - Brick chimney, 1942, placed on southern gable of house replacing original stone chimney and fireplace - Early settler construction of wall plates clad with split totara slabs and thinner split battens - Regular colonial joinery for door and window frames - Floor boards laid on the earth - Wooden roof shingles still evident under corrugated roofing iron of a later date

Detail Of Assessed Criteria

Sayer's Slab Whare was assessed for historical significance under s23(2) criteria but was not considered to be of sufficient signficance for a Category I registration under these criteria. Sayer's Slab Whare was not assessed for cultural significance under s23(2) criteria. Sayer's Slab Whare was assessed for physical significance under s23(2) criteria and was considered to be of Category I significance. s23(2)(g) The technical accomplishment or design of the place; Sayer's Slab Whare is a typical example of a very early form of house building in New Zealand. Slab houses were usually built by a single man, and were relatively simple to make since all that was required was to split tree trunks with an iron wedge into two-inch thick boards approximately seven feet in length. To pit-saw boards to these dimensions took two men a considerably longer time, but split boards could easily be produced by one man. Very often single men had only themselves to fall back on as a resource on the New Zealand frontier, and Sayer certainly fell into this category of the self-reliant pioneer. Sayer's Slab Whare was constructed by splitting totara logs into scantling for the framing and rafters of the place, and slab boards for the exterior cladding and battens, the latter being placed over the joins between the slabs. The scantling, or framing that the slabs were nailed to, is concealed by wall lining, but the rafters under the roof can be clearly seen inside the whare since it has no ceiling. Most of these have the rough hewn appearance of split scantling, although some of the timbers may be replacements of a more recent date. Some of the original timber roof shingles are still in place under the corrugated iron which was possibly placed on the roof as late as 1930. Archival evidence suggests that the whare was wired for electricity around about 1930; the insulators are still in place on the northern gable end although power appears to be no longer connected. There is also evidence that indicates Sayer went to some trouble in building his whare. Outside the door there are cement paving blocks set into the ground which have only recently come to light. The slab cladding is also chamfered on the edges of the boards, so that each slab board slides in behind the other. This could be taken as architectural evidence that Sayer possibly worked on the construction of the Black Bridge that was partly built by his stepfather, John Ashmore, a project where Sayer would have picked up his carpentry skills. Although no archival evidence has been found to support this theory, the whare indicates a refinement in construction not normally associated with slab houses. As noted above, under s23(1) the present chimney replaced Sayer's original stone chimney and fireplace in 1942 following the Wairarapa earthquake of that year. The Carterton fault line runs along only a few metres behind Sayer's whare. Originally Sayer's whare was a simple rectangular box with two windows and one door. Joinery has been used for the door and window frames, but this was not uncommon for some early houses of this type. The joinery could be of a later date than circa 1860 however. Of some interest is the way in which the builder stopped draughts, caused by the inevitable gaps which appear between joinery and slab construction, by plugging the gaps above the window frames with clay. Some of the clay still remains as an example to the present generation of how do-it-yourself settlers solved the inherent problems of frontier house construction. Around about the time Sayer was married, in 1864, he extended the whare on its western elevation by adding a lean-to. The lean-to was a conventional addition for box houses and usually housed the kitchen which would otherwise be situated away from the house. Presumably Sayer made his alteration for the same functional reasons. The join between the original house and the lean-to extension can be most clearly seen on the north gable, where he placed a series of slabs directly over the join. The lean-to effectively gave Sayer from two to three rooms in his whare plus two additional doors (one at the north end and one at the south end of the extension.) He also put in another window on the south end of the lean-to.