Glendower Station Homestead at Ponatahi has historical significance for its association with one of the Wairarapa’s oldest farming families, the Jurys, and was built by its founder, John Milsome Jury. It is of social significance to his many descendants. The house also has architectural and historical significance as an expanded Victorian cottage with additions showing the growth in wealth and status of pastoral landowners as farming became established.

Glendower Station was formed in 1854, when John Milsome Jury (1816-1902) took up 800 acres of land in the Pukengaki range near Carterton. Jury settled in New Zealand when he jumped ship in the Bay of Islands in 1835. He married Te Aitu-o-te-rangi (c.1820-1854), a high-born woman of the Ngāti Moe/ Ngāti Muretu hapū of Rangitāne and Ngāti Kahungunu. Around 1845 Te Aitu claimed ancestral land near Martinborough and the couple farmed on a river island (Te Ureta) that became known as Jury’s Island. In 1854 after Te Aitu died, Jury moved further inland and developed Glendower Station.

Glendower Station Homestead is thought to have been built in the 1860s. It was John Milsome Jury’s third house on the station, each cottage an upgrade from the previous. Originally, it had five bedrooms on two storeys, with the kitchen where the entrance hall is today. It was built of hand-sawn heart totara and clad in weatherboards; original shingles may still exist under the steel roof, which has two prominent gables.

The current form of the homestead reflects improvements from three main periods. The growing family of John and Te Aitu’s second son Charles Joseph Jury (1850-1916) required additions of four downstairs and two upstairs rooms and a second staircase. By 1935 the farm’s income was secure enough to enable major renovations; the third generation Jurys had decided to retain the homestead for its ‘old colonial appearance’ and homey feel. Wellington architect William Lavelle (1905-1974) was commissioned to enlarge the living room, install a new fireplace, remove the second staircase and replace the main one, upgrade the kitchen and bathrooms and expand verandahs into large porches with sun-decks above. The gardens were also established at this time, adding a large outdoor swimming pool (designed by Lavelle), tennis court, extensive native plantings and a circular driveway to the orchard planted in the 1860s. In the early 2000s the house was repiled and modernised including an extension to the southeast of the house, relocation of the kitchen, and the installation of skylights.
Electricity was connected in 1924, which eased the heavy domestic workload of looking after a large family as well as farm staff and numerous visitors. From its beginning, Glendower Homestead ‘became the centre of the district… One could not long be in the district without experiencing [its] hospitality’. After Ponatahi School opened in 1896, the first five schoolteachers boarded at Glendower, and the homestead was famed for its large Christmas parties. The large number of descendants of John and Te Aitu Jury also means the homestead is the family heritage of thousands of people. It was open for public tours during the 1990s.

John Milsome Jury died in 1902. By 1904 Charles’ son John Milsome Jury II (known as Paddy) was running the station. Two further generations of Jurys farmed and lived there before the homestead was sold in 2016. The Jury’s stag and wapiti trophy heads still hang in the entrance hall as they have since at least the 1950s. The surrounding farm and woolshed (List no. 2863) are still owned by the Jury family.