The former St Mary’s Presbytery, built in 1891 and 1911 on Maxwell Road in Blenheim, has historical value for its association with the expansion of Catholicism in Marlborough. The building has architectural value for its authenticity and intactness as a representative example of Italianate domestic architecture that reflects the status and lifestyle of its clergy inhabitants.
Marlborough is directly associated with the earliest period of Māori settlement in Aotearoa. Polynesian settlers inhabited Te Pokohiwi/Wairau Bar c.1300, and an extensive network of lagoons was later developed to make the most of the plentiful mahinga kai resources. Earlier tribes were succeeded by Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Apa and Rangitāne in the sixteenth century. Between 1828-1832 war parties of Waikato and Taranaki warriors attacked numerous pā, unsettling the region’s established tribal alliances. Ngāti Toa Rangatira put down roots in the Wairau and one of their warrior chiefs, Te Rauparaha, was the primary negotiator for the New Zealand Company’s 1839 purchase of the arable Wairau Valley. European settlement in the nineteenth century shifted customary ways of life for tangata whenua. Ownership and possession of the Wairau was still in dispute until 1847, when the Crown finally wrested legal title. Today Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Rārua and Ngāti Toa Rangatira have principal interests in the Wairau/Blenheim area.
The colonial township of Blenheim developed in the 1850s in an area that was a flax swamp before earthquakes raised the ground level. By 1864 it was the principal town in the province, with a steadily growing Catholic population. Father Augustine Sauzeau SM, appointed Parish Priest that year, is considered the founder of the Catholic Parish of St Mary in Marlborough. He arranged construction of the first St Mary’s Church on a large site in Blenheim’s Maxwell Road in 1865, and a complex of buildings that ultimately included two primary schools, an infant school, parish hall, presbytery, convent and high school, grew around the church, which was replaced with a larger building in 1878. Sauzeau first lived in a small cottage until a new presbytery was built at the south of St Mary’s Church, near Dillon Street, in the 1870s. By the late 1880s the parochial residence required upgrading.
The front of the 1870s building was demolished and in 1891 architect D.A. Douglas’s substantial two-storeyed timber addition for the presbytery was completed. Containing large sitting rooms and a library with generous bedrooms above, the building’s ‘strikingly handsome’ street-frontage and particularly notable verandah and portico dates from this period, as does the impressive entrance hall, with stained glass door, varnished timber panelling and ornamental archway above a turned staircase.
Twenty years later the rear half of the building was replaced by a substantial addition designed by John Sydney Swan. This contained a new kitchen, lounge and housekeepers flat with more bedrooms and bathroom above, and a striking skylight stylistically linked to Swan’s work on the Maxwell Road convent.
A small extension to one of the lounges was made in the mid-twentieth century. However, in 1996 the presbytery underwent its most substantial alteration when it was sold for disposal in the major redevelopment of the Maxwell Road parish complex. The presbytery was relocated in six sections to a rural site near Seddon, where it was reassembled and continues to function successfully as a comfortable residence, little altered from its original periods of construction.
Marlborough is directly associated with the earliest period of Māori settlement in Aotearoa. Polynesian settlers inhabited Te Pokohiwi/Wairau Bar c.1300, and an extensive network of lagoons was later developed to make the most of the plentiful mahinga kai resources. Earlier tribes were succeeded by Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Apa and Rangitāne in the sixteenth century. Between 1828-1832 war parties of Waikato and Taranaki warriors attacked numerous pā, unsettling the region’s established tribal alliances. Ngāti Toa Rangatira put down roots in the Wairau and one of their warrior chiefs, Te Rauparaha, was the primary negotiator for the New Zealand Company’s 1839 purchase of the arable Wairau Valley. European settlement in the nineteenth century shifted customary ways of life for tangata whenua. Ownership and possession of the Wairau was still in dispute until 1847, when the Crown finally wrested legal title. Today Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Rārua and Ngāti Toa Rangatira have principal interests in the Wairau/Blenheim area.
The colonial township of Blenheim developed in the 1850s in an area that was a flax swamp before earthquakes raised the ground level. By 1864 it was the principal town in the province, with a steadily growing Catholic population. Father Augustine Sauzeau SM, appointed Parish Priest that year, is considered the founder of the Catholic Parish of St Mary in Marlborough. He arranged construction of the first St Mary’s Church on a large site in Blenheim’s Maxwell Road in 1865, and a complex of buildings that ultimately included two primary schools, an infant school, parish hall, presbytery, convent and high school, grew around the church, which was replaced with a larger building in 1878. Sauzeau first lived in a small cottage until a new presbytery was built at the south of St Mary’s Church, near Dillon Street, in the 1870s. By the late 1880s the parochial residence required upgrading.
The front of the 1870s building was demolished and in 1891 architect D.A. Douglas’s substantial two-storeyed timber addition for the presbytery was completed. Containing large sitting rooms and a library with generous bedrooms above, the building’s ‘strikingly handsome’ street-frontage and particularly notable verandah and portico dates from this period, as does the impressive entrance hall, with stained glass door, varnished timber panelling and ornamental archway above a turned staircase.
Twenty years later the rear half of the building was replaced by a substantial addition designed by John Sydney Swan. This contained a new kitchen, lounge and housekeepers flat with more bedrooms and bathroom above, and a striking skylight stylistically linked to Swan’s work on the Maxwell Road convent.
A small extension to one of the lounges was made in the mid-twentieth century. However, in 1996 the presbytery underwent its most substantial alteration when it was sold for disposal in the major redevelopment of the Maxwell Road parish complex. The presbytery was relocated in six sections to a rural site near Seddon, where it was reassembled and continues to function successfully as a comfortable residence, little altered from its original periods of construction.
