The former stables at Corstorphine House were built by John Sidey (1823-1915), a successful early-Dunedin businessman and landowner. They sit nearby the grand residence, set in scenic gardens, which housed a dynasty of significant members of the Sidey family, including John’s son, Sir Thomas K. Sidey MP. As such, they have aesthetic and historical significance.

John Sidey arrived in Otago on the ship Blundell in 1848 and set up as a businessman and general merchant, trading out of his town section at the corner of Princes Street and High Street. By the late-1850s he sold his town business to cultivate and reside on land, bought ‘two years previously,’ at Corstorphine. Here he built a modest residence, where he lived from about 1857 to 1864. The original part of the existing Corstorphine House residence was built in about 1864.

The stables are likely to date to about the same time as the construction of the current residence. However, there has been no evidence found of their existence until circa 1884, when they can be seen in the background of a photograph taken of Caversham. The main stable building is ‘constructed of stone which has been concreted over, while the [other stable buildings] are of concrete.’

The stables have remained part of the Corstorphine property into the twentieth and then the twenty-first centuries. The property was sold by John Sidey’s grandson, Stuart, to the Presbyterian Church in order to ‘establish there a home for mentally-deficient women’ in the late-1950s. This institution remained operating out of the residence until the property was sold in 1993. It then operated as a boutique hotel. The property currently is run as a venue for weddings and corporate functions.