Early history of the site:
The northern shores of the Waitemata Harbour are of significance to several iwi, having been explored and occupied since early human arrival in New Zealand. According to oral tradition the Arawa canoe under the navigator chief Tama Te Kapua investigated the Waitemata. The canoe deposited a ritual obsidian core brought from Hawaiki on Te Mata (Boat Rock), an island to the west of Chelsea Bay, giving rise to the name of the Waitemata Harbour. The Tainui canoe also landed at Te Hau Kapua (Torpedo Bay) in present-day Devonport before travelling to its eventual heartland in the Waikato.
According to oral tradition, there were people already living at Te Hau Kapua at the time of the visit of the Tainui canoe. Physical evidence of very early settlement has been found on the foreshore where adzes were manufactured on stone working floors. Recorded horticultural features in the Maunga Uika (North Head), Takarunga (Mt Victoria) and Takararo (Mt Cambria) vicinity and evidence of terraces, pits and midden indicate that Maori occupied the volcanic cones in later times. The beach at Te Hau Kapua was the site of a late-eighteenth-century battle when a Nga Puhi, Te Kawerau and Te Parawhau alliance raided the Ngati Paoa pa, Takapuna, now known as North Head.
Following Ngapuhi incursions in the 1820s, much of the North Shore was depopulated, assisting its purchase by the British Crown after formal colonisation in 1840. A small Maori settlement at Te Hau Kapua remained inhabited until 1863.
Early colonial land division:
Devonport, originally known as Flagstaff, emerged as a colonial settlement with its use a British naval station in the 1840s. Crown land in the area was subdivided into suburban farms in 1850 and went on sale in 1851 and 1853. Located a short distance across the harbour from the colonial capital, Auckland, the land was particularly sought after by investors and speculators.
The site on which the house at 15 Jubilee Avenue was constructed straddled the boundary of suburban farm Allotments 13 and 13A at North Head, land purchased by James Hammond in 1851 and 1854. Hammond, one of three elected wardens of the Hundred of Pupuke in 1854 and an inaugural member of the Flagstaff District Highway Board in 1867, had established a brickworks in Stanley Bay by 1845. He later personally advanced funds for the completion of one of the North Shore wharves.
Although Devonport was subject to speculation and land subdivision in the 1860s, large-scale development emerged primarily during the economic boom of the 1870s and 1880s. With the establishment of good quality ferry services to and from Auckland, Devonport became a well-established residential suburb and significant seaside resort.
Parts of Allotments 13 and 13A, purchased from a trust in 1874 by Hammond’s children Edward Hammond and Sarah Burgess, were bought in 1882 by Alexander Richardson Watson (1828-1911) a leading Auckland building contractor.
By 1884, during an Auckland real estate boom that largely targeted speculative investors, Watson created a 30-lot residential subdivision extending from Torpedo Bay to North Head Road (later renamed Takarunga Road). A private road to Watson’s residence in spacious grounds at North Head provided frontage for many of the new lots. The thoroughfare was known as Artillery Road by 1886, reflecting military fortifications constructed nearby during the Russian scare, and was later renamed Jubilee Avenue in 1897.
Lot sales in Watson’s subdivision were slow due to the economic depression of the late 1880s and early 1890s Although Watson retired as a contractor in 1888, he continued to erect buildings for himself. In 1894, as the Auckland economy began to recover, Watson built the first of three rental houses in place south of Artillery Road by 1897. During the year ending February 1896 he also erected a single-storey villa with a side tower (14 Takarunga Road); followed by a villa of similar design (17 Jubilee Avenue) in place by 1899.
The locality afforded views of the harbour and the Domain’s cricket ground, and was close to the Flagstaff commercial centre. Cheltenham Road at the west end of the Avenue was an important route for commuters from the developing seaside suburb of Cheltenham who caught the inner harbour ferry to the city; and an important link for city excursionists visiting Cheltenham’s Rangitoto Bathing Beach.
Three of the Watson residences overlooking Torpedo Bay incorporated a cupola, each of a different design. In two instances the cupola topped a tower, lending an exotic appearance, inviting comparison with the architecturally eclectic Orientalism that emerged in English seaside resorts in the 1860s; or the pavilions of Midway at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an attraction visited by Watson in 1893.
Construction of residence (1901-2):
The single storey, timber villa at 15 Jubilee Avenue, Watson’s six or seventh rental house in the subdivision, was built during the year ending May 1901. Although it lacked a tower and had a roof of corrugated metal rather than slate, the design was similar to the neighbouring houses at 17 Jubilee Avenue and 14 Takarunga Road.
The front entrance was approached by plastered steps with large decorative pillars and orbs. The seven-roomed dwelling of L-shaped plan had a return verandah along two sides, and three bay windows. The design loosely reflected colonial Georgian influences. The residence shared more in common with the square-front villa style than the more ornate bay villa also popular at the time. Two brick chimneys located towards the front of the hipped roof served back-to-back fireplaces in the four front rooms. A third chimney towards the rear served the kitchen.
Internally the front door opened into wide central hallway. The most prestigious spaces located at the front of the house included the parlour off the east side of the hall. Immediately behind was a dining room with two doors, one opening into a rear hall adjoining service quarters accommodating the kitchen, scullery and pantry, and a room for the domestic help. At the end of the central hall were the bathroom, and the back door. A timber outbuilding with a gable roof and brick chimney housed the lavatory, a washhouse and the fuel store.
Although the identity of the architect and builder is not known, Watson - evidently a former draughtsman for William Henry Playfair (1789-1857), architect of the Scottish National Gallery (1851-7) - may have been the designer.
At the time of his death in 1911, Alexander Watson was one of Auckland’s wealthiest citizens. Born in Peebles, Scotland, the son of joiner / wheelwright Thomas Watson (1794-1884) and Isabella (nee Richardson), Alexander was an engineering apprentice at Leith and Liverpool before moving to Edinburgh. He emigrated to Australia in 1851 where he undertook significant building contracts including banks, government buildings, and one of the first lighthouses on the Victorian coast. He accrued substantial capital and he moved to New Zealand in 1864 where sizeable Auckland contracts undertaken included the Thames, Waitemata and Albert hotels; the Albert Brewery; and possibly the four-storey Auckland Timber Company Building (ATC). Watson was a founding shareholder and a director of the latter company and, after the formation of the Kauri Timber Company (KTC) which incorporated the ATC in 1888, was a member of the local Board formed to assist the Melbourne-based directors. Watson personally gifted kauri timber to a value of £700 for fittings, pulpit, pews, wall linings and the ceiling in the new United Presbyterian Church in Peebles, Scotland, in 1890.
Twentieth century and beyond:
In June 1901, shortly after completion of 15 Jubilee Avenue, Devonport Borough Council resolved to install sewerage. Several properties at the end of the street still awaited connection in late 1903, suggesting that a water closet may not have been provided at the property until circa 1904.
The first tenant of the four-bedroom house was Henry H.G. Ralfe (1861-1949), Clerk of the Auckland Stipendiary Magistrates Court, and his wife Emma and their three children. As a cadet at the Warden’s Court at Kumara, Ralfe had commenced what was to be a 40-year career in the Justice Department in 1877. Located off Cheltenham Road and overlooking King Edward Parade - two streets known for their large and handsome residences - the Jubilee Avenue address reflected Ralfe’s social standing as a respected senior public servant of the judiciary. The decade-long tenancy ended in circa 1913 with Ralfe’s appointment as Deputy Commissioner of the Cook Islands, a British colony annexed by New Zealand in 1901.
Following Watson’s death in 1911 and that of his wife Matilda (nee Dickey) a year later, the couple’s only child Alexander Richardson Dickey Watson (1878-1917) came into a considerable inheritance that included the Torpedo Bay subdivision and rental properties. A.R.D. Watson already owned the Mining Chambers on Auckland’s Queen Street and had business interests in Sydney where he and his wife lived the greater part of each year. Reputed to be an excellent mathematician, Watson was one of few qualified actuaries in New Zealand. He was a noted public benefactor both before and after his death, having given over the Watson family home - a prominent feature on the headland of North Head - to the Auckland Hospital Board for use as a convalescent home for soldiers wounded in the First World War (1914-18).
Following A.R.D. Watson’s premature death in 1917, half of his sizeable estate was shared among nine bodies, being two Presbyterian orphanages (Auckland and Sydney), the Salvation Army (Auckland and Sydney), Dr Barnado’s Homes, the St John’s Ambulance Association (Auckland), the Sydney Picture Gallery, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland City Council and Devonport Borough Council. The bequest to the latter was to be used ‘in or towards extending or completing or permanently improving the esplanade along the beach or foreshore ...’. The first section of the King Edward Parade had been built to commemorate the dual events of ‘Peace in South Africa’ following the South African - or Second Boer War); and the coronation of Edward VII. Subsequent improvements were to include a new bathing beach completed in 1928 which became a focal point for a memorial (unveiled in 1936 as part of Devonport Borough’s fiftieth jubilee celebrations) recognising Watson’s bequest which by that time had yielded £4,000 for seafront improvements. The Watson Memorial was one of several memorials erected along the esplanade in the early to mid 1900s that contributed to beautification of the seaside suburb.
A survey plan prepared in 1916, a year before A.R.D. Watson’s death, re-subdivided the unsold portion of the Jubilee Avenue property into 26 sites. Lot 24 (15 Jubilee Avenue) - tenanted by 1919 by government employee Ferdinand Burnett - was sold in 1921 to a Richard Burke. Burke’s daughter Florence and her husband Edward Patterson, a plumber, moved into the property in 1921. In 1935, the year the house was transferred into Florence’s ownership and was rented to William Laurie a commercial traveller, who purchased the property in 1950. A lean-to with verandah may have been added to the kitchen by this date. Apart from the removal of portions of the verandah balustrade and installation of French doors between the parlour and the side verandah, comparatively few alterations were made during the Lauries’ six-decade occupation. A garage was constructed at an unknown date prior to 1963.
The property changed hands several times after 1994. Alterations included removal of a small kitchen lean-to with verandah and partition walls within the service area to accommodate an enlarged kitchen with dining area opening onto a patio. A further rear addition provided a bathroom en suite for a bedroom. The partition wall adjoining the dining room / parlour chimney breast was removed. To provide better access to a replacement garage, the rear outbuilding was relocated and converted into a home office. A timber fence at the front of the property was replaced by a low wall.
