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 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 5 Jubilee Avenue was constructed lay within suburban farm Allotment 13 at North Head, a purchase made by James Hammond in 1851 who bought adjoining Allotment 13A in 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 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. At the time of his death, Watson - a founding shareholder and a director of the Auckland Timber Company in 1877 - was reputedly one of Auckland’s wealthiest citizens.
In the early 1880s Devonport increasingly became a suburb of commuting businessmen and lesser lights of the commercial community, as private residences were built within easy travelling distance of Auckland’s commercial centre. By 1884, during an Auckland real estate boom that largely targeted speculative investors, Alexander Watson created a 30-lot residential subdivision extending from Torpedo Bay to North Head Road (later renamed Takarunga Road). A private road to the Watson 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.
Sales within the subdivision were slow as the late 1880s economic depression took hold towards the end of 1885. Following Watson’s death in 1911, the inheritance of his son Alexander Richardson Dickey Watson (1878-1917) - a noted public benefactor - was to include the Torpedo Bay subdivision where Watson Senior had built several villas in the 1890s as rental properties for genteel tenants.
Construction of residence (1887) and damage / destruction by fire (1895):
In January 1887, Harriett Walker wife of warehouseman C. George Walker purchased Lot 35 and part of Lot 36 (at a cost of £268) on the north side of Jubilee Avenue. Harriett evidently had financial resources of her own, but a £450 mortgage appears to have financed construction of the single-storey, ten-roomed family residence occupying the site by 1888. George Walker was a buyer for the Manchester and dress department of Macky, Logan, Steen, an English firm that opened a store in Auckland in 1882. Five children were born to the Walkers, the youngest whilst at Jubilee Avenue.
The single-storey family residence insured for £450 evidently ‘burnt to the ground’ in October 1895.
Re-construction of residence (1895-6):
By February 1897, an impressive Italianate-style timber villa of two storeys occupied the property increasing the rateable value from the £35 assigned in the previous listing of February 1895, to £50. It is unclear whether the new residence incorporated elements of the earlier similarly located single-storey structure which had a comparable footprint and a return verandah.
A number of Devonport houses constructed at this time were the work of noted Auckland architect Edward Bartley (1839-1919) who lived locally, although it is not known whether he designed the Walker residence. Nor is the identity of the building-contractor known.
Reflecting contemporary bay villa design as a symbol of the status and material achievement of the colony’s rising middle class, the imposing new residence incorporated a two-storey return-verandah with extensive timber fretwork along two elevations. Chicago-style sash windows faced onto the verandah which terminated in a double-storey bay window unit - a component traditionally manufactured in joinery shops for addition to early bay villas to contribute to the overall impression of affluence. Internally, the dwelling’s main rooms were arranged either side of the central hall on each floor. The rooms of greatest social importance including the master bedroom and parlour were located at the front of the house, with less important rooms including the kitchen at the rear.
The Jubilee Avenue address off Cheltenham Road and overlooking King Edward Parade, two streets known by that time for their large and handsome residences, well suited George Walker’s business ambitions. The locality enjoyed views of the harbour and Devonport Domain’s cricket ground. It was also close to the Flagstaff commercial centre, until 1904 a major ferry terminal for commuters to Auckland’s central business district (CBD).
George pursued work as a mining agent in late 1895 while still a warehouseman, prior to entering a short-lived partnership - Whalley, Walker and Co., surveyors, civil and mining engineers and general mining agents. The firm operated from premises near the stock exchange in Auckland’s financial district, capitalising on renewed interest arising from increasing gold yields from Waihi and the Ohinemuri district following the introduction of the cyanide extraction process earlier in the decade.
Subsequent use and modifications:
In 1898, Harriett increased a mortgage taken out two years earlier. A court order that George pay an £8 debt in instalments, suggests the family may have experienced financial difficulties. An October 1899 advertisement offered a charmingly-situated family residence in Jubilee Avenue, for immediate sale. The house containing ten rooms, bathroom, pantry and scullery, and extensive balcony view of sea and harbour was described as having perfect appointments and finish.
Frank Bartram Blackwell (c.1862-1934) became the new owner the following month. His father, John - a master hosier who had done well in the drapery trade and owned eighteen houses in the Midlands city of Northampton - had left Frank a £6000 inheritance the previous year. Frank Blackwell, an amateur botanist and talented photographer, married in 1900 but the family appears to have lived on his Pahi River farm at Kaipara. Photographs taken by Frank and his sister Ellen featured in Plants of New Zealand, a 1906 publication jointly authored by Ellen Wright Blackwell (1864-1952) and Robert Malcolm Laing (1865-1941) that became a botanical classic running to seven editions over the next 60 years.
During Blackwell’s ownership, the Jubilee Avenue house was let to shipbroker Alfred G. Taine (1852-1941). Taine was a son of James John Taine (1817-1914) and Leocadia (nee de Oliveira) said to be the ward or adopted daughter of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. As a young man Alfred was employed by a London manufacturer of ice-making machinery, work that took him to India and the United States. Returning to New Zealand in 1879 he went into business as an auctioneer and commission agent, retiring to Auckland around 1900. Taine Senior later leased the luxurious Watson residence at the end of Jubilee Avenue, where he died in 1914.
In August 1904, 5 Jubilee Avenue was bought by Alexander Roger Morrison (c.1854-1922) manager of the Direct Supply Company (D.S.C.). The D.S.C., a major Auckland furniture, drapery and clothing manufacturing retailer based in Queen Street, had emerged in 1893 from the Auckland Direct Importing Company purchased by Morrison in 1889. Morrison’s closure of his premises at 6 pm rather than 10 pm on Saturdays commencing from 1890 earned praise from those concerned that late shopping and long hours in Auckland’s retail sector was the cause of the moral and physical wreck of many young lives.
In 1908, Morrison added four vacant Takarunga Road sites to his Jubilee Avenue property. A two-storey rear verandah added to the home shortly after would have enabled better enjoyment of the enlarged grounds. Retired by 1909, Morrison remained active as a member of a syndicate that acquired the assets of the D.S.C; and as a director of the National Timber Company, and of the Takapuna Tram and Ferry Company (TTFC). Until its demise in 1927, the TTFC (founded in 1910) offered a steam tram service through Belmont and Takapuna to Milford from its Auckland / Bayswater ferry. Shareholders invested in land along the way to encourage residential settlement in the Takapuna and Milford areas.
Following Morrison’s death in 1926, the Jubilee Avenue house formed part of a family trust with considerable land holdings. In 1927 a timber outbuilding was constructed as a washhouse, lavatory, wood and tool shed. The site plan shows a new fowl house of timber construction, and an existing brick outbuilding on Lot 22.
Morrison’s daughter and son-in-law, lawyer Eric Blampied, occupied the house until circa 1943. Following subdivision of the property in 1946, the land fronting Takarunga Road was sold although the area occupied by the fowl house and a brick garage was retained as part of 5 Jubilee Avenue.
In 1948, a period of increased pressure for residential accommodation as New Zealand’s marriage and birth rates escalated following the end of the Second World War (1939-45), the Blampieds obtained permission to convert the house into three flats: two downstairs; and one upstairs. Associated alterations included construction of two new bathrooms and kitchens; the introduction of new partition walls and the relocation of doorways. New openings were created to the exterior; the back porch was remodelled; rear stairs were constructed, and a dining alcove was created extending from the northeast corner of the ground floor - works overseen by architects Watkin and Stemson.
The house sold in 1967, ending more than six decades of Morrison family ownership. Reflecting a movement towards the gentrification of Auckland’s older suburbs in the 1970s, the property reverted to a single family home. In 1974, a photograph of the house accompanied a newspaper report that 64 selected buildings were to be recorded by the Borough Council as a reflection of the character of earlier Devonport. Restoration of the villa continued after the property changed hands in 1979. Alterations undertaken by the new owners included a deck and conservatory addition at the rear of the house (1985); construction of a carport or garage addition (1988) to or adjoining an existing shed; and replacement of the slate roof with corrugated metal.
