Positioned amongst the homes of Dunedin’s wealthy medical professionals on “Dunedin’s Harley Street”, Dr Williams’ house at 238 High Street was designed in the Arts and Crafts style by Basil Hooper in 1908. The house displays Hooper’s initial forays into the Arts and Crafts Movement and signals elements that become trademarks of his distinctive style. This place is of architectural and historical significance.

High Street runs in an easterly direction down to Princes Street at the Exchange. As Dunedin developed, High Street became popular with the wealthy members of the community, and was locale of choice for many of Dunedin’s medical professionals from the 1880s. Dr Ernest Harry Williams (1873-1954) graduated from Otago Medical School in 1899. In 1903 he had recently returned to Dunedin from the United Kingdom where he’d been furthering his medical education. By 1907 he was heading up the Karitane Hospital with Dr Agatha Adams. Around this time he engaged Basil Bramston Hooper (1876-1960) to design him a house and surgery. Hooper had also recently returned to Dunedin in 1904 from England where he developed an interest in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Williams was up and coming in Dunedin’s medical community, and given his busy life, it no doubt suited him to have a home surgery. Williams became the first physician to children at Dunedin hospital in 1910 and the first lecturer in children’s diseases at Otago Medical School in 1914. Later, he became the physician in charge of the children’s department at Queen Mary and was Honorary Physician at the Karitane-Harris Hospital. After Sir Truby King’s death, he became Acting Medical Adviser.

The house is stylish but unassuming, set further back from the road than its neighbours, its brick foundations, roughcast walls and flaring green slate roof ground it into its setting. Hooper’s distinctive plaster eyebrow details over windows were used here for the first time. Other elements such as the brick tile pattern at the apex of the roofline, and curved gutters, inspired by C.F.A Voysey (1857-1941), are evident and continued to be signatures of Hooper’s style. The front elevation boasts two asymmetric gables and a five-facetted bay window. There are clear glass lead-lights in windows. At the time of building it contained 10 rooms and offices. The north elevation features many windows including a bay window in the drawing-room. The ground and first floor casements are surmounted by a plaster ‘eyebrow’. The first floor has flat roofed dormer windows and a characteristic circular window. The formal entrance hall is lined with panelling to picture rail height, and the ceilings display heavy exposed beams which draw the eye to the end of the hall. The staircase begins half way down the hall on the right, it’s simple but striking with tall Arts and Crafts newel posts and balusters grouped in four sets of three. The drawing-room, and an interior notable for its heavy beamed ceiling, kauri panelled walls and an Oregon chimney piece. The front portion of the house was the dedicated surgery with a separate entrance and included a laboratory. Upstairs were a number of bedrooms with characteristically sloping ceilings, small decorative fireplaces, and a bathroom.

In 1914, Dr Williams commissioned a garage of Hooper, who designed it to compliment the house, was similarly finished in rough-cast with ‘eyebrow’ detail above the door and surmounted by a flaring, green slate roof. In 1924, with his family growing, Williams commissioned Eric Miller to design additions and an extension to the house. Upstairs the rooms have characteristic sloping ceilings. The house continued to be their family home into the 1960s. It was not until the 1980s that significant renovations took place when the brick partition wall either side of the surgery and waiting rooms were removed to create a formal dining room. This space set behind the large bay window became a formal dining room. They retained the two small fireplaces. They also renovated the kitchen from what had been a traditional servant’s space. One of the two sculleries at the back of the kitchen the wash-house and an old toilet were removed. French doors were installed to link the space to the veranda. They laid floor in the kitchen extension with inch thick flagstones retrieved from the front garden. Prior to this the flagstones had covered a courtyard in the old Chief Post Office, having arrived in Dunedin as ships’ ballast. The laundry was moved to the second scullery, and the old cool room was converted into a toilet. Currently the house comprises 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms upstairs, with 4 living areas, kitchen and dining room downstairs. The original features have been maintained while modernising the wall colour.