When Eleanor Duncan saw last month’s story on the front page of Nelson Weekly about the historic Haven Rd house being pulled down, the memories flooded back.
The home was pulled down bit-by-bit by Luke King, who plans to reuse its materials at a site in The Glen.
The house was built between 1904 and 1905 and is listed as a Historic Place Category 2 with Heritage New Zealand.
As a born and bred Nelsonian, Eleanor remembers going to Auckland Point School and playing by the fountain on Haven Rd, but she also remembers running through the halls of 81 Haven Rd.
Eleanor’s great uncle and aunt, Harry and Ivy Horncastle, owned the house for over two decades back in the thirties and Eleanor still remembers running to their house after school, armed with goodies from her mother.
“I used to pop along before and after school with mum’s baking or things she had made for Aunt Ivy.”
Eleanor says she spent a lot of time there in the 40s and 50s and knows the house well.
“I can still see all the rooms and the big long passage from the front to the back, it was like the black hole of Calcutta on the southerly side,” says Eleanor.
“They had the most marvellous garden and they had a massive cage with a magpie, in the back. He quite tickled my fancy, they had taught him how to talk and I spent ages in front of that cage.”
Eleanor even remembers the “ginormous old curtain” that hung halfway down the passage to stop the draft, but also served as a tissue for the five children in the winter.
“Aunt Ivy used to say everyone stopped and wiped their nose on it on the way through.”
While Eleanor doesn’t remember much of her great uncle Harry, she says he was a short Australian who was often working and constantly wearing a suit and tie.
Harry managed the Kirkpatrick factory that once stood on Vanguard St making jams and tins, well before the age of Watties.
“That was back in the day when horses and carts delivered all the tins.”
When we took Eleanor to the site with the torn-down house, her first words were “By jove!”
