Briarwood - GREYTOWN HERITAGE HOUSE + GARDEN TOUR
Briarwood is a place of great courage. Marc & Ash observe that they no longer see the daring of its collections and style and that it has simply become the substance of their daily living. For the visitor it is startlingly full-bodied.
Briarwood was always out to make a mark, although it is possibly now at its most imposing since its build. Always substantial for its double-storeyed presence, built closely to the street, it has symmetry that is slightly broken by a set-back portico, dressed partially, in turn, by a bay window. The tongue-and-groove boarding on the street facia is deep and regular; coursed to mimic stone. Purportedly Greytown’s first commercial building, there are architectural hints of this history in the heavy cornicing and defining pilaster at each corner. Today, the threshold is heightened by brick columns with pineapple corbels and black wrought-iron-work gates. Equally, the landscaping is highly strict and regulated and takes the eye down a formal drive, provocative about the hidden and unknown.
Trawl through images of the past and, although the building is always recognisable, it has differing incarnations. Built in its earliest parts in the late 1860s and realising its street presence in the late 1870s, its first moments as a cabinet maker’s premises (Charles Hornblow) were in the vernacular of settler architecture. It possibly became a townhouse for a while for the family of C.R. Bidwill; Bidwill sat on the Board of Wardens who were responsible for opening four critical roads from Greytown to the Waiohine River and, as a mark of civic maturity, installing a footpath.
The house fell to tired disrepair in the post war years and was reinvigorated and restored in the 1960s. For a while the building sported two small turrets on the hip of the roof. This was the epoch of Turkey Red. Initially a gallery, named after the owner’s favourite colour (who gives paint colours their names?), it later became a café. Subsequently it was, once again, sprucely renovated and some of the interior architectural detail given more authority. An era as a boutique hotel saw the house extended and the building of a loft apartment, above that garaging at the back of the property, as accommodation for the owners.
Now it is a private home. One of the owners, latterly a highly successful Wellington restaurateur, somehow embodies the spirit of so much that has gone before. However, he has also added a touch that is evasive about being categorised; it’s a house of extraordinarily diverse visual playfulness and rather than being confounded or incoherent for that, the rooms offer a saturation that has you endlessly discovering new elements; drenching yourself in the rich, dark colours; pondering on the parts and the whole.
Stepping into the house you find yourself in a large living hall. A staircase climbs from the right. Beneath the ascent, panelled, wax-finished doors discreetly hide a small, guest kitchen - a call back to an earlier moment in the building’s functions. Your eye is drawn to a vintage, naive animal figure that looks to have been a mascot; it’s indeterminate, sheepish or goatish, and bearing a sash. Directly beyond are bedrooms and suited bathrooms.
Turn left and you step into another living space. This is the stuff of dens. It’s turn-of-20th century, Edwardian-blokie-of-substance and carries an air of sanctuary. Downtime is spent here. Screens viewed. Reading read. A port in any storm. All overseen by the mounted head of a Thar. Faux staghorn candelabra, a splendid model of a sailing yacht; each object adding to the story this room tells.
The walls are intensely hung with the fastidiously realised graphite studies of wildlife by London artist, Gary Hodges. There’s history in this remarkable collection in that all the framing was undertaken by one of the owners of the house. Capitalising on rare downtime, and discovering a framing gallery in Wellington’s Willis Street that offered tutelage and materials for framing, every work was mounted and white framed. The extensive collection adds to the air of a gentleman’s retreat. The ceiling here, and in the substantial entry hall, is coffered; the square panels receding slightly from a grid of beams and cross beams.
At the top of the stairs, immediately to your right is the unique, modelled figure of an army Private. He is detailed in his khaki, binoculars slung about his neck. What is extraordinary about this figure, made by a serving soldier, is that he is made largely of bandages.
Directly towards the back of the house, beyond the guard of the soldier, is the master suite. A bedfellow here is a huge Ans Westra study of chickens.
Back on the landing as you move towards the front of the house, you are greeted by a spirited, anthropomorphic elephant on hind legs, partly disrobed from his or her pink jumpsuit, a cluster of moths make a break for freedom from the bits of discarded garment. There is a further painting by this artist, Joanna Braithwaite, above the fireplace in the adjoining living-room. wherein a cat is confounded by a topiary bird within a glass dome. There’s a segue in this last painting for its chimes with the collection of ducks, pheasant and rabbits; taxidermy you understand. The pièce de résistance in this collection is a pheasant, his vain train of a tail sweeping glitzily towards the floor.
There’s play here with texture, colour and layering – the iridescent tail of the peacock counter-pointing the Designers’ Guild fabrics that meld deep florals with muted, but no less rich, geometric pattern. The floral gets a further nudge from a large painting by Wairarapa artist, Stephen Allwood, of an indulgently blousy-petalled rose.
These upholstered chairs cosset ornate decorum; there’s a finesse in them that is in immediate contrast to the distressed cabinetry and utilitarian tubular steel-framed dining chairs and table. Alcove shelves carry contemporary ceramics; on the one side the work of Mt Maunganui ceramicist Laurie Steer and on the other, a further pottery compilation that borrows the artisan hands of a wider collection but, in fact, is high street retailed; you would not know if you were not told.
This room, partially framed through the small flanks of a removed wall for it was once two, is embracing, almost a refuge. The walls are painted in Resene’s dark cinnamon colour of half Marsala, the ceiling tones lighter but still carrying the hue. The colour seemingly bonds the different idioms of furniture and paintings, and sometimes even imbues them with another element. Two Newcastle (NSW) cityscapes by Euan MacLeod, a darkened palate and constrained orange, signature colouring for the artist, suddenly seem to be bathed by sodium street lights for the fact of the foil of the dark walls.
Tyrannical guides to interiors would have it that you can’t do this. You cannot bring together such unnerving differences and have them talk to one another with anything other than discord. This room proves them entirely wrong. There’s a melee of styles from artisan to highly cultivated, antique to contemporary, and yet nothing baulks, everything finds its own note in the orchestration.
Move through from here into the kitchen and you are startlingly bathed in light. It is partly that beyond the room is a balcony, windows and glazed door tempting you outdoors. It is also the contrasting white of walls and furnishings; white which maybe temporary – there are householder discussions in progress. In its past incarnation, the kitchen was self-consciously a recreation of Edwardian domesticity with plate racks and panelled doors and a butler’s sink. The owners have pared this back and continue to do so.
The butlers sink, alluring until the detail of lip above the work-surface confounded hygiene, has gone to be replaced with brushed stainless steel, shaped within the working surfaces to be continuous. The brushed finish avoids the utilitarian flavour that polished steel sometimes gives. Appliances are currently behind décor panels and there are plans afoot to replace dishwasher and fridge with stainless steel models and to reveal them to the room; “I just like stainless steel”.
Colourful bindings of massed cookery books and satisfactorily tactile pottery, pottery with hushed glazes or raw-fired, are shelved along an end wall. This is a working kitchen with an increasingly purposeful air that avoids being industrial but sheds the self-conscious idiom of retro-detailing. All a little of what you’d expect from professional cook.
The balcony overlooks the garden. In turn the garden shields the earlier mentioned garage and loft apartment. The work of landscape designer Lyn Eglinton (Stablehouse Design), the garden is defined by hedges and topiary. A parade of fastigiate Irish Yews (Taxus baccata Fagiata) line either side of the drive to the entry gates. Beyond, a saw-tooth hedge of hornbeam marks the southern boundary. Initially planted to define the angled parking bays when the building was a business, it has had the bonus in its maturity of providing architectural interest to what could have been a conformist straight line.
The hornbeam is accompanied elsewhere by copper beech. Buxus is shaped to formally interpose the footlights of the garden, punctuated occasionally by stone sculpture. This is a garden that layers greens one upon the other – sweetly sharp with spring’s new growth, rusting in the retirement of autumn. The recently updated blue-tinged-grey livery of the house does much to seat the house comfortably in its planted environment. Centrally a self-assured water feature spills into the formal pond, the large bowl-like urn gathering heavily mossed surfaces from the continuous soaking.
Briarwood is a place of great courage. Its owners observe that they no longer see the daring of its collections and style and that it has simply become the substance of their daily living. For the visitor it is startlingly full-bodied; each tasting offering up more notes.
~ Peter Rowlands