Petre designed Tudor-style home

This Tudor-style home on the slopes of St Clair was designed by architect F. W. Petre for him and his new bride to move into more than 125 years ago. But as Kim Dungey learns, theirs was not a smooth path into marriage or home ownership.

Francis Petre had met and fallen in love with Margaret Cargill while working for her father, Edward, on his clifftop villa nicknamed Cargill's Castle.

Their 1881 marriage created a scandal in the province, as he was staunchly Catholic and she was Presbyterian.

And the controversy did not end there.

Edward Cargill, a leading Dunedin businessman, gave the couple the land at 20 Cliffs Rd as a wedding present.

However, he had apparently not investigated the title properly.

Later, the property's real owner appeared with a clear title and claimed possession of the land - and the house, which Petre had named Springfield.

Cargill's daughter and son-in-law were forced to move out and later built a new house further up the hill.

This home, known to local children as the "haunted house", no longer stands.

Petre, born in Petone to a prominent colonial family, was educated in England and qualified as an architect and engineer around 1869.

On his return to New Zealand, he oversaw the construction of the Dunedin-Balclutha railway line before setting up in private practice in Dunedin.

A pioneer in concrete construction, he used the material in Cargill's Castle, St Dominic's Priory and Judge Chapman's house in Lovelock Ave, as well as 20 Cliffs Rd.

However, he was best known for his Catholic cathedrals and basilicas in Wellington, Christchurch, Oamaru and Dunedin.

While many of his buildings were on a grand scale, his own home and nearby Pinner House were built in the English Cottage style - a form of idealised Tudor, with halftimbered black beams set into white painted walls, beneath tiled roofs and beamed gables.

An old auction notice describes his former home as having "six beautiful rooms" and a section that was sunny, "neatly laid out" and close to the St Clair tram.

The house shown is much smaller than today's, later owners adding an inside toilet, bathroom and extra bedroom to the second storey in the 1920s, and another wing being added about 13 years ago.

Sam and Rosalie Sneyd's hearts sank when they opened the gate leading to 20 Cliffs Rd.

The place was perfect, but they were sure they could never afford to buy it.

"It's an emotional thing, isn't it?" says Mr Sneyd, as he tries to explain what attracted them to the house 41 years ago.

"We just fell in love with it."

Perhaps luckily for the Sneyds, the house never went on to the market.

The owner, who was moving to Auckland, had had a medical consultation with Prof Sneyd and hearing he was looking for a house, invited him to view her home.

Her late husband had been an ear, nose and throat surgeon and not only did she not want to bother with an auction or open homes, she wanted to sell to another doctor.

Mr Sneyd, a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Otago, moved in with his wife and three children six months later.

The move coincided with a local kitchen design competition, and Mrs Sneyd recalls that as her husband moved boxes around her, she finished her drawings at the dining table left by the previous owner.

The effort paid off, with her winning entry earning them the best part of a new kitchen.

Period bookshelves added to the drawing room were one of the few other changes the Sneyds made to the house until extending the ground floor 13 years ago.

The new wing included a cedar conservatory, a second bathroom, a laundry and a darkroom.

They also built a new garage in a slightly different position to the old one, gaining internal access from the house.

Under the old garage, they found leadlight windows which matched those in another part of the home and which were perfect for the conservatory.

Previous owners had made some attempts at modernisation.

One had covered most of the lovely old doors with plywood, which the Sneyds promptly removed.

Another had glassed in the porch but those windows remain since it makes for a sheltered entrance and, as Mr Sneyd says with a smile, is "good for raising seedlings".

The house is not ideal, adds Mrs Sneyd, who worked in general practice, cytology, public health and hospital administration before retirement.

The south-facing kitchen was obviously designed for a maid and there is no large entertaining space.

But the home has many charms, not least of which is its authenticity.

The gracious interior is filled with antiques, some of which Mrs Sneyd picked up at auction and others brought from England in the early 1900s by Mr Sneyd's maternal grandmother, one of the Grahams of Edmond Castle, near Carlisle.

There are also mementoes of their travels, which included nearly eight years in the 1990s working in Fiji, Hong Kong and Sarawak.

Another attraction is that unlike many old homes which faced the street regardless of where the sun was, this one turns its back on Cliffs Rd and faces north.

The couple say what they most like about the house is that it is full of memories.

But they had to laugh when they heard a young woman there on a fundraising tour comment that "it must be weird living in a place full of old stuff".

"It's an old house, filled with old things, with old occupants," says Mrs Sneyd smiling.