Barbara Kensington in front of the farm shed on her
family's farm at Goodwood. Photo by Linda Robertson.
The Historic Places Trust is considering category 1
registration for the country's second-oldest surviving farm
building, at Goodwood, north of Dunedin.
In 1849, Swede Charles Eberhard Suisted built a
barn in which his family lived while they waited for their
homestead to be completed in 1851.
The barn was then used as stables and still survives as a
farm shed.
Trust Otago-Southland area manager Owen Graham yesterday said
the Goodwood farmstead was being proposed for greater
heritage recognition because of its link to one of Otago's
earliest Scandinavian settlers and because it was a rare New
Zealand example of Swedish settlement and building design.
"Despite the stables' modest appearance, there is
considerable architectural significance that makes the
building an important reminder of what life was like for
Otago's pioneers."
The farmstead was understood to be second only to Johnny
Jones' Matanaka, at Waikouaiti, as the oldest farm building
still in existence.
Mr Graham said Mr Suisted, at 2m and 140kg, was "literally
and figuratively, a larger than life character" who came to
Otago from Wellington where he had been a hotelier after
arriving in New Zealand in 1842.
He bought 550 acres of land near Pleasant River for 200,
established squatting rights further north and named his
estate Goodwood.
The original homestead, Goodwood House, was built by
Charles Suisted in 1851 and demolished in the late 1930s.
Photo supplied.
He was born into a wealthy industrial family in Varmland,
Sweden, in 1810, and in 1833 married Mary Emma Richmond from
Lincolnshire.
Over the next 22 years they had 15 children, 12 of them boys.
The stables were built by superintendent carpenter John Seed
with the exterior of kauri timber.
Swedish motifs and design elements are evident and it may be
the only farm building in the country with a "pan iron tile"
roof.
Mr Suisted sold Goodwood in 1856 and later returned to
Wellington where he ran the Equator Hotel on the waterfront
before going bankrupt.
He died in 1860.
The old stable has been owned since 1941 by the Kensington
family.
Barbara Kensington said it had been used for storing hay but
now contained machinery.
Descendants of the Suisteds visited at times.
Mrs Kensington was happy with the proposed recognition of the
building, but pointed out that it was on private land and
with no general public access.
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