An historic wooden cottage which has been in the same family for nearly 120 years has been placed on the open market.
The two-room cottage - known locally as the Lewis Cottage - is believed to have been built in the 1880s and dragged on skids by draught horses to the edge of Otago Harbour, at Deborah Bay, to be used as a working men’s cottage when the Mihiwaka train tunnel was built.
Lewis St, in Deborah Bay, is a reminder of the family’s connection with the area.
Their son William and his wife Adelaide bought the 7.3m x 3.7m cottage in 1906, and raised their family of 17 there, on a diet of fish and rabbits.
Five other children who did not survive infancy are believed to be interred in the sea wall there.
He was a popular local identity because he rejected modern comforts such as a telephone or electric stove, and the simplicity of his lifestyle was the subject of many newspaper articles and television programmes.
At the time, Keith said family and friends wanted to preserve the cottage as a tourist attraction and a time capsule of how life was once lived in the West Harbour.
Mick said the cottage had been empty for much of the past two decades while they replaced the south and east walls, re-clad the outside, replaced and raised the piles, and re-roofed it.
But it now needed to be finished on the inside.
"It still needs the chimney rebuilt, the north-facing windows have to be replaced, and the walls need to be lined on the inside.
"So, there’s still a bit of work to do, but all the hard work’s been done."
Mick said the time had now come to consider selling the family cottage because the present owners were all reaching their late 70s and early 80s, and it was getting harder to keep up with the maintenance of the property - which mainly fell on Keith, because he was younger.
"I can’t handle it, my brother can’t handle it any more, and my sister can’t handle it.
"We’re all simply too old.
"That’s the main reason why we’re selling it."
"It will only be sold to someone who will actually look after it as an historic building.
"It’s not necessarily going to the highest bidder.
"It’s an important part of the Otago Harbour. We understand that, and that’s why we’re so keen to protect its future."
He said they would have been happy to pass the property on to the next generation, but it did not appear anyone else in the immediate family was interested in the responsibility that came with owning it.
Despite the property leaving the family’s hands for the first time in more than a century, Mike said he was surprisingly emotionally unaffected by its possible sale.
He believed that with the passing of time, it had become bigger than the Lewis family - it was now a landmark and a piece of Dunedin’s history.
"That’s perfectly OK for me.
"It’ll always be the Lewis Homestead, so we’ll always have a connection to it.
"It’s a landmark and we want to make sure it is maintained as a landmark."
Offers on the property have now closed, and the family will decide their next steps.
