Permission sought to move cottage to gasworks

Dunedin heritage campaigner Ann Barsby is delighted that a 19th-century worker’s cottage she once "went out on a limb" to save may soon find a permanent home.

"They think I’m mad," Mrs Barsby once recalled her friends’ reaction to her move to pay $14,000 of her own money to save the cottage from the imminent risk of demolition, in 2014.

The cottage, now located near the Tahuna waste water treatment station, was originally located in Braemar St, South Dunedin, near the Dunedin Gasworks Museum.

This week, Mrs Barsby applied to the Dunedin City Council for resource consent to shift the cottage to the grounds of the council-owned gasworks museum, where it would help deliver a stronger sense of social history.

Heritage campaigner Ann Barsby stands next to the 19th-century Dunedin worker’s cottage that she...
Heritage campaigner Ann Barsby stands next to the 19th-century Dunedin worker’s cottage that she saved. PHOTO: GREGOR RICHARDSON

"It’s a step in the right direction," after years of uncertainty, she said.

Mrs Barsby, who helped found the Southern Heritage Trust, is also appealing for community help to raise about $30,000 needed for site works, piles and more weatherboards linked to the cottage’s shift to the gasworks site, if planning permission is granted.

Such workers’ cottages were once common in Dunedin but few remained and it was important to maintain this rare link with the past, she said.

The wooden building was probably built in the 1880s or 1890s, and in about 1903 was extended and two bay windows added to the front.

john.gibb@odt.co.nz

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