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A café situated just metres from New Zealand's oldest surviving building has been damaged in an overnight blaze, but volunteer firefighters managed to stop the flames spreading to 204-year-old Kemp House at Kerikeri Basin.
Police are investigating the blaze, which started in a storage shed next to Honey House Café about 11.30pm on Friday.
The shed was destroyed while one wall of the café was burned and its water pipes and electric cables were badly damaged.
The two-storey Honey House has the café on the ground level and offices for Heritage New Zealand upstairs.
The business is next to Kemp House, which was built between 1821 and 1822 by missionaries, and was an important focus for early relationships between Māori and Pākehā.
Another heritage building, the Stone Store, which was built not much later - from 1832 to 1836 - is also next door to the cafe.
The fire had been small, and "both Kemp House and Stone Store were thankfully unaffected by the blaze," a Honey House Café spokesperson said.
Kerikeri deputy fire chief Andy Hamberger said the nation owed a debt of gratitude to a Kerikeri man whose vigilance may have saved New Zealand's oldest building.
Hamberger said a man on his way to work about 11.30pm on Friday called 111 when he spotted smoke near Kerikeri Basin.
The first fire truck at the scene found a storage shed next to the Honey House Café - which was immediately behind the 204-year-old Kemp House - was burning fiercely.
The crew called for a second truck as well as backup from Ōkaihau and Paihia.
Hamberger said the shed was razed and the café's exterior, water pipes and electrical cabling were badly damaged.
If firefighters had arrived a few minutes later the flames could have taken hold of the two-storey Honey House and spread from there to nearby Kemp House, which was currently wrapped in plastic for reroofing.
"It was called in by a chap who was going to work, he spotted the fire," Hamberger said.
"Without him the potential for spread to Kemp House was actually quite scary, to be honest, because they've got it surrounded with plastic sheeting to protect it. Potentially we could have had a fire in that Kemp House as well," he said.
"I don't know him but a big shout out to that guy, because without him being pretty vigilant on his way to work, we could be looking at a major building fire, or a heritage building being lost, or certainly significantly damaged."
John O'Hare, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga spokesman for Northland, said the entire Kerikeri Mission Station site was closed while police and Fire and Emergency New Zealand carried out their investigations.
It was too early to say with certainty what had caused the fire but initial indications were that it had been deliberately lit.
Fortunately, neither Kemp House nor the Stone Store had been damaged.
"But it was too close for comfort. It was very, very close, and we're just very thankful that that Kemp House didn't catch alight, and incredibly disappointed that somebody would do this. The indicators are that this was a deliberate act, which is appalling," O'Hare said.
The café was likely to be closed for the foreseeable future.
The cause had yet to be confirmed but if police found it had been deliberately lit, as was suspected, that would be "appalling" and "deeply disappointing", he said.
Despite its historic appearance, the Honey House - a former curator's cottage - was only built in 1976.
It was built on the site of a historic barn and took its name from James Kemp Jr's storage shed for beehives, which once stood nearby.
The café opened in 2012 with some of its recipes sourced from historic archives, or made with fruit grown in Kerikeri Mission Station's heritage orchard.
Kemp House was erected in 1821-22 by the London-based Church Missionary Society for the Reverend John Butler, the only ordained minister in the settlement at the time.
It was built by missionary carpenters and Māori sawyers, and later became the home of the Kemp family.
Kemp House is currently wrapped in plastic while its roof shingles are being replaced, which could have made a fire even more catastrophic.
Kerikeri Fire Brigade conducted a major exercise at Kerikeri Basin in February this year based on a scenario in which people were trapped in a fire at the Stone Store, which was next to Kemp House.
