Historic house finds new life
A 110-year-old building that once served as a Catholic presbytery has been transformed into a stunning family home in the South Wairarapa countryside.
The villa was formerly home to St Mary’s Catholic Church’s parish priest in Carterton and was hauled away in pieces in the middle of the night in November last year.
The building is now located on a 2.5ha rural property on Bidwell’s Cutting Rd between Greytown and Martinborough.
Its new owner, Matt Calder, has been working on transforming the tired old building into a fully strengthened and remodelled 260sqm family home.
The presbytery was built in 1912.
The neighbouring church was deemed earthquake prone in 2018 and the site was sold to developers in early 2022.
The building was in pretty bad shape when it was lifted from its High St site in Carterton.
Some of the ceiling was caving in, and the rooms had been turned into office and administration spaces. The villa is now home to Calder, his two children, his partner and her two children, who moved in about a month ago. “You’re seven minutes from Martinborough and seven minutes from Greytown so you’re in a golden triangle.
“The kids love it. They can hoon on motorbikes down in the paddock.”
Calder grew up in Wairarapa but spent a lot of time in Wellington and Indonesia.
He has done most of the work on the villa himself with licensed builders, tradespeople and engineers taking care of the certified work.
Calder said they had installed “a huge amount” of engineered strengthening in the roof to open up and support some of their improvements. “Mainly to support these quite vast open spaces, and we’ve also moved it from where it got a breath of wind in Carterton to an extreme wind zone, so everything has to be over-engineered for that.”
The whole back section of the house was about nine different rooms, all split up in a hodgepodge for the presbytery’s kitchen, toilet, shower and office space. That part of the house is now home to two of the children’s rooms, the master bathroom and an office.
Calder designed the kitchen, bathrooms and the layout of the house. He’s moved old villas before, and has gone for different design styles with each one. “Part of the joy of doing these is that you can have a lot of fun with each project.”