Miracle conversion |
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For weeks, Mary Dallison’s now beloved kitchen could have served as a backdrop in a gritty war movie. Men in face masks worked navel-deep in rubble to demolish 80-year-old cement walls lined with coke dust and chicken wire. Every person and every surface in the vicinity was coated in black dust.
It looked, Mary says, “like a little Bosnia”.
That was a tough winter for the Dallisons. Builders had descended on the dilapidated former Anglican bishop’s residence in the Nelson suburb of Bishopdale and things were not going well. Work was behind schedule, mistakes were being made, the budget was blown and all the windows had been removed from one end of the house. Meanwhile, amid the chaos, Peter was trying to operate his law practice from a home office.
At nights, the couple and their three children, Emma, Tim and Sam, camped out in the sole intact bedroom.
During the day, all five of them would take refuge around the fireplace in Peter’s office to eat, finish homework, play or work. Mary and Peter often slogged past midnight, in the wake of up to a dozen tradesmen, to give their children a clear path to school in the mornings.
“The process was hideous,” says Peter of the 13-month renovation project that should have taken nine months. “But the end result is just phenomenal. Living here and working here is just a delight.”
Now the war zone is a sleek, highly functional kitchen with dual dishwashers, fridges and coffee machines. The rest of the two-storeyed home has been stripped back, cleaned up, restored and carefully furnished. Bathrooms and underfloor heating have been added, open fireplaces revamped and a verandah has become a glass-walled indoor dining area that is, they say, “like lunching in the garden”.
Peter initially visited the 2.2ha property with a view to carving up the land for development. But once he’d walked up the curving, heavily treed driveway and spotted the historic house, he was too smitten to consider the idea.
“My neck was aching, looking at all these beautiful trees.” Though the house seemed grim inside, he recognised its potential and headed home to sweet-talk his wife.
Mary was reluctant. It was 2001 and the couple had barely finished designing and building a luxurious Georgian-style manor near Christchurch. Their children were settled into schools and Mary was entrenched in the rural community of Clarkville. In Nelson, she had no family or friends and her husband showed her a house that was tired and unloved-looking.
“No one had lived here for seven months,” she says. “It had had no maintenance, no money spent, the garden was let go.”
Things did not look up once the family moved in. The children hated the cold, dark, odd-smelling house as much as their mother did. “I cried and cried,” she says.
But Mary is quick to explain that the Anglican diocese had inherited an old, difficult-to-maintain home that dated back to grander times when churches were wealthier and kitchens were designed for servants. >
For the first four years, the house remained unchanged while Mary and Peter planned, sketched and resketched their renovation plans for the historic home. The current “Bishopdale” house was built in 1927 and, by the time the Dallisons moved in, it had been inhabited by a long succession of bishops and their families.
The site once housed an even more imposing theological college and bishop’s residence, then surrounded by large tracts of church-owned farmland leased out to generate income. Occasional church services are still held in a 133-year-old chapel on the property and Peter still uses a large safe that originally housed the church’s property deeds.
He and Mary relish their home’s history, its solidity and peaceful outlook and the opportunity to watch over an ancient chapel that looks like a slice of England. And they both grin over stories relayed by local residents who claim to have attended parties in the house decades ago. Apparently previous teenage residents used to make mischief while their dad was out of town.
Peter wonders whether his own children may do the same one day – the eldest Dallison offspring, Emma, is now 16; Tim and Sam are 14 and 11 respectively – especially once the new swimming pool and wine-cellar-cum-pool- house are completed this summer.
In the meantime, they keep their parents busy ferrying them between athletics meets and rugby, volleyball, basketball and touch rugby games. Peter coaches school sports teams and appreciates the convenience of living close to town and schools, so he can easily duck to sports grounds during the day or work in the garden in the afternoon.
Much as Mary and Peter adore the home and the space it affords their family, they expect it will feel far too large once the children leave home. If plans run smoothly, they will have sold up and moved to an island in Fiji by the time their youngest son hits university.
Meanwhile, they are careful to make time for sitting on the balcony off their bedroom on summer nights with a gin and tonic. At lunchtime, they often take dogs Max and Strawberry to explore walking tracks in the Grampians reserve that sits behind Bishopdale.
“The climate up here is stunning,” says Peter. “Working from home is just paradise and the Nelson lifestyle… there’s no question that it’s the best lifestyle in the world. We have three very, very busy children and everything is 10 minutes away.”
That’s if they can tear themselves away from the place. “Sometimes, in the weekends, we just don’t like going out that gate.”
Story: Sue Hoffart
Photographs: Daniel Allen
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