To the Lighthouse |
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Alan and mary Swafford have never been scared to be different so it was no surprise to locals when the couple built a lighthouse as their family bach on a remnant of their former farm at Ligar Bay, on the south-eastern shoreline of Golden Bay. They had been talking about it for years as they brought in the cows for milking and looked out to sea.
“We always said to each other how Ligar Bay needed a lighthouse,” says Alan. “So we thought, we’ll build it ourselves.”
Alan and Mary Swafford’s lighthouse, with its companionway leading to the boatshed (right), overlooks the small Golden Bay settlement of Ligar Bay with views out to Farewell Spit and beyond.
The Swaffords came to Ligar Bay as a young married couple in 1954, buying a small dairy farm of 34ha and milking 45 to 50 cows, at a time when schoolmates were being drawn to the cities in search of high earnings.
“We were living a lovely dream, working together to raise our three children, but there was no money for luxuries. Those had to come from the grandparents.”
When the Swaffords arrived at Ligar Bay there were just two farms and three baches in the area. “People would come from Nelson or even Takaka [about 10km away] for the weekend. It was in the days when people built baches anywhere. They were typical home-built things and people just put them up, even in the national park.”
Alan and Mary enjoy a snack in a sheltered spot near the companionway.
Despite their best efforts, the lifestyle proved uneconomic so they leased the adjoining 360ha beef and sheep farm and expanded. But agricultural prices continued to slump and in 1974 they were finally forced to look for alternative incomes. Mary began teaching in Golden Bay and Alan ran the local agricultural supplies outlet. “We would come down every weekend to run the farm and worked in Takaka during the week,” says Alan. “It was busy but at least the bills got paid.”
In the early 1990s, the local Golden Bay cement works closed and “when the dust settled, what had been a smoky industrial area became a pristine coastal bay very quickly and I realised it was a place where others might want to live. So we did a subdivision down to two and three-hectare blocks and that gave us enough to retire.”
Comfortably settled in a home in Takaka, the Swaffords reckoned it was time to give the bay the lighthouse it had always needed. “We had kept three blocks of the best land so we contacted [Golden Bay architectural designer] Andy Clark. He’s a practical bloke who’d already done some work for us extending our family home in Ligar Bay over the years. He was happy to ‘indulge us in our folly’, as he put it.”
The Swaffords went online, searching for designs, and were particularly impressed with the American coastal lighthouses. Preferred designs were downloaded and handed to Andy.
“He produced two or three plans and within six months we had agreement. We were guided by what Andy told us, with a few additions. We wanted a boatshed alongside and it had to sleep a number.”
In the master bedroom and en suite on the third level, Mary made the bed cover, rag rug and curtains as well as the folded quilt at the foot of the bed, which features the dozen American lighthouses that inspired the Swaffords’ design.
The four-level six-sided bach can sleep nine comfortably and an innovative student grandson has even squeezed in 18 on one stay. With 50,000 litres of tank-supply water and multiple bathrooms it can accommodate all family requirements.
From every level the views out over Ligar Bay to Farewell Spit and beyond are stunning, unobstructed and north-west facing. “That’s why all the windows in the lighthouse are tinted because there is just so much sun.
“We call the bottom floor the bilge. It’s built on a concrete pad with concrete blocks and has a let-down double bed and French doors out onto a jetty,” says Alan.
On the ground floor, “the bilge” has what the Swaffords call a “Laurel and Hardy bed” (they say every Laurel and Hardy film had a let-down bed) covered in Mary’s favourite handmade quilt; the framed T-shirt on the wall comes from son Alan’s days in the navy and the knotted banister was made by a Nelson-based Hungarian net maker.
From the bilge, narrow stairs wind up the interior wall to the kitchen/dining/living level, which the Swaffords call the galley. Earthworks ensured this second storey is also at ground level, enabling guests to drive up and walk in without stairs.
“We had the earth moved because we were only allowed a maximum of 6.5m above the ground, so we had to go down to get in the four levels of lighthouse.”
A small sunny walkway connects the second level to the bathroom, boatshed and stairs that lead to a loft with four beds. In the lighthouse proper, another flight of stairs winds up the wall from the living area to “the cabin” – the third-level main bedroom and en suite. “We call the toilet on that third level the head – that’s a marine term,” explains Alan. “In boats the toilets always used to be in the bow – the head or front of the boat – so all the mess would fall away.”
Up the final flight of stairs on the fourth level is “the crow’s-nest”, a small room with one bed.
The entire decor of the lighthouse has a marine theme. Mary is a dedicated quilter and has made exquisite quilts for every bed, each with an individual subject and colour scheme. Curtains and lighthouse objets d’art continue the look.
Alan happily recounts the kind of Golden Bay ingenuity that saved them time and money on the build. “Builder Paul Crockford put up three levels of the lighthouse and the boatshed, then built the fourth-level crow’s-nest in the boatshed, skidded it out, lifted it into place with a crane and just bolted it up. It saved having to get a lot of scaffolding just for that level.”
Accommodating a six-sided room on each level was never going to be easy, of course, and difficulties came to the fore in the kitchen. A swivelling rangehood was used at added cost after the builder told them a normal rangehood couldn’t be fitted.
The exterior walls are clad in a plasticised weatherboard called Palliside, which Alan says has proved excellent in the coastal conditions. But the interior flooring turned out to be a more challenging proposition. Mary had seen just the thing in her local hairdressers’ and a Motueka-based retailer agreed to supply the product, only to find it was a discontinued line.
“But they told us they could supply and I made them stick to their word,” says Alan. “They had to shop all over New Zealand to find us enough but they did get it.” Even today, six years after the lighthouse was completed, Mary remains delighted with her choice – a board-patterned vinyl with a distressed blue finish.
Though the Swaffords stay in the lighthouse on only a handful of occasions during the year they agree it’s the perfect bolt-hole for extended family and friends.
“When you’re getting in the cows for milking twice a day you get to know the land pretty well and I can tell you that lighthouse is on the best bit of land in Ligar Bay – just as a lighthouse should be.”
This weekend we will be: Mary will be quilting and we’ll both be gardening; I’ll be practising music [Alan sings and teaches singing].
The best time of the week: When friends or family call in.
And the worst time: Probably a long period of bad weather when we can’t get outside.
My favourite part of the house is: At home, the open fire and, at the lighthouse, the wood stove.
At the moment we are enjoying eating: Our own home-grown produce and home-killed meat.
The home improvement that caused the most debate was: We’ve always agreed.
A quote I often use is: Get on with it.
I love this part of New Zealand because of: The climate and community; we have 100 miles of beach here and that does make an impact on the area.
The most important thing to us is: Family.
Our happiest day in the lighthouse was: The house-warming; the house was overflowing.
Alan Swafford
For more images including web-exclusive images click on the "photo gallery" link above
Story: Jill Wild
Photographs: Daniel Allen
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