Fyffe House
Interactive map of the Fyffe House area
General information
Type	House
Location	62 Avoca Street, Kaikōura, New Zealand
Coordinates	42°25′0.3″S 173°42′25.42″E / 42.416750°S 173.7070611°E / -42.416750; 173.7070611
Website
www.visitheritage.co.nz/visit/upper-south-island/fyffe-house
Heritage New Zealand – Category 1
Designated	15 February 1990
Reference no.	238

Fyffe House is a heritage building in Kaikōura, in the South Island of New Zealand. It is the town's oldest surviving building and a remnant of a whaling station established in 1842. It is listed as a Heritage New Zealand Historic Place Category 1.^[1]

Robert Fyffe, who had arrived in New Zealand in 1836,^[2]was the first European to establish a whaling station at Wai ō puka, although Māori had occupied the area fishing and hunting since the 15th century. ^[2] and later worked on the whaling station as boat crew. Wai ō puka is located on a headland past the Pier Hotel and just before reaching the old wharf in Kaikōura. It is sheltered from southerly storms by high peninsula hills with views across the bay to the Seaward Kaikōuras.^[3].Fyffe was financed into the venture by the Wellington merchant John Wade ^[2] and built the house on piles made from the vertebrae of a Tohorā (Southern right whale).

Within 10 years Fyffe had set up a prosperous shore whaling business and established a farm with 2,000 sheep.^[4] By 1849 as the whaling business declined, he had turned to farming, initially acquired by squatting, and on his death in 1854 his estate was valued at over 6,000 pounds.^[2]

Thomas Nowell was the whaling station's first cooper, the maker of casks or barrels for whale oil and it is his house of two rooms and a hipped roof made with totara hand-split shingles, which is considered to be Fyffe House's eastern wing and now the curator's quarters.^[2] Robert Fyffe had also built a shearing and woolshed using whale ribs as posts and crossbeams supporting a roof of toetoe, and constructed sheep yards with pieces of whale bone. His assortment of buildings became known as Fyffe's Village, and formed the social and business centre of Kaikōura until the mid-1860s.^[1]

In December 1853 Robert's cousin, George Fyffe, then a law student at Edinburgh University, arrived in Wellington from Scotland, having accepted Robert Fyffe's invitation to join him at Kaikōura. ^[2]

Unfortunately, in late April 1854, Robert Fyffe was on the vessel Fidèle on a voyage to Wellington with a cargo of whale oil, when the boat capsized and wrecked and he drowned. ^[1]

Without a will in George's favour, Robert's executor advertised in 1861 seeking heirs. Fyffe's widowed sister Elizabeth Laird, then living in New York, saw this and attempted to locate their brother James Fyfe who was also supposed to be living there^[1]

Potential heirs were required to appear in person at the solicitor's office in Wellington, and so Laird and her family arrived in New Zealand in 1862 where she inherited £18,000 pounds and her son William Laird went to Kaikōura to assume control.

George bought the whaling equipment and the 'right to whale' in 1854.^[2] He continued this with a large acreage he had purchased of 7,000 acres and expanded the house in the 1850s and 1860s using pit-sawn native timbers, including kahikatea, tōtara, matai, rimu and miro to construct a two-storeyed west wing built on some whale bone piles, local mudstone and limestone. While digging the foundation for his store in 1857 George found a large moa egg, which is now housed in Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand. ^[2]

The property was first known as Mr Fyffe's house and later as Mr Goodall's and then Granny Low's.^[2]George Fyffe largely lived there until, then in financial difficulties,he fell off rocks and died in 1867.^[2] His wife Catherine died a few years later. They had no children.

Fyffe House was then bought by Joseph Wilkinson Goodall, (1835-1911) former district constable, Clerk of the Court and Registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages,who then took over management of Kaikōura Wharf.^[1] Few changes to the house were made in his time. The land was subdivided when he died in 1911 and James Johnston bought the house in 1920. His son James Allen (Jimmy) Johnson, a former whaler, took it over in 1922 andJoseph and Maud Low and their eight children lived there. Joseph Soutar then bought Fyffe House in 1935 and lived in a small bach on the property, while Maud Low remained in the house until she died in 1951. She bequeathed it to her youngest son, George Low. A former fisherman, he used most of the house for storage, including keeping a boat in the parlour.

George Low died in 1980 and bequeathed the house to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, which restored it as a house museum, and one of the oldest authentic cottages in New Zealand. ^{[1] [5]} This work included many repairs and repainting the exterior in its original pink. This paint was believed to be made from red lead, white lead and whale oil.^[2] Chairs and the brass bedstead were restored, along with a large lock on the front door. The bannisters were returned to their original wood. Some of the old lath and plaster was to be put under glass in one bedroom. At the back of the house some of the original wooden guttering remains and the remains of the bread oven.^[3]

Media related to Fyffe House at Wikimedia Commons

Category:Heritage New Zealand Category 1 historic places in the Canterbury Region Category:Kaikōura District