One of New Zealand’s first Lockwood Homes has come up for sale for the first time in almost 70 years.
The property has a CV of $4.225 million, but its beginnings are more modest than that.
Back in 1956, Auckland couple Hal and Joan McCowan commissioned the newly formed Lockwood Homes from Rotorua to build a three-bedroom bach on a 1500sqm plot of land overlooking Christian Bay, on the Tāwharanui Peninsula.
Tāwharanui wasn’t the playground of the rich and famous it is now, with Aucklanders tending to holiday in Manly, on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, in 1950s and 60s.
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Tāwharanui, which was further north, was less desirable but land there was starting to open up, and the peninsula was relatively close to Joan’s family in Warkworth.
Grandson Andy McCowan told OneRoof that construction of the Lockwood bach would have been quite a feat.
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Just getting to Christian Bay from their home in Auckland’s Epsom was challenging enough. Andy said his grandparents had to drive right around the Waitematā Harbour up State Highway 16 on gravel roads.
But getting the wood and materials to the bay took skill and determination.
There was no track to the couple’s section, so “all the wood was basically brought in by hand from Takatu Road down the hill”, Andy said.
The couple were heavily involved in the build, as were friends, family and neighbours, who pitched in when they could.
The bach was much more than a holiday spot. It was healing for Hal, who was traumatised by the events of World War II a decade earlier.
The bach was built in the 1950s by the McCowan family. The design is early Lockwood in style. Photo / Supplied
The property looks out over Christian Bay and towards Kawau Island. Photo / Supplied
Hal’s brother was killed while fighting in Egypt and Hal himself was seriously injured during fighting in Libya and subsequently captured by the Germans. He was sent to the infamous PG57 prisoner-of-war camp at Grupignano, in northern Italy.
When Italy fell, Hal was sent to Poland, to Stalag VIII-A Görlitz camp, where prisoners were forced to work in the mines.
When the camp was liberated, Hal and fellow POWs walked for two weeks to Krakow, where they waited for a month before being evacuated and eventually shipped home.
The war had scarred Hal and “the bach was a key part of the healing,” said Andy. “I would say that would be the case for many of the families from that era.”
Andy and his cousins spent countless holidays at the bay. “We’d drive up from the Waikato to use the bach. It is a soulful place, partly because of the connection to our parents and grandparents, but also because of the memories we made there. The long evenings with barbecues, the water skiing, the diving, the surfing at Tāwharanui and Omaha.”
The property has a CV of more than $4m and is for sale by tender. Photo / Supplied
Lockwood has few records dating back to its early builds, but the company built their first home in their Rotorua factory in 1954, two years before the McCowan commissioned their Tāwharanui bach.
The pioneering pre-fabricated homes made headlines and by 1958 Lockwood had built 350 homes nationwide.
Sarah Smith, head of sales and marketing at Lockwood, said that the McCowan bach was one of the very early Lockwood designs. “Speed of construction was one big drawcard of Lockwood at the time. They were also known to be strong, with similar style homes in Norway surviving bombing in WWII. They had better thermal performance than other styles of construction at the time too,” she told OneRoof.
Listing agent James Doole, of Barfoot & Thompson, said the bach offered quintessential coastal living. The boat ramp was almost directly in front of the home and Kawau island was “practically on the doorstep”.
- 806 Takatu Road, Tāwharanui Peninsula, Auckland, is for sale with a deadline of November 13
