- A six-bedroom estate in Tai Tapu, Selwyn, featuring a unique indoor climbing wall, is for sale.
- The property includes a home cinema, large garage for 18 cars, and a billiards room.
- Owners Richard and Lynda Bell are selling up to return to their previous home, which had been damaged in the 2010 earthquake.
A trophy home with one of the country’s best indoor climbing walls is on the market for sale.
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However, owner Richard Bell admitted to OneRoof that he has never once made it to the top of the wall.
Even Bell’s listing agent, Chris Jones, from Bayleys, was unsure if he was strong enough to conquer the unusual feature, which shoots up through the massive two-storey house.
A climbing wall shoots through the two-storey home. Photo / Supplied
The property is spacious and has been pitched as a premier family residence. Photo / Supplied
“I’m useless, but if you gave me a couple of gins, I’d be the first up there,” he joked.
The six-bedroom estate at 1/71 Tai Tapu Road, in Tai Tapu, Selwyn, is one of the largest in Canterbury. It boasts a 1373sqm footprint, sits on 4.16 hectares of land and has an RV of $5.1 million.
It was originally built by Cantabrian racing enthusiasts Debbie and Dennis Chapman. They installed the climbing wall for their children. Other unusual features include a large home cinema and a huge garage, which can comfortably hold up to 18 cars.
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The Chapmans sold their estate to the current owners 10 years ago, having upgraded to a high-tech castle they had built for themselves.
The Bells, Richard and wife Lynda, snapped up 1/71 Tai Tapu Road after their beloved “forever home” was nearly destroyed in the 2010 Christchurch earthquake. They are only selling up because they have found a way to repair their old home. “It’s one of those earthquake stories where your house is a write-off, you don’t know if it can be repaired, you think you’re going to move on and then find you can fix it,” Richard told OneRoof.
Richard said his family loved their time at the estate, and shared some of its unusual secrets:
- The garage had a car hoist and extra-height doors to accommodate boats and specialist vehicles, and came with a kitchenette and bathroom.
- There’s a huge indoor swimming pool with no pool. The Chapmans replaced the pool space with an engineered floor after the quakes. “We did investigate putting the pool back in, but we don’t like indoor pools,” Richard said, adding: “We’re a tall family and it wasn’t an overly deep pool, so it wasn’t suitable.” The Bells instead used the room for two weddings.
The house sits on more than 4ha, with Halswell River running along the property boundary. Photo / Supplied
- The top of the climbing wall served as the backdrop to the home cinema, which is on the second floor. “The wall is a professional-grade climbing wall and has a proper auto belay system, so it is very safe.” It tended to be used by the younger members of the family, who were in their teens and early 20s when the Bells first moved in.
- Richard and Lynda turned the Chapmans’ go-kart room into a large billiards/pool room. Richard sourced the table from the Mataura Paper Mill Employees’ Social Club. “It’s a 100-year-old kauri table. It was the dirtiest, ugliest old thing, and therefore wasn’t overly expensive. I took it to a specialist wood place, and a month later it came back as the most beautiful piece of furniture I’ve ever seen,” Richard said. The Bells plan to leave the pool table with the house, but if the buyer doesn’t want it, they have friends who will take it on.
Jones told OneRoof that the home was unlike any other he’d seen. “It’s not so much a house, more a statement piece. The enormity is going to intrigue people. You won’t find another one like her in Canterbury. No one else would be mad enough to build it.”
Although the home is big, there’s nothing odd about it, Jones told OneRoof. “The bedrooms are generous, but normal-sized bedrooms. The bathrooms are normal in size. You often find with large homes that the living areas are so big, it takes you half an hour to walk to the kitchen. Well, that’s not the case at 1/71 Tai Tapu Road.”
Jones said he’d been approached by locals and out-of-towners about the house. “The rural market has come right in Canterbury in the last six months. We’ve had dairy farmers look at it, and we’ve had businesspeople from town.”
- 1/71 Tai Tapu Road, in Tai Tapu, Selwyn, is for sale by negotiation
