When Dominican nuns lived in the grand old convent for sale in McLeod Road, Helensville, they took down all the fancy parts of the villa, wanting a simple environment to live and worship in.
When Nick Roberts and his wife Tracey bought the property in 2004 they put what fancy bits they could find back up – luckily the verandah balustrades were still under the house – and they added more features.
The couple are downsizing and the property, which has a CV of $1.08m and a history dating back to the 1880s and the days of kauri logging, is for sale by negotiation.
Nick is a musician and Tracey a potter and along with adding their own tastes the couple wanted to respect each era of residents who have lived in the house.
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The first resident was Andrew McLeod, the son of the McLeod family, one of the first European families to move to the suburb in Auckland’s north-west.
Nick says the McLeods used to bring kauri down from the north into the local port and it was milled in Helensville, and the old convent is built from heart kauri.
In 1910 the house was sold to the first manager of the Helensville Dairy Co-op and in 1922 he sold it to a family, two of whom came to have a look at the house aged in their 90s, then in 1931 the home became a convent, with nuns living there until 1974.
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Nick says 11 nuns, still wearing their habits, came to visit as well, and also a bus load of students the nuns used to teach, so the house contains a lot of memories for a lot of people.
After the nuns a local dental nurse had the house, then another man owned it until the Roberts bought it.
There’s a deconsecrated chapel in the house and a room the nuns used to call “the coffin room”, Nick says.
That room is a bathroom now but it’s long and narrow and the nuns told him they put a mezzanine floor in it and two single beds.
“It had a single bed on the ground and then one bed on the mezzanine, but they used to call it the coffin, I remember them telling me that.
“I think there were up to 10 people here at any one time at some stage. It wasn't about comfort.”
The property is owned by an artistic couple. They have brought joy and colour to the home. Photo / Supplied
The property was a former convent and the owners have kept true its past life in some of their interior design choices. Photo / Supplied
The verandah balustrades are a case in point of the nuns wanting simplicity.
“We found those and we brought them back out and put them back on because when the church had them they made the whole house plain so anything that was fancy was gone, but someone was smart enough in 1931 to put all the balustrades under the house, and in the ceiling.”
The Roberts added to the religious vibe as well, as did their friends. Nick found a stained-glass window with a cross on the side of a road and it now lives out by the spa pool, and friends got in on the religious act as well.
“You might notice in the photographs there are quite a few religious bits and pieces around the house and that's because our friends have picked it up and if they find things they give it to the house basically.”
The couple likes to reuse and recycle so the house is filled with antiques and collectibles they have acquired over the years.
Musical instruments abound in the charming villa. Photo / Supplied
Nick says he and Tracey had eyed up the property since they moved to Helensville in 1996 because it was so grand, but he says he was also drawn by the musical vibe, saying some of the nuns taught music, and he expects that back in the 1920s or so there would have been events held at the house.
To him, the house has a musical soul: “For me to come here I felt it, and it was interesting, we had somebody else look through the house after us and they felt it as well.
“You could just tell there's been music in this house forever, you could just sense it.”
Nick has a music room, and there’s a pottery room where Tracey has a kiln.
He describes the house as a “heart house”.
“It’s a house a person is buying from their heart and their emotions rather than from their logical head; it's one of those sorts of places I think.
“It's got a wonderful karma. We just love it but it's time for us to do our next thing.”
The couple says whenever they have found photographs or stories they have put them together and these will stay with the house for the new owners.
