One of Wellington’s most significant modernist homes is on the market for sale for the first time in 11 years.
Known popularly as the Nancy Martin House, the three-bedroom property at 18 Church Drive, in Wilton, is seeking buyers with more than $1 million to spend.
Tommy's Wayne Sampson, who has the listing with colleague Edmund Chrisp, said the house was designed by Czech architect and artist Frederick Ost for Wellington woman Nancy Martin in the 1950s.
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Martin is remembered in the city as being the first single Wellington woman to obtain a mortgage. Sampson her first application was declined but she persisted. “The first approach apparently was, ‘I'm terribly sorry, we don't lend to single women’, to which she pushed back pretty hard and obviously got the money to build the house second time around,” the agent told OneRoof.
Documents show she borrowed three thousand one hundred pounds in September 1957 from the Australian Mutual Provident Society in order to build the house. On the mortgage papers Martin’s occupation was listed as “spinster”. In reality she was an accomplished musician and academic.
In her youth Martin had travelled to Europe on a scholarship to study music and returned with a Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music, and British Scholar in music.
Her obituary in 2006 noted that she was at one time head of music at girls boarding school Solway College. She later worked for the Adult Education Department at Victoria University College as the university was called then.
The house is a standout example of mid-century architecture and has been lovingly restored by its owners. Photo / Supplied
The property was designed by architect Frederick Ost for noted Wellington musician and academic Nancy Martin. Photo / Supplied
She invested in New Zealand art and it is most likely through this passion that she met Ost, who was Jewish and had come to New Zealand after escaping Nazi occupation in his native Czechoslovakia.
Ost designed Martin’s home with European modernist aesthetic principles, according to current owner Ann Shelton’s book, A Spoonful of Sugar. It was one of the few homes that Ost designed in New Zealand.
Sampson knows just how special the home is. A lover of mid-century architecture himself, the agent owned the home from 2007 to 2013 and passed the baton to Shelton and her partner Duncan Munro. “It felt like handing a baby over,” Sampson said. “Ann and Duncan were the perfect buyers.”
Shelton and Munro have restored the property with painstaking attention to detail.
Their work won two Resene awards in 2020: the Resene Total Colour Master Nightingale Colour Award and the Resene Total Colour Heritage Residential Award.
The couple’s first job when they took possession was to rewire the property - a task that led to an important discovery: the house's the original colour scheme.
The original colour scheme of the house lay hidden until the house was rewired. Photo / Supplied
After investing a lot of time and test-pots to get the colours right, the couple had a stroke of luck. “At the last minute, an Instagram post of our progress received a comment saying that in 1957 there was only one colour chart to choose from,” Shelton was previously reported as saying.
Sampson said the home had receiving a lot of attention from buyers, with around 150 people coming to one of the first open homes.
He does worry that buyers might be tempted to rip out the original bathroom and kitchen and replace them with modern ones. He was a fly on the wall at open homes run by a colleague in 2013, and it nearly broke his heart hearing potential buyers talk about their plans to "rip this out and rip that out".
He eventually found the perfect buyers in Shelton and Munro Sampson. "To be honest, it was like handing over a baby really, Duncan and Anne were the perfect buyers.”
- 18 Churchill Drive, in Wilton, Wellington, is seeking enquiries over $1.095m
