Capture: Roamin' Holiday
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Islander, in reply to
Larnach's Castle was where I discovered spiral staircases as a kid - it wasnt in very good nick 54 years ago, but was still well worth the visit.
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Jackie Clark, in reply to
It wasn't that flash 3o yrs ago but I loved it. It was the first time I'd ever thought about the existence of servants, and all the staff required to run a big house. I was particularly fascinated by the bell system that it had to ring "downstairs". We started going there in 1974, 7 years after the current owners' bought it, so it was still a work in progress. I would love to go there again.
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Cecelia, in reply to
Marshall has done a fantastic job of recreating the snobbery and privilege of the time in his book. I was always fascinated by the fact that NZ had a real castle but what's with the Victorian verandahs?
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Don't forget Cargill's Castle - NZ also has a real live ruined castle. But I'm surprised to read in that article that there are four castles in NZ. I'd never heard of the other two.
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3410,
I'd never heard of the other two.
Not sure about "Merkleworth" in Takapuna. Seems to be Merksworth, more correctly.
Might be another name for Algies' castle (1926) (don't laugh; it's a bit more impressive from the beach side), but Google does not clarify.
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Well, Algies' castle does look a little stumpy by castle standards, but it does look a lot more like a mediaeval fortress than it's southern cousins. Cargill's and Larnach's always struck me as being much more like palaces than castles.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Algies’ castle
I remember from back in the early 90s the occupant, or whatever their title was, complaining of people turning up unannounced and expecting a guided tour.
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Little babies on my buddy Shane's amazing avocado tree, on Waiheke, this morning.
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Jackie Clark, in reply to
I’ve never heard of Firth’s castle – or Clifton House . Maybe it's this one? I’m not sure where it is.
But yes, Algie’s Castle is on Hurstmere Rd down the Milford end. Because I was born and brought up in Takapuna, it was a fairly large part of my childhood. Although we always used to call it The Castle, I think we always knew that was a bit of a misnomer.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
I think all of NZs castles are a bit of a misnomer, really. A proper castle has been sitting there guarding places for centuries.
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I must be doing something right. I've got a 9 month old bookworm on my hands. Pity she's got the book upside down, but she's only just started learning, there's plenty of time to teach her yet.
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David Hood, in reply to
what’s with the Victorian verandahs?
Well, it was built in the 1870s and 80s.
Though being a local, I haven't actually been to it for many years, but I gather the restoration is going relatively well.
Along with Cargill's castle I would also note the equally impractical, and related, Tunnel Beach. -
Islander, in reply to
Indeed.
I think some of the old pa sites are our equivalents.
Mind you, they are distinctly lacking in the spiral staircase department..That's a lovely photo of your baby daughter & her book!
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
I read her a book in English every morning, and I encourage my wife to read to her in Chinese (my wife is not much in the habit of reading, I suspect at least in part because of her parents' lack of education due to... certain unfortunate events in China's modern history) and now after I read to her I give her the book and she flips through the pages feeling (and sometimes even kissing or tasting) the pages, pictures and words. That photo above, I put her in the middle of the bed so I could hang out some washing (not as irresponsible as it may sound, Chinese apartments not being large I was never more than a couple of metres away) and she grabbed the book and started flipping through it. I'm taking this new habit of hers as a Very Good Sign.
Spiral staircases are overrated in my experience. And from what I've read of (not much, and some time ago) of some of those old pa sites, some of them could be built virtually overnight and abandoned just as quickly as circumstances required, and they had pretty ingenious fortifications (like pallisades raised above the ground so that muskets could be fired from underneath) that gave the brits a hell of a lot of trouble. So they may be the equivalent of castles, but I rate them as being far cooler.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
. . . she flips through the pages feeling (and sometimes even kissing or tasting) the pages, pictures and words.
My earliest memories of books are of illustrations so beautiful that licking seemed the only way to take in their colours and textures. Kathleen Hale's Orlando the Marmalade Cat was damn near irresistible. Here's one of him actually getting licky.
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Islander, in reply to
Chris - there are North Island sites for pa - and there are South Island sites - and all of 'em adaptable. Some lasted (the physical terraces and palisades and trenches) for generations: some lasted a battle. OK, the castle equivalent was intended to be permanant - but I still find pa - as fighting edifices - our equivalent.
Annnd, we invented stuff for trench warfare & protection that were adopted,
50 years later, in the first world war european slaughter-grounds...
And I still lurve spiral staircases! -
Islander, in reply to
O! One of my first memories of actually *reading* a book was of then kissing it!
I'm sorry - it wasnt a classic - it was something called Nicholas Nickleby who was a cat...insofar as I remember...it *was* 60 years ago-
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
That's pretty much what I meant by my comment on giving the brits a hell of a lot of trouble.
And that's the funny thing about the brits. As they went about building their empire, they seemed to have learnt as much from those they colonised as they tried to teach. It sometimes seems to me that in the process of trying to "civilise" the world they wound up civilising themselves.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
I don't have any similar book memories. Probably my earliest really vivid book memory was in Te Awamutu and my mum coming home from the public library with a picture dictionary each of French and German, and it wasn't the pictures, it was these words, these magic, strange, foreign, exotic words for things I knew about in English. I remember the pictures, but I don't think I really noticed them so much as they were just explanations for these words. And the words! Wow! They just opened up whole new worlds for me, sent my mind spinning out to worlds beyond our small archipelago!
In the photo of my daughter with her book, it was the words that told me the book was upside down. Seriously, I looked over and saw her with a book and noticed that she was looking at the words (Chinese characters or hànyǔpīnyīn romanisation of the characters) upside down. I didn't notice the pictures were upside down (although that was obviously true) until I posted the photo.
I do often catch myself glancing over an illustration and focussing entirely on the caption beneath it (like when reading the Tintin comics I posted a photo of above).
But I don't care how my daughter comes to enjoy her books, or whether she becomes a voracious T-Rex reader like her paternal grandma, a slow food reader like me, or an occasional reader like her mummy, or what kinds of books she comes to like (she's already showing preferences!), so long as she does understand the sheer joy and adventure to be found within their pages.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
I remember Larnach's Castle mostly for the opening scenes from that live-action comic book Shaker Run (from 3:30):
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Cecelia, in reply to
Great shots of yon castle.
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Dye job.
Thanks for keeping the thread warm while I've been Roamin'.
Excuse me while I indulge in a few holiday captures.
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Capture my drift?
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Traffic hazard.
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Hebe, in reply to
Dye job.
Gidday gorgeous.
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