19th Century Pioneering Mindset – Alberton House

Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life. ~ Robert Henri

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It was 1862 in England. He was twenty-eight and married a girl of twenty-two. Allen Kerr Taylor and his young bride Martha sailed off for New Zealand, where he was already landowner of 270 acres of prime Auckland real estate, and where a custom built farmhouse in Mt. Albert awaited the newlyweds.

With 270 acres of prime Auckland real estate already under his name, the wealthy landowner and his new bride settled in Alberton House. Martha died giving birth to their second child three years after their marriage. Neither of her children survived infancy.

Two years after Martha's death, Allen remarried Sophia. Together the couple went on to have ten children – six girls and four boys. Four girls lived to adulthood, and only one married. Violet ran off with a shipping clerk. Two other girls had suitors. However, the dalliances were terminated by their mother Sophia who believed neither suitor's station satisfied the requirements of the Kerr-Taylor family.

Violet was disowned after marriage. Because back in those days, people were supposed to marry for opportunities, not for love. Such was the mindset of the 19th century.

When I pulled up to the Alberton mansion, I was advised by the tour guide that there was to be a gathering of egg cup collectors in the ballroom. It was tempting but I passed.

The guide was a young lady with striking features sporting a gypsy-coloured turban. The poised art history major was dauntingly knowledgeable about every facet of the house, its history and deceased occupants.

The farmhouse built in 1863 was gradually extended and renovated into today's fashionable mansion styled in classic Victorian architecture with Indian colonial influence. The colonial villa became the social haunt of the elite – where high society congregated for riding & hunts, dances, archery, tennis, croquet meets, garden parties.

Ascending the stately white stairs onto the wraparound verandah, and through the sash window & stable door (designed to keep out farm animals), you step into the main hallway – the drawing room to the left, the dining room to the right and a central staircase leading upstairs.

Every timber in the house is Kauri, with the exception of the verandah which is native Matai.

My soft-spoken and elegant tour guide waxed lyrical about the Art Nouveau red wallpaper of the dining room, the cafe-styled bentwood chairs, and the luxurious chaise longue apparently invented for women who wore corsets and couldn't quite sit upright.

Considered prime real estate in its time, Alberton would've been dark, musty and cold, with neither insulation nor electricity back in the days, a far cry from the well-insulated, spacious open plans of today's coveted houses.

Those were the days of stoking endless fires, filling chamber basins, servants cramped in tiny spaces in the attic, and women dying in childbirth. No wifi, no television, no mobile phones, no medical advances. Did those days of unharried simplicity, stripped of modern conveniences and digital distractions, contribute to a sense of cohesive wholeness?

And then there were the parties.

Standing in a small children's room, I tried to imagine what it would be like as an adolescent gal waking up to a day of balls and garden parties, family and servants abuzz and aflutter with work and preparations for festivities.

To be a child amidst a family firmly ensconced within a community, supported by a community, where everyone had a place and knew their place, unlike the disconnected modern world where the concept of community is less visceral and more... cloud based. Online. I wondered what it was like.

In truth, I could've been reminiscing about my own childhood which was deeply visceral and organic, firmly entrenched in family and community in my country of origin, back in the days when telephones were still rotary, and children played until dusk when intensely aromatic smells of cooking and love pervaded the air and mothers called their children home for dinner.

The sprawling estate – once encompassing more then 622 acres of rolling greens – is planted with a number of stately trees: Evergreen Magnolia, Japanese Cedar, Strawberry Tree, and Holly to name a few. I was delighted to meet both the Strawberry Tree and the Holly for the very first time, mistaking the strawberry looking fruit for lychee.

The rest of the house also included a ballroom, study, boudoir, nursery, bedrooms, sewing room, wash house and gift shop. I exited the the property from the side double entrance with stained glass doors and transom windows, where homemade jams for sale sat enticingly underneath a sidelight.

Allen Kerr Taylor died in 1890 shortly after nearly going bankrupt, leaving a legacy of strong women in his wake: the unmarried and industrious daughters Winifred, Milfred, and Muriel – with their suffragate mother Sophia as figurehead and role model – went on to maintain Alberton and continue the family's legacy of moral and financial benefactor of the community.

After leaving the estate, I was suddenly imbued with a subtle but undeniable spirit of the 19th century pioneering days of New Zealand. My mind was awash in the zeitgeist of those early days of history, when the air was freed of pesticides, vehicle emissions, contaminants and electromagnetic radiation. The sky was fresh, the horizons brimming with possibilities, the world charged with a clear but zesty atmosphere of "beginning".

For a while, I was magically transported back in time, becoming an English pioneer discovering New Zealand in a new light. I wanted to stay in that 19th century space, seemingly so much more vibrant than the dark palettes of the modern world.

The essence of Alberton followed me home to present day reality, temporarily permeating my world with the sparkle of "beginning".