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Number 9 Puketahi St Greymouth
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DescriptionNUMBER 9 PUKETAHI St
Number 9 Puketahi St must have been a very impressive house when it was new.
Looking at it from the front, it was twice as wide as the average house, and built on top of the left hand side, was another story, or level. Across the front of both levels was a wide veranda, with a railing fence, of turned uprights to prevent you taking a tumble. Number 9 was partitioned off into two separate flats, or houses whatever you might like to call them. Our house, which was rented from the Catholic Church for 3 pound [$6] a week, when Dad was paid 7 pound [$14 a week] was two double bedrooms.
One bedroom known as the front bedroom was for Mum and Dad, with an open fireplace, which backed onto the lounge fireplace. I can only remember the fire going in the bedroom once, when Mum was sick and stayed in bed. Mum never really seemed to get sick.
Right in the middle of the house was the kitchen, with the only source of natural light coming from a large skylight which originally opened, by pulling an endless cord, which turned a worm drive. Over the years it had rusted up, and rusted away, so it was sealed permanently. Poor Mum had to cook all year round over that hot, smoky old coal range, which heated our hot water up to boiling point very quickly. Mum enjoyed sprucing the front of it up, with a coat of aluminum paint.
While on the subject of fires, I can still see my Mum, taking a fire shovel of hot coals out of the kitchen range. Then, while holding a metal tray under the shovel, she would casually walk out of the kitchen, up the passage to the sitting room fire place, where she would place the hot embers into the grate. Then she would delicately apply some fresh coal and there you have a fire going. When the oven in the coal range burnt through, the landlord bought us an electric range, which was put out towards the rear of the house, in what was called the pantry.
The kitchen sink and bench were in the pantry, where all the meals were prepared and then they had to be carried about fifteen paces to the kitchen, as Mum still preferred to cook on the old stove top. Regrettably Mum’s roasts cooked in the electric oven, were never as good. [Until they shifted to the Greymouth Trotting Club’s caretaker’s house many years later, where there was a coal range.] Mary, Kevin and I, when we were very young, all slept in the large “back bedroom,” which was big enough to comfortably fit three single beds, plus bedside tables and a large set of drawers. The back bedroom came off the kitchen, so in the winter, our three bare arses would be out to the kitchen stove to get dressed. Mum would have our school clothes laying on the “wire rack” above the stove that Dad had lit before he went to work at 6-45am. While we were getting dressed, the porridge pot, with its layer of skin on it, would be sitting off to the left, off the heat on an asbestos mat. Toast was made with the red hot coals of the fire box and a long wire fork.
ContributorBrian McIntyreDate of story events1950sMap[1]
Number 9 Puketahi St must have been a very impressive house when it was new.
Looking at it from the front, it was twice as wide as the average house, and built on top of the left hand side, was another story, or level. Across the front of both levels was a wide veranda, with a railing fence, of turned uprights to prevent you taking a tumble. Number 9 was partitioned off into two separate flats, or houses whatever you might like to call them. Our house, which was rented from the Catholic Church for 3 pound [$6] a week, when Dad was paid 7 pound [$14 a week] was two double bedrooms.
One bedroom known as the front bedroom was for Mum and Dad, with an open fireplace, which backed onto the lounge fireplace. I can only remember the fire going in the bedroom once, when Mum was sick and stayed in bed. Mum never really seemed to get sick.
Right in the middle of the house was the kitchen, with the only source of natural light coming from a large skylight which originally opened, by pulling an endless cord, which turned a worm drive. Over the years it had rusted up, and rusted away, so it was sealed permanently. Poor Mum had to cook all year round over that hot, smoky old coal range, which heated our hot water up to boiling point very quickly. Mum enjoyed sprucing the front of it up, with a coat of aluminum paint.
While on the subject of fires, I can still see my Mum, taking a fire shovel of hot coals out of the kitchen range. Then, while holding a metal tray under the shovel, she would casually walk out of the kitchen, up the passage to the sitting room fire place, where she would place the hot embers into the grate. Then she would delicately apply some fresh coal and there you have a fire going. When the oven in the coal range burnt through, the landlord bought us an electric range, which was put out towards the rear of the house, in what was called the pantry.
The kitchen sink and bench were in the pantry, where all the meals were prepared and then they had to be carried about fifteen paces to the kitchen, as Mum still preferred to cook on the old stove top. Regrettably Mum’s roasts cooked in the electric oven, were never as good. [Until they shifted to the Greymouth Trotting Club’s caretaker’s house many years later, where there was a coal range.] Mary, Kevin and I, when we were very young, all slept in the large “back bedroom,” which was big enough to comfortably fit three single beds, plus bedside tables and a large set of drawers. The back bedroom came off the kitchen, so in the winter, our three bare arses would be out to the kitchen stove to get dressed. Mum would have our school clothes laying on the “wire rack” above the stove that Dad had lit before he went to work at 6-45am. While we were getting dressed, the porridge pot, with its layer of skin on it, would be sitting off to the left, off the heat on an asbestos mat. Toast was made with the red hot coals of the fire box and a long wire fork.
ContributorBrian McIntyreDate of story events1950sMap[1]
Relates to
PersonBrian McIntyre
West Coast New Zealand History (5th May 2015). Number 9 Puketahi St Greymouth. In Website West Coast New Zealand History. Retrieved 3rd May 2026 05:09, from https://westcoast.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/899