Katherine Mansfield House is on Tinakori Street in Thorndon, central Wellington, and there is a modest fee to go inside the house. It was built in 1888 by Harold Beauchamp, Katherine Mansfield’s father, and the year of Katherine’s birth. The house's exterior departed from the then-prevailing Victorian style with the symmetrical classical influences of early Regency architecture.
At the time, the Beauchamps were up and coming, and the house was built in the part of Wellington that was first settled by Europeans, with views over the new city. Katherine was there with the family for a short time before they moved. She was initially educated in Wellington and then went to Queen’s College in England in 1903. She found Wellington too stifling on her return and moved to England permanently at the age of 19. She was successful and became famous with a modernist approach to short stories. Sadly, she died in 1923 from tuberculosis. Katherine’s story is beautifully told on the walls of one of the rooms in the house.
Subsequent owners heavily modified the house after the Beauchanps, which ended up as two flats in the 1940s. The construction of the Wellington motorway below Tinakori Street also affected the property. However, it was rescued by the fame of its early residents.
In 1987, the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society acquired the house and began to restore it. This included finding wallpaper that matched the original fragments in the house and extensive refurbishing in the style of a well-to-do family in the late 1800s / early 1900s. Further major repair work was undertaken in 2019.
The garden around the house is also maintained in a style typical of the period. Many of the flowers are of European heritage, but there are also examples of ferns and other natives. A bust of Katherine is set amongst the plants at the south end of the garden.
After visiting the house, take a stroll along the road. There are many other beautifully maintained, albeit modernised, heritage homes on Tinakori Street and the side of Tinakori Hill. Then, walk over the motorway on the Hobson Street or Molesworth Street bridges to the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Park.
