Old cottages of Akaroa

Here are some old cottage sketches
from our Akaroa trip over Easter – if it’s one thing Akaroa does well
it’s old houses. Akaroa was settled in 1840 by French settlers which gives it a point of difference amongst local destinations. As the English already had a large presence in the North Island it had been hoped that they could take the South Island in the name of France. By the time they arrived it was too late as the English had moved quickly to secure the south. Despite that they bought land from local Maori and set about building Akaroa.

This first house below – the Langlois-Eteveneux cottage
is one of the original French cottages and was pre-fabricated in France
then shipped out. It certainly does have a slightly different look and
construction to most of the other cottages in town. Street names are a legacy of
the early French settlement with this house on the corner of Rue Lavaud and Rue Balguerie.

This
cottage below got the better of my landscape sketchbook – I had to crop
the roof off so it could fit. This one is on Rue Jolie…

Obviously
the building below isn’t a cottage at all but I’ve included it anyway. It’s the
Old Shipping Office and like a lot of early NZ commercial buildings it is
constructed of timber to look like stone – even down to the turned
balustrades and wooden keystone at the top.

This one at the top of Rue Jolie has flowering Nikau palms and awesome harbour views…

Akaroa harbour is a partly submerged volcanic cone or caldera on the Banks Peninsular east of Christchurch so the terrain rises very steeply guaranteeing dramatic views of rugged peaks over water. I’ve tried to compress the scenery into most of the sketches somewhere. This one is on the not so French sounding William Street…

Our accommodation in Akaroa for the week was this original 1850’s cottage complete with old coal range. Fortunately it wasn’t quite cold enough to light it…