25a Cashmere Rd. Maling House. Pascoe and Hall.
A lovely example of the continental L-shape floorplans brought to Christchurch by Ernst Plischke in the late 1930s. These houses introduced multi-purpose living areas and full height glass opening onto courtyard gardens. This one, built in 1947, looks particularly well-restored and is a credit to the owners (orange door aside).
January 30th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Our 1950-built house in Mairehau is identical to the Maling House pre the second storey being added except that the cladding is a mix of weatherboard and brick. I read about the Maling house in H&E and the floor plans, windows etc are identical to ours.
We bought it in 2001 from the son of the original owner and he said the architect was “Someone & Someone”. I suspect that either “Someone & Someone” ripped off the Maling House design or that ours too is a Pascoe and Hall. One day I’ll go into the Macmillan Brown Library and try to find out for sure.
In the meantime we love it and are slowly undoing various “renovations” and replacing the ceilings in order to get some insulation up there. But once a month when I climb onto the roof and cut my wrists to shreds while clearing out the internal gutters I think about my ex-roofer father and his one bit of advice he’d give all his children when we were out house-shopping: “Never buy a house with internal gutters no matter how dishy it looks”…