16/09/2026
Katherine Mansfield’s second childhood home is currently up for sale!
In her story ‘Prelude’, Mansfield describes her family’s 1893 move from what is now Katherine Mansfield House & Garden on Tinakori Road to 372 Karori Road. At the time Karori was a rural settlement - as you can see in one of the historic photos, the house was surrounded by paddocks. In his memoir, Mansfield’s father Harold Beauchamp describes it as “a property of fourteen acres, on which we kept quite a farmlet - cows, a couple of horses, pigs, and poultry.”
The Karori tunnel was not opened until 1900, so the route into Wellington city at the time was over the hill through Northland and down onto Glenmore Street via The Rigi. Although today you can zip between Karori and the city centre by car, bus or bicycle, it still takes an hour or so on foot – a mode of transport often used by Harold Beauchamp for his journey into work.
The house was originally built in 1866 for Stephen Lancaster, who named it ‘Chesney Wold’ after a house in the Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. Lancaster did not often live in the house himself, leasing it out to various people. It has undergone significant changes over the years and by the late 1950s it was in such poor repair that it was believed it would be demolished. After its conversion to flats in 1969, a partial restoration was undertaken in the mid-1980s and the current owners have done a lot of work to make it a comfortable home for modern family life.
You can read more about the history of the house on the Wellington City Heritage website: https://wellingtoncityheritage.org.nz/buildings/151-300/169-chesney-wold
And see photos of the house as it is today via the real estate listing: https://rwwellingtoncity.co.nz/properties/residential-for-sale/wellington-city/karori-6012/house/3575510
We hope the next owners enjoy living in a house with so much history!
