PAPA PĀNUI TE TŪHURATIA • NOTICEBOARD RĀRANGI • EXPLORE THE LIST
Miller House (centre) with the remains of Paradise House – its chimney stacks – in the foreground.
Revisiting Paradise
WORDS: MATT PHILP
Despite being struck by a devastating fire in 2014, Paradise retains its significant heritage values Paradise is a place on Earth. Specifically, it’s at the top of Lake Wakatipu, where in the mid-1880s William Mason, New Zealand’s first architect, commissioned the building of a summer house. Although isolated and modest in scale, the home inhabited a setting so majestic – at the edge of beech forest wilderness among the mountains – that when the Masons began taking in guests, Paradise was quickly established on the nascent 19th-century tourist circuit as an exceptional destination, worthy of the odyssey involved in reaching it. Over time, as the original guesthouse (named Eden Grove
10 Hōtoke • Winter 2022
by Mason, and later known as Paradise House) was expanded and new accommodation added, Paradise became a place to which visitors returned year after year, through generations. In 2008 its significance was recognised with a Category 1 listing. Then, six years ago, lightning struck Paradise, sparking a fire that engulfed the guesthouse. An adjacent building, Miller House, was restored after suffering smoke and water damage and reopened for guests, but Eden Grove was razed to the ground. A handful of original flagstones and the lower portion of the chimneys are now all that remains.
Pink House
Heritage New Zealand
