Location: 208 King Street, Rangiora
Turvey House is considered the oldest original residential building in the Rangiora Town Centre.
It was presented with its Landmark plaque in 2003 to commemorate the Borough’s 125th anniversary.
The privately owned double brick home is located in King Street and was built in 1875 by Samuel Ayers, a bricklayer, who later became prominent in public affairs.
He and his parents, Thomas and Elizabeth, had settled in Woodend in 1858 with a group of relatives and friends from the village of Turvey in Bedfordshire, England.
The Ayers family had long been stonemasons and bricklayers and Samuel had learnt the trade from his father, working all over North Canterbury building houses, chimneys and other brickwork. Examples of their work include Haskell House in Kaiapoi and Ohoka Homestead, Jacksons Road.
Amazingly, the house remains in Ayers family ownership to this day and is in a remarkably original condition.
Distinctive features of the house include the cavity brick walls of Flemish construction (bricks connecting the two walls across the cavity), polychromatic brickwork on the north wall, dog tooth brick course at the top of the walls under the eaves, the bull-nosed verandah with iron tracery, the fretted fascias with finials at the top, the gabled iron roof and the bay windows.
Turvey House has a Historic Place Category II registration.
