Anyone with a love of literature will get a great deal of pleasure from a visit to Katherine Mansfield's restored birthplace. New Zealand's most distinguished author and a short-story writer, Mansfield was born into the Beauchamp family in 1888. She left Wellington at age 19 for Europe, where she kept company with the likes of Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence.
The Beauchamp house has been meticulously restored and provides essential background background to her stories. Her memories and experiences here were recreated in her most famous short stories. If you haven't read her books or short stories, not to worry there are a couple of videos at the house to gain some insight in the house and her life. There's a 50 minute documentary of the life of Katharine Mansfield and a 20 minute video about the life in the house.
Built in the middle of an economic depression, the facade of the 209 square metre house was relatively plain. Paired facings and simple classical style pediments over each of the four symmetrically placed sash windows are the only adornment. The interior of the five-bedroom house was also modestly decorated in a style influenced by the Chinese designs popular in New Zealand at that time. It was described by Mansfield as the 'horrid little piggy house' and Harold Beauchamp moved his family to a more prestigious house in Karori in 1893 when Mansfield was five years old.
There are both permanent and changing exhibitions and you are free to walk around the heritage garden. It has been replanted with the plants and flowers available in Wellington at the time.
25 Tinakori Road, Thorndon Road.
