Daily Photo – The Dinning Room at Larnach’s Castle

When William Larnach moved into his peninsula mansion, if he’d had a fridge, his “to-do” list probably wouldn’t have fitted on it. In fact, it was more a case of asking what had been finished.

Things he would have proudly been able to tell his wife Eliza he’d finally gotten around to completing included erecting the three-storey stone shell, constructing the central tower, securing the main roof, framing the exterior verandahs, completing the temporary estate cottages and roughing in the primary interior layout.

His to-do list, however, was just a tiny bit longer. Among other things, it included completing the lower apartments, enclosing the verandahs, carving the master ceilings, laying the interior woodwork, constructing the grand staircase, building the ballroom, finishing the ground-floor structural stonework, shipping 20 tons of glass panels from Venice, and sourcing premium native New Zealand timber to cover the raw brickwork. Then there were the grounds. Massive piles of construction debris had to be cleared, dense bush cut back, muddy clay fields graded, windbreaks established and the footprint of a formal garden laid out.

So unfinished was the building that the Larnachs continued to live on a building site for another 12 years as various parts of the house were completed. The highly elaborate carved ceilings in the main foyer and dining room were so specialised that they alone took six and a half years to finish. Building his grand home had taken so long, and demanded such extraordinary craftsmanship, that Larnach lived in a fully completed house for just 11 years before his death in 1898.