Rai Valley Cottage repairs complete
25 June 2025
A 144-year-old heritage gem in the Rai Valley has a clean bill of health again.
The Rai Valley Cottage, situated in Carluke, Marlborough, recently underwent a week of repairs and maintenance to address damp caused by the subfloor of the rare, totara slab building.
The well known local heritage house, which was built by Charles Turner and his brother Arthur in 1881, is open to the public and cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
“You never know what you’re going to find with historic buildings, but we were fortunate to have Mike Gillies and John Taylor on the job,” says Ann McCaw of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
“Both have extensive experience working with heritage buildings for the Deparment of Conservation for example. We were pleased to see that parts of the building, which we expected to be badly decayed, weren’t as extensively damaged as anticipated – though other parts were worse.
The integrity of the native timbers played a large part in the better-than-expected condition of parts of the cottage according to Ann – and the totara in particular.
Work was guided by a building conservation project undertaken by Mike in 2023 which included an extensive survey of the house. One of the main issues identifed was dampness as a result of parts of the building sitting directly on the soil with the possibility that some of the piles and bearers had decayed.
“This created constant damp within the cottage as moisture from the soil was drawn up through the subfloor and into the cottage floors,” she says.
“The remedy for the problem was new bearers and piles made from treated pine rather than precious native timber because nobody will ever see under the floor.”
Mike and John expected to have to jack the cottage up in order to carry out the work, though both were pleased to find they could manually dig under it and carry out the repairs that way.
John Taylor of Golden Bay on the job at Rai Valley Cottage.
Mike Gillies of Greymouth takes a closer look at the sub floor of the Rai Valley Cottage.
“That was great as jacking up the building may have created other issues that would have needed mitigating – doors not being able to be opened or closed for example.”
The historic cottage is fit for purpose once again with the dampness issues significantly improved.
“The normal weather patterns of heavy rainfall in the Rai Valley area has always been an issue for the cottage, as well as the collection that is held there, because of the humidity that is created – so much so that books and most textiles have had to be stored in a specially designed museum cabinet leaving only a few of the textiles to be available on display,” she says.
The result of the repair work is a much improved environment for collection items.
“We’re delighted with the outcome. Mike and John have done a fantastic job,” she says.
“You wouldn’t even know they’d been there – which is always the sign of really well executed conservation work.”
A rare example of a totara slab building dating back to 1881 will soon be the subject of some much-needed TLC.
Rai Valley Cottage, situated in Carluke, Marlborough, will be closed for repairs and maintenance from June 13 to June 19, 2025. The cottage is cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and is a well known local heritage building.
Repairs will focus on the cottage’s sub floor – including the original bearers which have sat directly on the ground for the past 140 years. That, combined with the generally damp conditions of the Rai Valley have led to decay, and created general damp within the subfloor of the building causing it to sink.
New timber will support the existing cottage and create air flow under the cottage that will hopefully enable it to stand for another 140 years.
“The house was built by Charles Turner and his brother Arthur who used hand-split Totara slabs and pit sawn timber framing to build this tiny and isolated cottage in the depth of the Rai rainforest,” says Ann McCaw of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
“Charles, his wife Matilda and their family hosted manawhenua, travellers, traders and anyone who passed through on the journey to and from the coastal areas around Okiwi Bay.”
Life was hard and clearing the land to enable food to grow and to keep stock was their priority as crops failed regularly in the darkness of the afforested valley. Eventually the couple retired to Nelson and their cottage had many uses over the subsequent years until it was restored by the Rai Valley Pioneer Home Valley Committee in the 1960s as a monument to the early settlers of the area.
Since then it has been available to view generating continued interest by visitors from all over New Zealand as well as international tourists.
“The Rai Valley Cottage is a very important surviving piece of New Zealand built heritage,” says Ann.
“We’re looking forward to this work being completed and making the cottage available to visitors again.”
The Rai Valley Cottage (Picture: Grant Shehan).