Ewelme Cottage is a well presented colonial dwelling constructed between September 1863 and February 1864, and is one of the few New Zealand Historic Places Trust properties for which a definite starting and finishing date for the building is known.

Ewelme Cottage was the home of the Reverend Vicesimus Lush, (1817-1882) his wife Blanche, nee Hawkins (1819-1912) and their children. Vicesimus and Blanche (pictured below) were married in England in 1842 and immigrated to Auckland on the ‘Barbara Gordon’ in 1850, with four children. A further five were born over the next 12 years. They lost three children to scarlet fever in 1854 and another to the fever in 1876. Of the remaining five children, only two married. Although both married children subsequently had families of their own; the descendants today come from Martin, the son.

The house was a private commission by the Reverend Vicesimus Lush, when he was resident vicar of Howick (1850-1865), and therefore is not a vicarage. The principal reason, of two, Lush gives for building was to enable his two eldest sons to live as close as possible to the Church of England Grammar School, Parnell, (1855-1893) at the top of the road, which they were about to attend.

While the sons lived in the house during school terms they returned to Howick for holidays, while their father and other members of the family often came to the cottage during the years to spend time in Auckland for varying amounts of time.

The plan of the house was drawn by Lush in September 1863, possibly influenced by the Howick vicarage (there are some similarities) or by a plan for a wooden house he had commissioned from a London architect, before immigrating to Auckland.

In 1865, with his resignation of Howick, all the Lush family moved in for the next six years, three of which Lush spent as ‘Visiting Clergyman to the Inner Waikato’. In 1868 he was appointed resident vicar of Thames. His family remained at Ewelme Cottage until December 1871, when they joined him at Thames.  During the next 13 years, the house was rented or left empty. This situation continued when Lush was appointed in 1881 to Hamilton, as Archdeacon of Waikato. When he died in 1882 his wife and children returned to live permanently in the house, followed by descendants, until 1968.

Ewelme Cottage had been modified in 1865 with the enclosing of the eastern verandah and in the early 1870’s with the building of the present kitchen as a separate building. In 1882, immediately after her husband’s death, Blanche Lush renovated the house by creating the drawing room with the removal of the dividing wall of two rooms; enclosing the main entrance to become a foyer; and by joining the kitchen to the house by having a roof placed between the two.  The buttery was added on the southern side and the present study (then as a bedroom) on the northern side.

When the house was purchased by the Auckland City Council in 1969 almost 95% of the remaining contents were gifted by the vendor, the last Lush grandson. Subsequently other items once in the house were returned by family members.

Ewelme Cottage opened to the public on Anzac Day, 1971, as the first NZHPT property in Auckland. Its name is taken from Ewelme, a village in Oxfordshire, England, the childhood home of Blanche and the place of her marriage to Vicesimus. The name was first used by Vicesimus Lush in December 1866 and for some years was written on gateposts on either side of the main entrance. The use of the word ‘cottage’ is part of the overall name and not necessarily an architectural definition of style.

The house is displayed as close as possible to the appearance of 1969 rather than any earlier period thereby showing how the family continued to “live in the past”.

The first reference to the garden at Ewelme Cottage is in April 1864 in the Rev. Lush’s journal when he relates hiring a person to break in the land. Trees were introduced first followed by vegetable plots (now gone) and flowering plants are mentioned. Save for the first trees, all other plants were purchased from a local nursery and some survive today.

An English oak planted in mid-1866 dominates the garden and a magnolia under the oak may be the one planted in 1869. Several old fashioned plants, flowering and otherwise still flourish.

In 1882 Blanche Lush mentions, in a letter, that she was having the garden reformed and there is an indication by a daughter, in a letter at the same time, that it had been planned by her father years before