The gazebo is a small wooden octagonal building with a gabled roof and eight finials. It has been made with great skill and features beautifully carved details. It has a scalloped long roof tiles/shingles that match the boards on the external sides of the gables. The windows, unusually, are glassed, and it has no floor.
By 1908 the gazebo had been purchased by Herbert Rawson, a prominent Wellington dentist, with many business interests, and who played a large role in the history of Seatoun. He trained as a dentist with his brother Henry, who was 14 years his senior, and subsequently took over his practice in the 1870s. His dentistry practice thrived both in Wellington and in the provinces where he travelled for regular clinics. He was the first president of the New Zealand Dental Association, and his obituary stated that he was instrumental in passing the first Dental Act in New Zealand. He also made his own nitrous oxide and used it long before it was used internationally. In addition to dentistry, he was a man with substantial business interests, being chairman of the Mercantile and General Insurance Company, and a director of the Tawa Land Company. In 1904 he had a substantial building constructed on the corner of Woodward Street and the Terrace, where his practice was based. He also established a company to create a picture theatre and skating rink complex in Thorndon in 1910.
He was extremely interested in the development of Seatoun and was passionate about sanitation, trees, roads, and other developments in the suburb. He was a member of the Seatoun Roads Board and chair of the Seatoun and Bays Progressive Association. He owned a substantial (and ever expanding) amount of land in Seatoun and established a dairy farm there. He was chair of the Wellington Ferry Company, which helped to open the suburb for day-trippers and encouraged settlement of the area, and proposed the building of the Seatoun Wharf.
Between 1909 and 1918 he had 15 cottages built on land that had formerly made up his dairy farms and later he and his family built grander residences in Ludlum and Inglis Streets as ‘show homes’ for their subdivision of the ‘home block’, which was to be more impressive than the other areas they had developed.
The Gazebo was purchased by Rawson and placed in his garden, which is reported as being large and beautiful with a number of features. Newspapers report a number of garden parties held there, often as fundraising events to raise money for more public tree planting, or a children’s playground, or other work of the Seatoun and Bays Progressive Association.
Rawson died in 1926 and the subdivision (22 sections, 2 houses, the garden, artificial lake, gazebo, etc) was put up for sale in 1929. The sections were all quickly sold.
The section occupied by the gazebo was purchased by sisters Helena Reta Ward (nee Jacobsen) and Clare Jacobsen, and they built a new house at what is now 59 Falkirk Avenue. Helena and Clare owned the property for 50 years, but following the death of Helena (Clare died in 1968) the house and gazebo was sold to Graeme Colgate. By this time the gazebo had fallen into disrepair and Colgate carried out substantially repairs with funding from the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.
In 1986 Colgate sold the section to Bruce Hancox, who only owned it for four years before selling it to Sarah (Sally) Verbiest. Further repairs were carried out by the new owner under the guidance of Ian Bowman before it was sold in 2001 to Rachel Haupt and Simon Clutterbuck.
In 2011 the owners applied to Wellington City Council and the NZHPT to assess whether or not they could relocate the gazebo. This was approved, and the gazebo was moved to 343 Matahiwi Road, Masterton.
