26 Stoke Street was built for prominent local builder, Alexander Campbell (c.1873 – 1932), in c.1908. Alexander Campbell was the son of Dugald Campbell, the shipwright who built the Wellington Patent Slip. Campbell was educated at Newtown School and served as an apprentice joiner and carpenter with Messrs Harry and Ewing. He was a keen rugby player and referee, and later served as a member of Hutt County Council. The house is likely to have been the family home where Campbell and his wife, Mary, raised their three sons Dugald, Alister and Gordon. Mary Campbell certainly held a “pleasant little afternoon tea gathering” at her house in Stoke Street in 1921 when she was the secretary of the local Ladies’ Auxiliary.
Alexander Campbell bought the land on Stoke Street as Lots 7 & 8 of Section 955 from George Morley in 1907. Morley was an ironmonger who owned eight lots near the north corner of Adelaide Road and Stoke Street. The house was built on Lot 8 (and part of Lot 7), and Campbell sold the remaining part of Lot 7 in 1908 to Walter McLay, a match manufacturer who also owned the adjoining Lot 6. The site overlooked the Thomas Marshment brickworks (1893 - ?) that occupied Sections 966 and 968 to the south of Stokes Street.
The building permit for 26 Stoke Street is dated 27 November 1908 and the drawings show a distinguished two-storey bay-villa with three reception rooms, a kitchen, pantry, wash-house and (servant’s) bedroom on the ground floor, and four bedrooms, bathroom and linen cupboard on the first floor. The house, as built, differs from its consent drawings in several subtle, but noticeable, ways. The ground floor entrance porch is narrower than drawn and the porch gable features a different ornamentation scheme. The ground floor bay windows were built with top-lights, and the first-floor string-course and ‘sunburst’ ornamentation to the south (street) gable roof-apex both appear to have been omitted. The bargeboard, as built, is more ornate and the gable wall features a single, circular, window. Most significantly, the house appears to have been built with a third-floor attic that is not shown on the original plans. These alterations are likely to have occurred when the building was under construction, presumably by Campbell and Burke, the company of builders and contractors that Alexander Campbell part-owned.
In 1921 Campbell sold the house to Albert Steward, a company manager, who immediately placed the house in his wife’s name. The Stewards soon rented the house out and then sold it to Richard Edwards in 1927. Members of the Edwards family lived in the house intermittently until 1940, when the house was sold to Briton Smith. Smith sold it to Frank Crowther, a musician, the following year.
Eric and Myrtle Millar occupied the house from the early 1940s and in 1958 they bought it outright from Crowther. They owned the house until 1975. With Myrtle Millar’s death the house was passed to the Public Trust, which sold it to public servant Peter Gordon in 1978. In 1987 Gillian Durham, later Director of Public Health for the Ministry of Health, and her husband John Durham (both medical practitioners), purchased the property and made $60,000 worth of changes to the house. In 1994 Rowan and Angela McArthur bought it and two years later sold it to David Beard. By 2007 the house had been sold to Simon and Deborah Bachler and Tawa Trustees Limited.
In 2006-2007 the house underwent repairs to the roof and it was discovered that the original diamond shaped asbestos tiles were still present in the roof of the house and garage. These were replaced with modern diamond shaped lightweight roofing tiles and in 2010 the owners received a Wellington City Council Built Heritage Incentive Fund Grant for the work.
