- Harcourts agents Graham Lewis and Sue Noonan have sold the iconic Clark House in Hobsonville.
- The heritage mansion, listed by the Defence Force in October 2022, was marketed as a historic opportunity.
- The sale price and buyer are undisclosed, but the property had been listed with a $5.2m-plus price tag.
One of New Zealand’s most viewed homes has finally found a buyer. Harcourts agents Graham Lewis and Sue Noonan have put a sold sticker on the iconic Clark House, in Auckland’s Hobsonville.
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The heritage mansion was listed for sale by the New Zealand Defence Force in October 2022, but it caught the nation’s attention thanks to Lewis’s clever marketing.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a special buyer to purchase a slice of New Zealand’s history from the current owner, His Majesty the King,” Lewis said in his listing blurb on OneRoof.
King Charles III receives a hongi during a reception hosted by Governor-General in Auckland in 2019. Photo / Getty Images
King Charles III had just ascended the throne and the idea that he owned a house in West Auckland made headlines, and the listing became OneRoof’s most viewed of 2022.
Sure enough, the ownership papers for the 732sqm two-storey brick villa showed the registered owner to be Her Majesty the Queen, who had died just one month earlier in September 2022.
In reality, the house was not really owned by King Charles III, but the Crown, with the title in the name of the sovereign for defence purposes.
The Defence Force had used the estate for Royal New Zealand Airforce operations from 1950 until they moved out in 2016.
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OneRoof reached out to Lewis for comment on the sale but he had not replied at the time of publication. The sale price and the identity buyer remain undisclosed but earlier this year the property was given a price tag of $5.2 million-plus.
The 1.9ha property has a category 1 listing on the Historic Places Register and an RV of $16.58m.
Historical accounts show the Crown paid £8000 for the property in 1950. The RNZAF used the house as offices for Task Force Headquarters, even hosting a South East Asian Treaty Organisation conference in 1955 in the grand rooms. An annex was added in 1967 to house a decompression chamber.
Clark House, used by the Defence Department as RANZF offices and medical facilities from 1950 to 2016, is now surrounded by subdivisions. Photo / Supplied
The grand rooms have hosted South East Asian Treaty Organisation meetings, as well as more prosaic offices. Photo / Supplied
The house is a showcase of craftsmanship, with a grand staircase, Victorian mosaic tiles and stained glass windows. Photo / Supplied
When the house was first put on the market in 2022, Phil Gurnsey, general manager estate strategy for Defence, told OneRoof that it had been used as a medical unit. He added that at the time it was the only Hobsonville Defence land on the market.
Lewis and Noonan said in their advertising that Clark House was in need of restoration and comprised 10 large living rooms and bedrooms, gutted kitchen and bathroom areas, an impressive central curved staircase, decorative feature tiles, stained glass windows and carved fire mantlepieces.
The Italianate-style house was built by well-known English ceramics entrepreneur and pioneer Rice Owen Clark II as a showpiece for his company’s experimental hollow ceramic blocks made in the adjacent Limeburners Bay plant. When the Hobsonville clay ran out, the company moved to New Lynn, but the Clark family remained in the house until it was sold in 1950.
Later generations of the Clark family formed Crown Lynn Potteries which became Ceramco, a large public conglomerate, in the 1970s.
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