Last updated 20:16, May 18 2018
Kelly Grant
The burnt-out rear of a house that a tennis club in Auckland's Birkenhead had hoped to relocate for use as a pavilion.
The burnt-out rear of a house that a tennis club in Auckland's Birkenhead had hoped to relocate for use as a pavilion.
A kauri villa on Auckland's North Shore, empty for a decade, was visited by vagrants - and police - now suspected arson has deuced a tennis club's plans to reuse it.
Neighbours reported police and an ambulance being at the property shortly before the April 30 fire.
Keri Muller lives across the street and said there were people at the house "on the reg".
"It's pretty widely known in the area that squatters had taken up a sporadic residence in the house."
Takapuna Fire Station senior station officer Quin Webster confirmed there were two areas where the recent fire had started, and police were treating it as suspicious.
News of a fire destroying this villa left a previous owner in tears.
The house had no power or water, and Webster said it had "issues with security" and "people breaking in."
The property had changed ownership several times since 1993, and has been owned by the same family since 2003. It had not been occupied for many years, and had fallen into disrepair.
Birkenhead Tennis Club committee member Andrea Morgan says she was "heartbroken" when she heard about the fire. "I thought, 'No, this has got to be a joke'."
A fire in an empty villa that had fallen into disrepair is being treated as suspicious, the fire service says.
Morgan had been in discussions with the owners about the tennis club relocating the house, for use as a pavilion, since it went on the market three months ago.
"I saw the property for sale, and they were selling it as two sections, so I knew that whoever bought it wouldn't want the little villa on it."
The owners were quite keen on the idea of relocating the house as a gift or at a heavily reduced rate, and the tennis club planned to clean up the site to make it more appealing to buyers.
Concept sketch of the villa transformed into a pavilion. (Supplied by Birkenhead Tennis Club committee member Andrea Morgan.)
When Morgan first visited the property, she noticed some furniture in it.
"There were squatters and vagrants regularly in the house at nights. The owner didn't want to aggravate them by kicking them out in case they purposely damaged the property. They ended up completely destroying it."
Alison Whittington was a previous owner of the Waipa St, Birkenhead home. Her late husband's family built it 85 years ago and she sold it in 1993 after he died.
The kauri villa was built in 1907 by blacksmith Benjamin Townsend and his wife, Margaret Jane. (Photo supplied by a subsequent, but not current, owner - Alison Whittington.)
When she heard the house was up for sale, she thought the home would be "bulldozed" and was pleased to hear of the tennis club's plans and that it would stay in the area. "[The house] would live on forever."
Whittington "shed some tears" when she heard about the fire, and says she regrets "not retrieving the stained glass windows we designed and had made for beside the front door..
She felt "a bit angry" the property had fallen into such a bad state and there was no front door.
"They didn't even secure it. It was a sitting duck, really."