Tophouse History

Tophouse, as the word says is the house on top of the hill. But actually Tophouses were always built as accommodation houses at higher altitudes, government supported, and very common in the 1800's. For example, if you were traveling from Nelson and wanting to go to Christchurch you would have to travel this way up the Rainbow Valley over to Hanmer. This is still the shortest route through to Christchurch (about 100km shorter than traveling around the main road).

These houses were built about one horseback days ride apart, so coming from Nelson the first one would have been at Foxhill then here, up the Rainbow Valley and across the top there were a string of accommodation houses. These houses were all made of cob. Cob is a mixture of horse hair, cow manure and straw mixed together with 14 parts of water and clay. All the walls are about two feet thick. They used no foundations, just put down a layer of rocks and boxed the walls up a foot at a time, basically till they got to the right height; put the roof on and the floors inside just used to be dirt floors.

This is the third and last type of Tophouse built. The first type was built in the early 1840's and was very basic. Just a stable and a bed, the second type improved slightly on this and was built about three km's down Tophouse road. This burnt down and this was the last Tophouse built in 1887.

The Location and Where It Is Built

This house is strategically placed between the three valleys, the Wairau,Motueka and Buller valleys, for the simple reason that the drovers also had to take their sheep through to the Canterbury plains and would also have to converge on this area.

A man by the name of Longney had the hotel built and got Ned James to build it for him. He said to Ned that there were only two important things he wanted in his hotel. One being a gigantic fireplace and the other being a secondary fireplace and where you put the rooms I really don't care. It took Ned a year to build and when it was finished Longney went down the valleys where the drovers used to stay in their shacks while passing through and said: Come on boys, come up to my hotel and sit in front of a nice raging fire and have a flagon of grog for a shilling. That's exactly what they did. After that he would feed them on the large table in the dining room, (this table was built is this room and has never been out of here). After he had fed them he would bunk them in the rooms here. In a double room he would pack them in, he would have six bunks in one room, three on each side. It would cost a shilling to sleep on the bottom bunk, nine pence to sleep on the bunk in the middle and three pence to sleep on the top bunk. Now does anyone know why the difference in price? The reason being, in those days the drovers never had a bath very often and that the smell would rise.

He was doing very well with the hotel because this also used to be the main road through from Nelson to Blenheim and the stage coaches would stop here (Cob and co and Newmans) up till 1894 when a tragedy happened here at Tophouse.

One of the drovers by the name of Bill Bateman fell in love with a certain Miss Wylie, Jane Wylie was the governess to Longney's four children here at the hotel and he also had his cousin in here managing Tophouse for him and his name was John Lane. Bill started writing Miss Wylie love letters and down behind the trees in the front here is still the old original Telegraph office and these letters would come in there. Local news was in those days was opening the letters and reading what was going on, so everyone knew about Bill's love for Miss Wylie (and it certainly wasn't the other way around).

One day Bill was down at the Wakefield pub having a few beers with his mates. If you think back to the 1800's they went to the pub not for a few hours but for a few days. Bill's mates were laughing behind his back, so he turned to them and asked what was going on. They said; Bill we know about your love for Miss Wylie and the love letters you write but you have no show mate because she has her eye on the manager there, John Lane, he has a good job. Well Bill had a few beers then he had another few beers then he turned to his mates and said; I'm sick of those people up there at Tophouse, I'm going to shoot them all!

Well they didn't take him seriously they just thought he had had too much to drink and was a bit unhappy with the news that they had told him. But the next day he bought powder and shot, came back to Tophouse, went down to Mr. and Mrs. Wallis who run the telegraph office and asked Mr. Wallis if he could borrow his shotgun because he wanted to go rabbit shooting. That wasn't a problem because they knew him. Bill came back to Tophouse, invited John Lane to go rabbit shooting with him, took him out the back of Tophouse and shot him through the back of the head. He came back to Tophouse, got a glass of whiskey out of the cupboard bar thought what he had done and thought oh Mr. Wallis is going to catch on as well because I borrowed the gun from him. So what did he do... He got Mr. Wallis took him out the back of Tophouse and shot him though the back of the head, then he came back again with the intention to shoot Miss Wylie but she in turn had caught on that there was something seriously wrong going on and escaped from Tophouse, down to the telegraph office, boarded herself in with Mrs. Wallis and put an SOS through to the Nelson police in those days with morse code. But it would take the police at least two days to get here! Bill did cut the telegraph wires but he knew that they had already got a message through and that his game was up, he came back to Tophouse, got a bottle of whiskey out of the cupboard bar, went and sat down outside on the veranda, drank it till there was an inch left in it, took off his boot, put his toe on the trigger, barrel in his mouth and blew his brains out. Out on the veranda you can still see where the pellets went into the roofing. This was one of NZ's most gruesome murders in the 1800's. Longney actually sold the hotel within a year after this tragedy happening because it was not good for business of course.

We also have a ghost here at Tophouse! This has nothing to do with the murders. His name is Sidney Smith and he was a very well liked man. He was a tinker man going around with his horse and cart selling his pots and pans. One day he tied his horse up over there by the tree. Apparently the horse got spooked and kicked him accidently in the side of the head and Sidney came running into Tophouse and dropped dead in the hallway! In 2007 we got a medium in to check this out. And sure enough he got in contact with Sidney. He said he just loves the place, so cozy and the fire is always going. I think it's just Nigel who pulls a white sheet over his head scaring everybody. But seriously we do get a lot of people in who do sense it and always say the same thing, that the lavender room is his favorite room and he is here looking after Tophouse for us. So he is more than welcome to stay.

The third and final part of the story is:

I mentioned a cupboard bar in the story. Have you ever heard of a cupboard bar before? Well we have an original cupboard bar in the lounge! Up till 1926 you could have a license to sell strong alcohol out of a cupboard. The reason behind this being you couldn't store much strong alcohol in a cupboard but you could have it out the back. I think the officials figured this out in 1926 and came around and said we are going to revoke these cupboard bar licenses and you can't have them anymore. He said; well what am I going to do!!!

Well there is only one thing you can do if you want to hold your license and that it to build a bar. Now that is exactly what he did. Outside here is NZ's smallest bar and it is built in 1926 out of kerosene crates. This bar was fully licensed up till November 1926 when Ray Clark shut the doors thinking for the last time. Two reasons for shutting, one was the price of petrol going up and the other was difficulty in holding his liquor license. This bar was shut for 39 years until Nigel reopened it in 2008. He said this is ridiculous, I want the license back but I don't want to change anything in there, got his lawyers onto it and found a loophole and got the license back in March 2008.

That is a bit of the history of Tophouse!