{"id":590887,"date":"2026-09-05T10:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T10:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/590887\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T10:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T10:12:15","slug":"blaze-at-cafe-next-to-nzs-oldest-building-suspicious-fenz-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/590887\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaze at cafe next to NZ’s oldest building ‘suspicious’, FENZ says"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fire at a cafe next to New Zealand’s oldest surviving building is being investigated as suspicious.<\/p>\n

By Peter de Graaf for RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n

A caf\u00e9 situated just metres from New Zealand’s oldest surviving building has been damaged in an overnight blaze, but volunteer firefighters managed to stop the flames from spreading to 204-year-old Kemp House at Kerikeri Basin.<\/p>\n

Police are investigating the blaze, which started in a storage shed next to Honey House Caf\u00e9 around 11.30pm on Friday.<\/p>\n

The shed was destroyed, one wall of the caf\u00e9 was burned, and its water pipes and electrical cables were badly damaged.<\/p>\n

The two-storey Honey House has the caf\u00e9 on the ground level and offices for Heritage New Zealand upstairs<\/p>\n

The business is next to Kemp House, which was built between 1821 and 1822 by missionaries, and was an important focus for early relationships between M\u0101ori and P\u0101keh\u0101.<\/p>\n

\"Kemp<\/p>\n

Kemp House (right) next to the Stone Store, Kerikeri. (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/p>\n

Another heritage building, the Stone Store, which was built not much later – from 1832 to 1836 – is also next door to the cafe.<\/p>\n

The fire had been small, and “both Kemp House and Stone Store were thankfully unaffected by the blaze”, a Honey House Caf\u00e9 spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Kerikeri deputy fire chief Andy Hamberger said the alarm was raised by someone who spotted smoke as he was heading to work on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Two fire trucks from Kerikeri responded along with one each from \u014ckaihau and Paihia.<\/p>\n

Hamberger said the fire took about half an hour to bring under control, with firefighters dampening down until about 3am today.<\/p>\n

He said it was incredibly lucky a local raised the alarm when he did, with the caf\u00e9 just metres from Kemp House, a Category I heritage building.<\/p>\n

Heritage New Zealand Northland spokesman John O’Hare said the entire property – including the Stone Store, Kemp House and the caf\u00e9 – would be closed today while police and fire experts investigated.<\/p>\n

The caf\u00e9 was likely to be closed for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

\"Kemp<\/p>\n

Kemp House holds the Honey House Cafe and Heritage NZ offices. (Source: istock.com)<\/p>\n

The cause had yet to be confirmed but if police found it had been deliberately lit, as was suspected, that would be “appalling” and “deeply disappointing”, he said.<\/p>\n

Despite its historic appearance, the Honey House – a former curator’s cottage – was only built in 1976.<\/p>\n

It was built on the site of a historic barn and took its name from James Kemp Jr’s storage shed for beehives, which once stood nearby.<\/p>\n

The caf\u00e9 opened in 2012 with some of its recipes sourced from historic archives, or made with fruit grown in Kerikeri Mission Station’s heritage orchard.<\/p>\n

Kemp House was erected in 1821-22 by the London-based Church Missionary Society for the Reverend John Butler, the only ordained minister in the settlement at the time.<\/p>\n

It was built by missionary carpenters and M\u0101ori sawyers and later became the home of the Kemp family.<\/p>\n

Kemp House is currently wrapped in plastic<\/a>, which could have made a fire even more catastrophic.<\/p>\n

In 2023, a large stand of gum trees near the Stone Store were poisoned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fire at a cafe next to New Zealand’s oldest surviving building is being investigated as suspicious. By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,111,43,139,1067,69],"class_list":["post-590887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}