{"id":64792,"date":"2025-10-08T05:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/64792\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T05:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:16:07","slug":"photographer-tracey-scott-restores-rotoruas-historic-te-hemo-villa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/64792\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographer Tracey Scott restores Rotorua\u2019s historic Te Hemo villa"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheThe gentleman’s room at Te Hemo. Photo \/ Tracey Scott<\/p>\n

Te Hemo, as it is named, is a Category 2 heritage-listed New Zealand building and an iconic part of Rotorua\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Scott bought 354sq m Te Hemo three years ago \u2013 a fitting historical home for her collection of New Zealand colonial furniture, art, artefacts and books.<\/p>\n

With stained glass and pressed ceilings shipped all the way from England, Te Hemo has been painstakingly restored and today has five bedrooms, four bathrooms, several living areas, a conservatory and a turret. It maintains its colonial architecture and distinctive white and green paintwork.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe library AKA ‘The Growlery’. Photo \/ Tracey Scott<\/p>\n

Scott\u2019s research translates Te Hemo from te reo M\u0101ori as \u201cthe end\u201d, according to a recent feature in NZ House and Garden. She puts this down to the house being located at what was once the end of town, but jokes that it can also mean smelly, which fits with the distinctive fumes of the famous P\u014dhutu Geyser next door.<\/p>\n

The building is right next door to Whakarewarewa geothermal village, with P\u014dhutu Geyser just across the fence.<\/p>\n

While the previous owners undertook extensive renovations to the bulk of the house, Scott has continued the work, including bringing the turret back to its former glory.<\/p>\n

\"'Every‘Every child’s dream’ – the turret at Te Hemo. Photo \/ Tracey Scott<\/p>\n

It\u2019s every child\u2019s dream to live in a house with a turret, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what fascinated me about the house. It had this kind of mystique. It\u2019s got a turret. What\u2019s in the turret? What\u2019s up there? Why do you have one of those?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe dining room at Te Hemo. Photo \/ Tracey Scott<\/p>\n

Scott, a graduate of the Otago School of Fine Arts before training in photography, says her love of collecting started young.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was 10 years old, my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said I\u2019d seen a little painting in an antique shop I wanted, and she thought I was quite strange. What child wants an old painting? Don\u2019t you want a toy?<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 I still have some of those pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe attic at Te Hemo. Photo \/ Tracey Scott<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also loved old homes since she was a child, she says, growing up in one and creating memories in grandmother\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was either fruitcake or shortbread or ginger kisses, and always some beautiful china, and then she would let me sit on the lounge floor in the formal living room, and she would pull out a big suitcase, and it was full of wind-up toys that she had collected from cruises around the world, and they were the most fabulous things,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n

\"TraceyTracey Scott. Photo \/ Tracey Scott<\/p>\n

\u201cDancing white horses and donkeys from Mexico and cats, gorgeous toys, elephants with monkeys on their back. So my grandmother\u2019s house was a happy place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owning Te Hemo, which has served time as a restaurant, a convalescence hospital in World War I and was once split into four apartments, comes with \u201cshared ownership\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe stair case at Te Hemo was one of the first parts of the house built. Photo \/ Tracey Scott<\/p>\n

People knock on the door asking to look around; often they have some connection to the place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a lady knock on the door one day and say that she was from Australia and that her father used to live here, and could she come and have a look.<\/p>\n

\u201c… The great-grandson of the guy who built it, and he brought his son out from Australia and I said, do you want to come and view it?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he actually ended up donating me the, I didn\u2019t know he\u2019d been a carpenter, he donated me kauri balustrades for the attic. I was rapt.\u201d<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gentleman’s room at Te Hemo. Photo \/ Tracey Scott Te Hemo, as it is named, is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,52539,6628,111,139,69,13636,52538,38715,8139,8690,52537,9966],"class_list":{"0":"post-64792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-hemo","15":"tag-historic","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-photographer","20":"tag-restores","21":"tag-rotoruas","22":"tag-scott","23":"tag-te","24":"tag-tracey","25":"tag-villa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64792","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=64792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}