Earnscleugh Castle lovingly restored to former glory

Katie Todd, RNZ Otago/Southland reporter

A palatial 1920s building near Clyde is on the brink of a lavish new chapter, painstakingly restored from years of mould, rodents and neglect.

When husbands Marco Creemers and Ryan Sanders put the finishing touches on their house - affectionately known as Earnscleugh Castle - later this year, it will boast an airy ballroom, a pool and sauna, a seven-foot entranceway chandelier, a library with a sliding ladder and even a special room for their beloved French bulldogs with heated floors.

The pair said they were not only creating their dream home, but capturing its storied past for locals and visitors to enjoy.

"We want people to feel a sense of glamour, a sense of realness... and to take an interest in the stories of the property and its place in the fabric of Central Otago," Sanders said.

Sanders, from Christchurch, and Creemers, from Auckland, had hunted for the right property for eight years, when they came across the 21-bedroom brick mansion in 2022.

Creemers conceded it was "really bad student flat material", full of mould and rodents, surrounded by waist-high lawns and not watertight, with unsafe electrics and broken plumbing.

"But I think we just fell in love with it," he said.

"We knew we wanted a bit of land and something we could add value to. As soon as we drove up the driveway, before we even got inside, we kind of said to each other, 'Oh my God, we're going to buy this, aren't we?'"

From student flat to stately home

Creemers' extensive commercial property background and Sanders' business acumen, as the owner of Haka House Hostels, made for a workable pairing.

 "I need to be honest - my practical skills, globally, would sit in the bottom 10 percent," Sanders said. "Marco's very handy, thank God.

"He's my hero."

Foremost, the two knew they wanted to make Earnscleugh Castle a home, but also renovate it, so it could be run as a boutique hotel.

That meant adding ensuites to each bedroom and creating what Sanders called "an engine room, of sorts", where guest linen could be stored and meals prepared for visitors.

The pair also knocked down walls in the west wing, where the cook's sleeping quarters and breakfast room were, to open up a large kitchen and modern living area, reducing the total to 16 rooms.

The building was uniquely designed, with access between rooms entirely via balcony, rather than internal corridors, due to the 1920s flu pandemic.

While the external corridors were later closed in, due to the frosty Central Otago winters, Creemers said the couple decided to open them back up using a recessed glass wall.

He said their vision fell neatly into place, after they commissioned an architect and an interior designer to each create a new floorplan.

"We also did our own one together and the three of them were pretty similar, so that was kind of a nice thing. When they all came together... there was not much difference in them."

The pair recruited local tradespeople to repair the roofs, build three ponds for water security and, most time-consumingly of all, carry out 18 months of extensive earthquake repair work.

"Basically, we opened the house right out," Creemers said. "We took all the ceilings down, and architraves and skirtings off, and then tied all the joists and rafters to the brick walls with bolts and ChemSets.

"Then we had to concrete-cut through the brick walls and put carbon-fibre strips, epoxy those in. That all ties into the exterior plastering, which will have a carbon fibre mesh in it to earthquake-strengthen it."

The couple have carefully restored the damaged ornate plaster ceilings, removing them, making casts, recreating them in panels and then gluing them back on, in what Creemers described as "all a big trick".

Throughout the renovation, Sanders and Creemers lived in a coach-house located right behind the castle, which they said would ultimately become a 365-day-a-year bed and breakfast.

 

A rich history

Earnscleugh Castle was built in the 1920s by Stephen Spain on land once owned by Sir William Fraser, who first released rabbits into Central Otago.

Fraser went bust, but Spain made his fortune exporting the rabbits to Europe, Sanders said.

"It's amazing how some people see a problem and another see an opportunity. Spain definitely had that entrepreneurial flair."

Throughout the renovation, he and Creemers connected with descendants of past owners, tracing the castle's century-long journey.

They learnt that a bricked-up window on the west wing was the result of two feuding brothers who lived there - a feature they decided to retain.

"It's been a journey right up until now," he said. "The amount of people reaching out through social media, the access to photos that we've had from the families that have lived here that they've sent across to us, the stories that I've shared, which are just verbal history... it hasn't been written down.

"It's been absolutely amazing how engaged the three main families have been that have lived here previously and everything that we've found."

Setbacks and allies

The project stalled in 2023, when the Central Otago District Council declined a resource consent for external plastering.

Sanders said the pair had worked closely with Heritage New Zealand to itemise and document their changes, and retain the property's original character.

"We were pretty gobsmacked," he said.

While the couple eventually got the go-ahead, Sanders said it cost a year off the tools and "a lot of money spent on consultants".

Due to that and other changes, he conceded the project was now "eye-wateringly" over budget.

However, help came from an unexpected quarter - former Queenstown Lakes District councillor Penny Clark, who was nearing the end of her sixth year on the council, when she read about the Earnscleugh Castle project in the newspaper.

"I knew that council voting was going to come up and I thought I can't manage another three years of this bureaucracy," she said. "I saw it from the front page of the ODT one day and thought, 'God, that's got my name written on it', so I rang and bingo."

She lived in a caravan on site, and mostly made sure the sprawling 30 acres of lawns and gardens looked respectable.

"I managed to coax the chap next door into bringing his tractor over and cutting the lawn, and that's how Penny's grass started," she said.

Clark also became the resident pest controller.

"Council put you on wildlife trusts and youth trusts and all these trusts, and you suddenly learn all these other tasks, so I had another string to my bow," she said. "I could kill possums.

"The first 12 possums I killed one night, I lined them all up and took a photograph, and sent it to Marco up in Auckland. He came back saying, 'Oh, the poor wee things', and I thought, 'Oh, we're going have to knock this bloody city life out of him'."

Clark said she looked forward to the day she could put her feet up with a gin and tonic, and start reading all the history material about the property that Sanders had compiled.

The renovation was "on the home straight", she said.

Finish-line in sight

Sanders and Creemers expected to finish the internal work by October, in time to host a family Christmas and Creemers' 60th birthday - the first celebrations in the reborn castle.

They have documented the transformation on the Earnscleugh Castle Instagram and Facebook pages, but the interior remains under wraps, both online and to media, until it debuts on Grand Designs.

Even before the renovation is complete, Sanders and Creemers said their dream had been realised.

"We got 30 acres of land bordered by a beautiful river," Sanders said. "We've got some Varlais sheep, which we've just started to breed.

"We've got this mess of big trees all around the house - it's just beautiful. Now we just want a relaxing, beautiful - bit bigger than we imagined - house space," Creemers said.