Kinder House is a

historic house A historic house generally meets several criteria before being listed by an official body as "historic." Generally the building is at least a certain age, depending on the rules for the individual list. A second factor is that the building be in ...

on Ayr Street, in the suburb of Parnell,

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

, New Zealand.

History

Kinder House, sometimes known as "The Headmaster's House" was built in 1857. It was commissioned by Bishop George Selwyn and designed by

Frederick Thatcher The Reverend Frederick Thatcher (1814 – 19 October 1890) was an English and New Zealand architect and clergyman. He was born at Hastings to a long-established Sussex family. He practised as an architect in London from 1835 and was one of the ...

, architect of many

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

buildings in Auckland. The house is a Gothic-style, double-storey mansion built of grey volcanic stone quarried from nearby

Mount Eden Mount Eden is a suburb in Auckland, New Zealand whose name honours George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland. It is south of the Central Business District (CBD). Mt Eden Road winds its way around the side of Mount Eden Domain and continues to weave ba ...

. The house was the residence of

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

-born

John Kinder John Kinder (born September 28, 1974 in Santa Ana, California) is a Japanese American stock car racing, stock car racing driver. He is a former competitor in the NASCAR SuperTruck Series by Craftsman and the Winston West Series, and in the United ...

(1819 1903), an Anglican priest, painter, photographer and headmaster of the Church of England Grammar School, Parnell. He occupied the house with his wife and the six children of his brother Henry Kinder, who was murdered in 1865 by John's sister-in-law and her lover. The house was opened to the public as a gallery in 1982. The house is also used for

wedding receptions A wedding reception is a party usually held after the completion of a marriage ceremony as hospitality for those who have attended the wedding, hence the name reception: the couple ''receive'' society, in the form of family and friends, for t ...

and other functions. In 2012, leading landscape photographers from New Zealand and abroad exhibited New Zealand

landscape photography Landscape photography shows the spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes ...

at a Kinder House exhibition organized by the Contemporary Photography Foundation, during the Auckland Festival of Photography.

Reported haunting

It is claimed that the house is haunted by the apparition of a man.Kinder House – Ghost Hunt: True New Zealand Ghost Stories (2005) Because of this, it was visited by a team of

paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Nota ...

investigators in 2005 and featured on ''Ghost Hunt'', a New Zealand television show.

References

External links

Kinder House Official Website

External links

{{Parnell, New Zealand

Kinder House Kinder House is a List of category 1 historic places in Auckland, historic house on Ayr Street, in the suburb of Parnell, New Zealand, Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand. History Kinder House, sometimes known as "The Headmaster's House" was built ...

Houses completed in 1857 1857 establishments in New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Category 1 historic places in the Auckland Region Historic homes in New Zealand Parnell, New Zealand Reportedly haunted locations in New Zealand Historic house museums in New Zealand Museums in Auckland