Frank Sargesons Bach

Frank Sargeson lived in this fibrolite bach from 1931 to 1982. He also wrote most of his work here and entertained literary friends. A famous live-in guest was Janet Frame. From 1955 to 1956 in a short but significant stay, she wrote her first novel "Owls Do Cry". She lived and worked in a now-demolished small army hut behind the house. The key is available from the Takapuna Public Library.
From an architectural standpoint "the bach is considered as a precursor to the work of the Group." (not to be confused with the Christchurch artists Group, the architects group is known for the attempt by young graduates to establish a vernacular architecture in the years following the second World War. They are the subject of a book edited by Julia Gatley)

LLTM p51

Frank Sargeson’s Bach, Takapuna - New Zealand fiction finds its voice

No Trust registration form could improve on Kevin Ireland’s assessment of this place. ‘That tiny fibrolite dwelling, set in the subsistence garden that Frank cultivated like a small farm,’ Ireland wrote in Under the Bridge and Over the Moon, ‘became a literary kingdom entirely without guards or frontiers and where the only cards of identity were books. As the novelist David Ballantyne put it: ‘Here he wrote all his best-known short stories and novels, grew vegetables and entertained friends and fellow writers. Here a truly New Zealand literature was born.’

In 1931 Norris Davey (Frank Sargeson) moved into the family bach in Esmonde Road, Takapuna, then a quiet seaside resort on Auckland’s isolated North Shore. That seclusion suited the 28-year-old Sargeson, who was still trying to live down an earlier arrest for having sex with another man. Dilapidated and cockroach-infested 14 Esmonde Road, ‘a small one-roomed hut in a quiet street ending in a land of mangrove mud-flats that belonged to the inner harbour’, it may have been, but it offered sanctuary and somewhere to write. Here Sargeson wrote most of his work and also held court to the small literary community.

Here he grew his vegetables, entertained, cooked fine meals, argued and loved and took in strays, most memorably Janet Frame, whose sojourn in the garden shed (now demolished) has been featured in books and film. Sargeson died on 1 March 1982 and his ashes were sprinkled under a loquat tree in the garden. Traffic from the Auckland harbour bridge thunders along Esmonde Road, but a trust now administers the property as a literary museum. You can get the key from the Takapuna Public Library. Do it. Behind its stark,no-frills grey fibrolite exterior there awaits an enticing, water stained brown little world full of books, old armchairs, hats, coats and all the relics of a life of yarns and letters.

© 2002 Original text – Gavin McLean.

Further reading: Janet Frame, An Angel at My Table, Century Hutchinson, Auckland, 1984; Michael King, Frank Sargeson, Viking, Auckland, 1995.