History

There are 3 eras to the Landsendt property that we know about and interveneing periods without a lot of information. The homestead, Sunnydale is the focal point to the property's history.

Sunnydale was built in the very early 1860s and is the oldest house in West Auckland. It is built from pit sawn and split kauri timber. The pit was found, with an old timber hook, on the property. Nails in some of the foundation wood suggest recycled timber which indicates that the house could have been rebuilt. Some of the foundations are large boulders.

Murder at Sunnydale

On October 30th 1892 Mr William Thompson, the owner of Sunnydale was murdered by poisoning. To make a long story shorter, he was poisoned by his good friend, Alexander Scott, a neighbour. Mr Scott fell in love with Mrs. Thompson. She became pregnant with her third son. Mr Scott was desperate to marry her so he 'disposed' of Mr Thompson.

It can only be assumed that Eric Thompson, the third son, was the son of Mr Scott but never the less, the poisoning occurred and a damning love letter was produced as evidence at the trial.

Scott went to many chemist shops around Auckland, using false names and different stories, to obtain poisons including arsenic, strychnine and several others. While Mrs Thompson was pregnant she stayed in Thames with Mr Thomson's uncle, John Hall. Mr Thompson became quite ill while she was gone, so the friendly neighbour, Mr Scott looked after him. The reason for the illness was the poison he was getting added to in his meals. It took 2 months for Mr. Thompson to die.

Scott was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death by the rope. (later used to hang Minnie Dean, the only woman to hang in NZ)

Mrs Thompson got off because, during the trial when she was meant to appear in court she took the next boat back to England, leaving her babies in NZ. Charles Thompson, a younger brother took the 3 mth trip from England to collect them. Mrs Thompson was not allowed to raise her middle son (the oldest died a year before the murder from 'a long illness'). The family let her raise Eric. He was named and buried as a Thompson.

The Hall family from Thames have a connection with the present day Landsendt. When I did the research for the murder I wanted to find out more about the Hall family. We knew that Halls Totara was named after the same Mr Hall in this story. We discovered the exsistence of some letters at the Auckland museum which Hall wrote to Mr Cheeseman, the then curator of Auckland Museum. I copied many of these letters and coincidentally at the same time, Thames historical society and DOC put on a tour around Hall's Reserve, his garden. The planting was neglected and Thames council and DOC were not sure what to do with the reserve. They suggested the possible removal of exotic species in the reserve. The emergence of the letters was so timely as we realised that this could possibly be the first arboretum in NZ. Graeme Platt has verified this as Hall was, as far as we know, the first person in NZ to collect plants from the bush and record their growth. In the letters to Cheeseman he refers to other colleagues, one being Captain Dorien Smith, from Tresco Abbey, Scilly Isles, UK. This garden has old NZ natives which would have come from Hall and some of the exotics in his garden would have been swapped seed. Halls Reserve is a slice of NZ's botanical history which is now regarded by the Thames council as a national treasure. Funds are being used to fence it and restore the plantings and also maintain the old trees.

How does this all relate to Landsendt? Dick being an avid plant collector like John Hall, swapped plants with his colleagues. One of these colleagues is Michael Poulgrain. Many of Michael's plants are in our garden such as the rare Agave filifera, Parajubaea torallyii var micro carpa and Puya venusta. It turns out that Michael is the great grand son of Hall. We found this out quite a long time after the initial research. Our neighbours, Ron and Debbie Hall also live up Parker Rd. Nothing to do with the events of the last century. Ron is another great grandson.

The second era was the ownership of Sunnydale by the Davidson family. Geoff Davidson from Oratia Native Plants is from this family. They owned it for 55 years, running it as a dairy farm until they got too old to run it. They sold it to the Endt's in 1962.