PHOTO: BAYLEYS This classic villa in Devonport looks deceptively small from the front, but it’s 450 square metres – large enough to have once been a maternity home.
A huge number of people have stayed in this Devonport villa, but thousands of them won’t remember it.
The kauri villa, in Buchanan Street, was a maternity home for 50 years between 1925 and 1975, so odds are if you were born in Devonport during those years, this is where you arrived into the world.
But, even before the house became Pentlands Maternity Hospital, it was a significant property, being one of the first original villas built in Devonport, in 1893. There’s even a street in the suburb named after the first owner, James (Jim) Mays, who arrived from England and made his fortune in the Coromandel goldfields.
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