Clark Cottage, in Hobsonville, is the eleventh heritage site published on Tohu Heritage, and the second belonging to the Clark family story already told here through Clark House.
Thomas Edwin Clark built it around 1908, not long after marrying Margaret Morrison, and the couple first called it Love Cottage. It is made from hollow ceramic blocks, roughly 65 by 21 centimetres, a construction technique Thomas himself pioneered at the family pottery works that once shaped this stretch of the Waitematā Harbour. Only four buildings built this way are known to survive today, and Clark House is another of them.
The century that followed was not gentle. The land was subdivided, a wall was removed to make a children’s dormitory and later rebuilt using the original bricks, and for a time the place was known as Duke House, after James Stirling Duke, who ran a Suffolk sheep stud here from 1971. In 1986 it became home to a motor museum and model collection. The surrounding land is now Summerset at Monterey Park, whose Clark Coastal villas take their name directly from the cottage.
Today the cottage stands restored at the heart of the village, its original stained glass, timber archways and moulded detailing still intact, used by residents as a gathering place. You can explore Clark Cottage now.
A note from the founder
Clark House was one of the first places Tohu Heritage ever documented, so returning to Hobsonville to record the smaller, earlier house the same family built felt like closing a loop. The two buildings are barely a kilometre apart and made from the same invention, and now both can be visited online by anyone, side by side.
What stayed with me was how well the setting is looked after. The landscaping around the cottage is genuinely impressive, and the shared vegetable garden beside it is clearly tended with real pride. Every detail around the building has been cared for and maintained, which is not something you often find around a place this old.
Thank you to the management team at Summerset at Monterey Park, who look after the cottage and made this capture possible.
