Holly Lodge, or, Whats in a Name?

Although it was undoubtedly due to something like a family connection or even whimsical fancy, it is still interesting for me to ponder the origin of Holly Lodge’s name, and try to derive some meaning from it. I have some fairly solid reasons to believe that the house has always been called by that particular name, these being:

• The earliest photos of the house show the holly trees as young shrubs — the same trees that now loom large over the front steps
• The photo from ca.1902 shows the plaque on the front of the portico (although the actual words are obscured…)

• In many of the classifieds that HJ Underwood took out in the local papers, his address was referred to as “Holly Lodge, top of Tasman-street”. The earliest of these that I have found is from the Evening Post, 11 November 1896:

• and, Q told me the house has always been called Holly Lodge.

These reasons all add up for me to say that if the house was not called Holly Lodge when it was built, it was christened that name very soon after and it has since stuck. But they do not tell us why the house was branded as such. One could possibly argue that the holly trees out the front of the house inspired the name rather than vice versa, but this would be a stretch, as holly trees were not very common at the time in these parts and so were probably quite purposefully planted (I would add that they may even be the oldest holly trees still standing in Wellington).

So the mystery stands — what inspired the name? Some family heritage, or something else? The word “lodge” lends itself to masonic connotations, as the Freemasons meet in Lodges. HJ was almost certainly a member of the Freemasons in Wellington, and his wife Harriet’s paternal ancestors were also involved in the Freemasons right from the founding days of the Wellington chapter. After the Penguin disaster of 1909 (in which HJ perished tragically), the Freemasons donated a large sum of money to the relief fund for the women who had been widowed by it. Also, soon after the tragedy, a Freemasons hall was opened in Johnsonville called Holly Lodge… This all may just be coincidence, and I don’t have any evidence or reason to believe that masonic meetings were ever held at the house.

Another idea is to look at where else the name Holly Lodge turns up in history. Well, it is of English origin, which is of no surprise, and historically there have been quite a few of them. But there is one stand-out place that probably deserves a mention: in Highgate, which at the time was just out of London, there was a country estate by the name of Holly Lodge. It was built by a very wealthy family and inherited by the Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts in 1837, who tended towards philanthropy and festivity. According to wikipedia:

“Between 1849 and 1906 Holly Lodge became world famous as the rural retreat of one of the most remarkable women of the 19th century with grand galas and festivities taking place in the house and the meadows. Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens were both regular visitors to the estate.”

It wouldn’t surprise me if tales of such things had permeated as far as colonial New Zealand, and perhaps HJ and his wife, being both very contemporary and community minded people, were keen to recreate a little of the same splendour in the foothills of Wellington. It is a nice idea anyway.

Update: I uncovered this gem of an newspaper clipping from the Evening Post in 1907 which describes the sale of Holly Lodge in Highgate, and in particular the esteem “that estate overlooking and yet right within the capital city” was held in by people from “the outer parts of the empire”.

Originally published December 2013