Country Life: Makahuri - from former boarding school to village

A decade after Drew Mackenzie and Anthony Ryan bought a derelict Catholic convent on the Kāpiti Coast a village is taking shape.

The sign on the gate says, "people and dogs running free", but the project has not been without struggles.

Makahuri, in Te Horo, was once Marycrest - a boarding school for girls which closed in the early 1980s - leaving classrooms, a chapel, paddocks and dormitories to the pigeons and vandals until, in 2016, its new owners came along.

With people seeking accommodation and keen on a village lifestyle, the couple decided to invite others in, turning the buildings into homes and shared spaces, an idea developed in Denmark in the 1960s.

"If I could see this 10 years ago, would I have done it? I probably would have, you know, for all its battles," Mackenzie told Country Life.

Follow Country Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's been a protracted process navigating regulations and council requirements, she said.

"We kept trying to say we're not a subdivision, that's not what we're about."

The 14.6-hectare property at Te Horo, south of Ōtaki, includes a hotch potch of former school buildings and a homestead, where Mackenzie and Ryan live, plus an ancient stand of native forest and paddocks which are being planted as part of the Ōtaki Carbon Forest Project.

The buildings had lain empty for seven years before the couple and their family moved in.

"We've replaced, we think, probably around 2000 windows since we got here. Most of the windows were broken. People have been coming in, ripping out the nice native timbers."

Work is ongoing as consents allow and residents include students, retirees, full-time workers and families - aged from under a year to 90.

The aim is to have about 14 households either buying their apartments under a body corporate system or renting, Mackenzie said.

"Makahuri is a sustainable, safe, creative and harmonious co-housing community. It is a place of beauty where the mauri, forest, land, people and animals are honoured and respected by all," its vision statement reads.

"People often have asked if we're a commune, which we're so not, and even 'community' has connotation that you're living in each other's pockets and we don't do that. We are a village.

"I think of villages of old and how they just lived in an area together and they knew each other and supported each other, and they didn't necessarily even get on all the time but they had each other's backs regardless and that's us, that's how we are. We're a village."

Berylla Jones moved in during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. She grew up on a farm and liked the idea of being in the country as well as village-style living.

"There's a diversity of people, so there's a diversity of ideas. There's like support around if you need support. When my partner died during Covid, it was really lovely to have villagers here to, you know, be here supporting."

Jones' quilts adorn the walls of the former chapel now used for community events, exercise classes and meetings.

Residents pay a co-housing fee to run the vegetable garden. They pay for wheelbarrows of wood collected from the property as well as eggs from the chickens looked after by Makahuri's oldest resident.

"We have our own recycling station and John manages that. Anything you want fixed; you can take it to John. So, if you break a shovel handle, you just take it to John. He fixes it for you. And his wife, Blossom, who's 82, I think, she just feeds everybody and she's a fabulous gardener.

"She's one of our wise people of the village."

Mackenzie said Makahuri had experienced significant tensions and difficult periods but has treated each problem as an opportunity to improve its clarity and processes.

"We've never got to the point that we looked like we were going to fall over but there have been times when there has been huge issues going on. But every one of them we've learnt from, every one of them we thought it's because we weren't clear or we didn't have a process and so with every point of tension we develop better as human beings and as a village."

Prospective residents were encouraged to join a working bee, Friday morning "café" or one of the other activities at Makahuri "to listen how we react to each other and understand more, not only the kaupapa, but also the whakapapa".