Carlile House

Landmark Victorian building in danger of collaspe. Built as the Costley Home for Boys in the 1880s. designed by Robert Jones Roberts (c.1832-1911) Reg no: 9584 - Category I

Edward Costley died in the 1880s and left a very large amount of money to be used for various charitable purposes including additions to the Auckland & Greenlane Hospitals which were named the "Costley Wards". This structure in Richmond Road was built as the Costley Industrial School for boys. The focus of the Costley trustees was on boys whose character and antecedents were good, or those likely to profit by or be a credit to the institution. The boys were maintained, a portion of their earnings being deducted for their keep, until they were capable of controlling of their own affairs. Younger boys attended the nearest school until the end of standard four.

Numbers dwindled after closure of the Auckland Industrial School in 1896. Following the closure of the Costley Training Institute at the end of 1908, the place served for two decades as the Richmond Road Children's Home, an Anglican institution.

In 1913 a memorial chapel was constructed for Sister Cecil of the Order of the Good Shepherd who had managed the facility from 1909 until her death in 1912 {this is the adjacent Tongan Church}.

Following the 1931 Hawkes Bay earthquake the building briefly housed Hukarere Maori Girls' School. From 1935 until circa 1969 the headquarters and training school of the Church Army, an Anglican evangelical outreach mission founded in London by Wilson Carlile (1862-1942) to undertake social work in slums was located here which is when it was renamed Carlile House.

The Church of St Michael and All Angels, the Church Army and an associated boys' club are essential elements of Derek Hansen's Remember Me: A Novel, (2007) set in Richmond Road during the 1950s the building was briefly used by the Department of Social Welfare as a remand home, and in 1973 became the Auckland Alternative School.

Virtually nothing has been done to this building since the 1970s and it rapidly decaying.

Despite the many romantic stories circulating there was never a fire here in which 43 children perished. The various children's Homes which occupied it operated from the mid 1880s to the 1950s and it was possibly used for emergency housing for ten or twenty years or so. Without doubt some deaths would have occurred here during that century of occupation. There was a fire in the late 1980s and possibly another in the 1990s but neither involved anyone being hurt let alone dying.

While there may be a resident ghost, people may be assured that if 43 children had died in a fire in this building {without apparently ANY newspaper reports} the building simply wouldn't be still standing, it would probably have been immediately demolished. As an example the Fire at the Grand Hotel in Princes Street in 1902 resulted in six deaths; as the worst fire in Auckland's history it had a great deal of newspaper coverage - especially as several of the dead were children. Any large fire here must have post-dated that event and there simply isn't any evidence.

www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc02Cycl-t1-body1-d1-d2...
www.urbex.co.nz/carlile-house.html