Back in March 2013, Raglan’s spaceship house in Riria Kereopa Drive was sold for removal. And now in summer 2014, the Raglan house will shift to Chistchurch. Ray White Raglan director Julie Hanna said a Futuro fan from Christchurch bought it at auction. “We just sold that for removal at $80,000 just for the spaceship. I think they’re going to dismantle it and take it away on the back of a truck.”
The house is made of fiberglass reinforced polyester plastic, the same material used to make surf boards, was selected to build the spaceship houses. The prefabricated spaceship house consisted of 16 separate elements that can be quickly bolted together in two days. The flying saucer shape of the house is 3.5 metres high and 8 metres in diameter. It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and a central table.
The house was featured in the 2008 book, ‘Baches of Raglan’. The book’s editor, Venetia Sherson, interviewed then owner Raglan former sea captain Peter Farrell. He purchased the house in the 1970s after noticing it featured in the September 1970 issue of Playboy. Mr Farrell said he had fallen in love with the house, especially as it gave him something in common with Mr Hefner. The house was purchased two years ago by Bill McKinstry who allowed Captain Farrell to stay on until he passed away late in 2012.
Fewer than a 100 such houses were made, including a handful in New Zealand by a Christchurch company under licence from its Finnish manufacturers. The Raglan UFO style house was included as a Kiwi icon in the ‘Kiwi Prefab: Cottage to Cutting Edge’exhibition at New Plymouth’s Puke Ariki museum in 2012.
The block of leasehold land on which the spacehouse sat has now been taken off the market. Leashold land in tis area had been selling at about $80,000 for the past few years, but the most recent sale fetched $295,000.