Victoria Ginn has renamed the old Commercial Hotel in Normanby, The Blue Matriarch. Photo: ROBIN MARTIN / RNZ
A South Taranaki hotel dating back to the late 1800s is on the market following a restoration by a celebrated photographer.
Once a bustling workers' drinking hole, the Commercial Hotel in Normanby is about six kilometres outside of Hāwera.
Victoria Ginn bought the 440-square-metre building sight unseen while living in Fiji about six years ago.
"I was in my rainforest hideout on the Coral Coast of Fiji overlooking beautiful turquoise reefs and the ocean and with a lot of private bush, but I found the heat was beginning to affect my health.
"So, I looked online on TradeMe just out of the blue and this building jumped out at me."
Also known as the Back Hotel it was once a community focal point.
The Commercial Hotel pictured in the 1940's. Photo: SUPPLIED
"People came in here and I think there were lots of sing-songs a lot of happiness in this building. I think there were also a few fights, of course, naturally.
"And there used to be huge gatherings for cyclists and you name it who would gather in their masses outside and inside the building on occasion until the local police stopped it."
Ginn took RNZ on a bit of a tour of the building.
"This was an old part of a bar this area. There are three lounges or three bars downstairs and they're lovely spacious areas. You've got three-metre studs here. This was my bedroom here which is a beautiful spacious, quiet and quite serene area."
The ground-floor also contained a large commercial kitchen, bathrooms, a self-contained studio apartment, and it lead out to the garden and a salt and magnesium pool.
Victoria Ginn built a salt and magnesium pool. Photo: ROBIN MARTIN / RNZ
Then it was up the stairs.
"These have the old leather treads. The original leather treads with the little brass nails stuck through them. There's a lovely old stained glass window. She's stood against cyclones, you name it.
"And then we're upstairs and this used to be travellers accommodation upstairs and it had nine bedrooms. Little bedrooms that I opened up without altering the structure I just opened up the rooms."
Upstairs there was a new kitchen with a breakfast bar made from kauri from one of the original bars downstairs.
There was no denying Ginn had been busy.
Victoria Ginn said as much as she saved the Commercial Hotel, it rescued her. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Now in her 70s she had re-wired, re-plumbed, re-roofed, re-painted, put in double glazing and decorated throughout in her own esoteric style.
"I'm quite good at fixing places up and I love creative challenges and I do love decorating and I have a sense of colour.
"I wanted to rescue the building, but I also needed rescuing so it was a two-way process and now I've fallen in love with another place and I want to be rescued from here."
Although the Commercial Hotel was old, Ginn said rumours the building was haunted were overstated.
Victoria Ginn is ready to move on from The Blue Matriarch. Photo: ROBIN MARTIN / RNZ
"My family home in Thorndon was haunted and it could be quite frightening, but this house, this building I would say there's no dead headless people walking the halls at night, no ghostly hands creeping through the walls to pull your hair.
"Maybe the occasional nightmare I've had, but that's my own psyche and it's probably to do with what I've eaten or drunk."
Ginn said the property - which she had renamed the Blue Matriarch - would be suitable as a multi-unit dwelling or suit an imaginative hospitality or tourism sector entrepreneur.
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