The Houses · H-11
South House
Southland, South Island · Established 2017 · Residency only
South House is the youngest house in the network and the only one that keeps a generator large enough to run the village hall.
- Region
- Asia and Pacific
- Residential places
- 15
- Residential periods
- Fifteen places, held for members undertaking the Fellowship or the restoration programme. Visitors are not received at present.
- Public gathering
- Shared workshop, Saturdays. No Open Table at present; the house is not resourced for it.
- Arrival
- Two hours from Invercargill. The valley road is gravel and floods.
- Access
- The hall and kitchen are step-free. The tracks are not. Residents with mobility needs are placed on the register work rather than the trap lines.
- Correspondence
- Write to the steward at South House. Replies take some weeks.
The house
The house was established in 2017 after four years of correspondence with a rural community board, and the correspondence is more interesting than the founding: the board wanted to know, in writing, what the Institute would do if it lost interest. The undertaking given then — twenty-five years, or the house transfers to the community trust — is published in full.
Restoration work is done with a landcare group: predator control, wetland fencing, and a replanting programme along two kilometres of stream.
Emergency preparedness followed the 2019 storm, when the house discovered it was the only building in the valley with three days of water and a working radio. It is now a designated welfare point.
The work
- Ecological restoration with the landcare group: trapping, fencing, and stream planting.
- Emergency preparedness: the welfare point, the generator, the radio schedule, and a household register reviewed twice a year.
- Rural community support: transport to appointments, and a shared workshop open on Saturdays.
Observance kept here
One place left
At the formal meal, one place is laid and left unoccupied. The practice arrived with the house's first steward, from North House, and no explanation was recorded with it.
The shared forms, here
- The Quiet Twelve
- Shortened to eight minutes during conservation workshops, by a standing decision of the house recorded in 1996.
- The Weather Entry
- Kept in the same book but in the southern seasons, so that the winter entries fall in July. The book is not reordered.
Kept in use
The white cups
Tea, at the table and at the bench. They recur in house photographs from the late seventies onward, which is an accident of ordering and not a design.
Local participation
- Coastal track and hall repair, monthly.
- The sitting rota, arranged with the district nurse.
- Separation
- Notice once, to the steward or by telephone. The sitting rota is filled before anything else, because somebody is expecting a visitor.
- Succession
- Sitting duties are handed over with one visit made together, at the request of the person visited and not of the house. The work is reassigned; the person is not replaced.
The steward
Hine Waititi
Schoolteacher · steward since 2022
Taught in the valley for nineteen years before the house. Holds the household register and the radio schedule.
Records
Other houses
- Cedar House — Aomori Prefecture
- Shore House — Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
Entry H-11 · reviewed 3 March 2026