Edward Randell

In 1867 William Randell, a bricklayer and mason from England, built a small wooden cottage in St Mary Street, in Thorndon, for his wife Sarah and their growing family. Edward (Ted) Randell was the fifth of their ten children, born in 1862. Ted did well at school and at the age of twelve was accepted as a clerk in a solicitor's office. William died in 1880 but Sarah managed to keep the cottage and feed the family with financial help from Edward and her other working children. One by one the children grew up and moved away from home, but Sarah stayed in the cottage with daughter Harriet until 1912.

Ted spent most of his life working for the Land and Income Tax Department in Wellington. He married Emiline Emma Louise Jones (Em) in 1888 and they had three sons. Ted loved the outdoors and enjoyed rifle shooting and playing rugby. In later life he had severe arthritis and was vision impaired, so left his job when he was little more than fifty years old. Ted died in 1920.

William and Sarah’s great-granddaughter Beverley Randell and her husband Hugh Price purchased the cottage at 14 St Mary Street in 1994, and with their daughter Susan Price they set about restoring it. Over the course of the restoration, with their architect Martin Hill, they discovered a number of everyday objects such as clothing, ceramic fragments, discarded tools, children's toys, buttons and bottles, hidden in the walls, under the floorboards or in the attic. They donated these items to Te Papa in 2008. Some of Ted’s childhood treasures, or discarded items from his youth, are no doubt among them.

References
Randell, Beverley. 1992. A Crowded Thorndon Cottage: The story of William and Sarah Randell and their ten children. Wellington: Gondwanaland Press.
Randell, Beverley, and Susan Price. 2022. Unpublished research notes provided to curator.