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Overview
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. Mary, seated on the left of this photograph, was the eldest of their ten children, born in 1855. Mary married George Remington, seated on the right, in 1877. They had no children of their own, but their niece Constance, standing at the rear of the image, lived with them after her mother Sally, Mary’s sister, died in 1884.
In 1994 William and Sarah’s great-granddaughter Beverley Randell and her husband Hugh Price purchased the cottage at 14 St Mary Street, 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 Mary’s childhood treasures, or discarded items from her 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 Unpublished research notes provided to curator.