Two fluke finds, a newspaper in the old homestead walls and a buried wine cellar, led a local couple to find out the history of Como Villa Estate - and publish a book.

Pam and Johnny Chapman, who bought the property in 1982, undertook a twenty year journey to get to know Thomas Oliver, the story of his businesses and his family. 

With the help of late professor John McCraw and historian Wayne Stark they have traced the “elusive” and “skulduggerous” Oliver across the world, visiting Italy, the United States and England.

They found Thomas Oliver was an English pioneering businessman, who made his fortune in Central and Otago and set about creating a grand English manor estate in Earnscleugh, giving it an Italian name.

Some of the antiques inside the restored villa. PHOTO: The Central App 

The Chapmans have restored the villa and its rock walls, decking it out with antiques and relics to show visitors how it would have been, there’s even a blacksmith shop on site.

The six bedroom home was inhabited for more than 100 years, Oliver and his first wife, Mary who left England at 17, lost two children in the house.  

The villa required 120 tons of schist rock and would have taken more than a year to build, transported by horse and cart.

For its time it was an elaborate home, a “real show place with exotic trees and shrubs”. 

Along with the villa there were 2000 fruit and forest trees, a dairy, a piggery, a stable, a coach house and 12 water races. 

Pam said she can not recall the day she found the newspaper but it was during the mid 1980s.

“I was just in here one day, just scratching around as there was wallpaper in blotches around the walls and I uncovered a newspaper… an old Otago Witness which had a date on it in November 1869. That’s what started us on this journey."

She wrote to professor John McCraw, and he came and looked at the remains and he inspired the Chapmans to see if they could recreate it.

“He put it in a book, ‘Gold in the Dunstan’… some paragraphs are in that book about Como Villa.”

Johnny said Thomas Oliver was a high flying businessman, a water race tycoon, he had a “winery, a gold mine, he was a hotelier… and into importing alcohol way before bottles were even being made in New Zealand.”

Pam said Oliver was a man of means, he employed upwards of 20 people; “I don't think Oliver himself ever got dirty hands actually.”

The wine cellar was discovered by chance in the mid 1980s when Johnny moved one of two large loaders that was being stored on his property during a strike by workers on the Clyde Dam.

“The compartment underneath was covered over by Oliver, …the only artefacts in there were Mrs Oliver’s shoes, her tiny [leather] booties, she was only 17, old bottles that had come from Europe… and European cutlery.”

“We’ve found hand blown bottles dated 1850s are still in the cellar; they were being brought into the country to stock up his hotel,’’ Johnny said. 

Johnny with the untouched bottles in the underground cellar. PHOTO: The Central App

The Italian name connection was explained by viticulturist and wine maker Grant Taylor who visited the Chapmans in 1989.

Grant’s great great uncle Luigi Valli was the part-time wine maker in the 1870s and came to the Central Otago goldfields in 1861 together with his younger brother Guiseppe.

In 1872 Luigi moved to Conroys, close to Como Villa, perhaps helping Thomas Oliver to produce one of the vineyards first vintages.   

The Chapmans aren't sure if the Como name was a joke by Luigi and Guiseppe, or if it was just a heartfelt connection to home.

“We’ve been to Como and it’s nothing like this,” Pam said. 

Thomas Oliver died in 1908 in San Diego with an estate worth US $45,000 (equivalent to $2M in 2024)

The 70 page book will be launched next month at Central Stories Museum and Art Gallery in Alexandra. 

Have a story to share?

Contact [email protected]