Puketutu Island Estate
Once the residence of Sir Henry Kelliher, the beautifully restored Spanish Mission homestead sets the scene for your stand-out celebration. Enjoy the immaculate lawns, garden terraces and ponds. Puketutu Island Estate provides a wonderful range of outdoor entertainment spaces for you and your guests to enjoy.
Located only 30 minutes from Auckland CBD, Puketutu Island Estate offers a range of flexible indoor and outdoor spaces for you and your guests to enjoy. However grand or intimate your occasion, our team can design your event as little or as much as you would like us to. Whether it’s a sunset ceremony, champagne and cocktails or corporate retreat - rest assured that that your vision will be brought to life.
History
Once the residence of Sir Henry Kelliher, the beautifully restored Spanish Mission homestead sets the scene for your stand-out celebration. Puketutu Island Estate is full of history, it offers a retreat for you and your guests to escape to. The landscape and design of the estate reflects the creativity of Sir Henry Kelliher who was a patron of the arts, having established the Kelliher Art Awards in 1956. He was a generous donor to many charitable causes, and in recognition of his work as an industrial leader and philanthropist he was knighted in 1963.
Kelliher Estate was his residence from the 1950’s up until his passing in 1991. The Spanish Mission homestead was restored to its former glory by The Kelliher Charitable trust in 2007 and is now one of Auckland’s most desired functions venues.
Sir William Kelliher standing in front of Spanish style house. A child is riding on horseback and there is a lily pond in the foreground. 1930s, Puketutu Island. Manukau Harbour. Source.
Puketutu Island, which lies off the cost of Māngere, is sacred to the people of Te Kawerau ā Maki, Te Waiohua and Waikato-Tainui.
It was the first permanent home of the crew of the Tainui waka in Aotearoa.
Known as Te Motu a Hiaroa to Mana Whenua, the island was once a quarry. Thousands of tonnes of scoria and basalt rock were removed for construction projects, including the expansion of nearby Auckland Airport. The small island is currently undergoing a major transformation and will one day become a reserve for everyone to enjoy.
In 2012, Watercare bought a lease from the Kelliher Trust and transferred ownership to a trust with 12 iwi trustees.
Since then, Watercare has been filling the former quarry with biosolids from the nearby Māngere Wastewater Treatment Plant, so that by 2049, three small hills will be created (including the current one) to replicate the original cones on the island before it is returned to Aucklanders for enjoyment and use as a public park.
View across waterlily pond to front of Kelliher Estate. Shows architectural details on the house, such as shutters, window decoration, and wraught iron scrollwork above the doorway. 1930s, Puketutu Island. Manukau Harbour. Source.
View across a water lily pond towards a car parked on the drive of Kelliher Estate. Source.
