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Marycrest, a girls’ rehabilitation school, has been listed on TradeMe by a man who says he’s Georgian royalty.
It is on state Highway 1 near Otaki, on the Kapiti Coast, and has been unused since it shut in the early 1980s.
Marycrest has been listed for a minimum $2 million by Victor Greenwich, now living in Sydney, who says he is a descendent of a princely Georgian house.
Marycrest was established in 1953 by a religious congregation, the Good Shepherd Sisters, which originated in France.
Roscoe Turner, a Marycrest researcher, in his 2008 history, says Sister Mary Teresa Kennedy and Mary St Finton arrived there from Upper Hutt with “three founding girls”.
“The girls who came into the care of the sisters often had problems that could not be resolved in their normal environment and needed the loving care of others to restore their sense of self-worth.”
Marycrest, Turner said, closed because of a declining number of sisters and changes to institutional care and counselling.
The property changed hands over the years. It was bought by Newman’s bus company, who wanted to turn it into a country club and golf course.
Former Wellington mayor Sir Michael Fowler later bought Marycrest with hopes of developing a tourist resort.
Greenwich said he bought Marycrest in 1988 after building a home in nearby Peka Peka in 1981.
“I had heard that the government was going to put in a …prison [at Marycrest], which is the reason I bought it, to maintain its tranquility.”
Source
- Stuff.co.nz
- Image: TradeMe
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