Longwood is an historic house south of Featherston, New Zealand, built for the Pharazyn family in 1906 and home to the Riddiford family for much of the 20th century. It replaced a c.1857 house built by Henry Bunny which he named after Longwood House, Napoleon's residence on Saint Helena. Designed by John Sydney Swan, Longwood is registered with Heritage New Zealand as a Category I heritage building and is one of New Zealand's largest country houses. Origins Longwood was established as a Wairarapa sheep station in 1857 by English solicitor Henry Bunny (1822–1891), who had come to New Zealand in 1853 fleeing bankruptcy and built up a law practice in Wellington. In 1853 the Crown had purchased the Owhango Block of land in South Wairarapa from Ngāti Kahungunu, and in 1856 established the settlement of Featherston, dividing the land into urban and (expensive) rural sections, one of which was purchased by Bunny. Bunny built a typical two-storey colonial house with dormer windows in a shingled roof and a wide glazed verandah. He also laid out 8 acres of gardens planted with English specimen trees, but retained two tōtara trees now thought to be 700 years old. On the grounds he built stables, a cookhouse, granary, and cow shed. The house was named "Longwood" after Longwood House, Napoleon's place of exile on Saint Helena; Henry's brother General Arthur Bunny had visited Napoleon's grave and taken cuttings of the willows growing there. He sent them to Henry to plant on the grounds, where they still exist today. Bunny sold Longwood in 1871 to early Wellington settler Charles Johnson Pharazyn. Pharazyn enlarged the house with a substantial two-storey wing, retaining the original modest house as servants' quarters. He committed suicide in 1903 by throwing himself into the Thames, and the house was passed on to his grandson Charles Buckland Pharazyn (1868–1938). Longwood burnt down in 1905, but some of the outbuildings still survive. They include some of New Zealand's oldest extant farm buildings, and consist of a cowshed, granary, coachhouse and stables, derelict greenhouse, polo stables, and a cookhouse/workers accommodation building now known as the "Gamekeeper's Cottage". 1906 house Charles Buckland Pharazyn rebuilt Longwood in 1906. The new house, designed by Wellington architect John Sydney Swan, was built of severe (and fire-resistant) brick in a Scottish-baronial style. In 1910, not long after the house had been completed, the Pharazyns moved to Sydney and