Republishing a news media article from 25 April 2021

Afternoon tea for Mrs McV - Kelburn Croquet Club founder’s historic portrait preserved

After hanging for nearly 100 years in the Kelburn Municipal Croquet Club’s historic pavilion, a large 1920s photographic portrait of the club’s founding president, Mrs Lily McVilly, has been professionally restored and will be lodged with the Alexander Turnbull Library.

But Mrs McVilly has not left the building. A digital copy commemorates the forceful woman who battled Wellington City Council for some years from around 1909 for a suitable location in Kelburn to play croquet.

The Club’s centennial history tells how “a deputation of Kelburn ladies” led by Mrs McVilly pursued the Council until finally winning the right, in 1913, to “practise croquet at Kelburn Park on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons between 1.00 and 4.00 pm”. 

However there were ongoing complaints about the state of the lawns for croquet. Worse, players were too close to the cricket grounds and croquet players occasionally sustained injuries from cricket balls, sometimes ending up in hospital.

By the early 1920’s, persistence had led to the eventual establishment of the current club on Salamanca Road, with five playing lawns.

Mrs McVilly was also the foundation vice-president of the Wellington Croquet Association, in 1919, and a leading light in the Wellington Women’s Club. 

She presented the photographic portrait of herself to the Kelburn Croquet Club in 1924, where it hung until it began showing signs of deterioration.

Kelburn Croquet Club members determined to forestall any further deterioration and to preserve the historical significance embedded in the portrait by well-known early Wellington photographer Stanley Polkinghorne Andrew. The club commissioned Wellington conservator Diana Coop to copy, restore and preserve the original print for archiving by the Alexander Turnbull Library.

A commemorative ‘afternoon tea for Mrs McV’ was held at Kelburn Croquet at the end of April 2021, where the effort to get the portrait restored and archived was outlined by project leader Lisa Thompson, followed by conservator Diane Coop describing the restoration process, and the club’s honorary archivist Deirdre Wogan, who brought the club’s early history to life.

Further biographic information

Lily May McVilly, born Nellie May Stevens in 1865 at Waikawa in Otago, was one of five children of a poor Catholic family.  Her father emigrated from Scotland and her mother from Ireland. Her childhood was spent in the Catlins and South Dunedin.  Somewhere along the way, Nellie May Stevens transformed into Lily May Stephens (Lily clearly sounded more sophisticated and adding a ‘ph’ to her surname must have elevated it somehow). 

The newly reinvented Lily May married Richard William McVilly, who was General Manager of New Zealand Railways in the Golden Age of railways in New Zealand in the early part of the twentieth century.  The McVillys were very well known in Wellington and both were remarkable people who greatly enhanced themselves and their communities during their lives. 

Lily McVilly and her husband first lived at 63 Rintoul Street Newtown Wellington from 1896, then at Fairlie Terrace, then at “Muri-Wai” 89 Kelburn Parade. She died on 27 January 1941 and is buried at Karori Cemetery.
 

Article added: Friday 12 November 2021