Francis Petre - Personal Life

Personal Life

One of Petre's first large houses, the folly-like Cargill's Castle, was built for Edward Cargill, a local politician and later a mayor of Dunedin. It is also very likely that Petre was the supervisor of the construction of a tunnel that Cargill had driven to a private secluded beach below the castle (today known as Tunnel Beach). While designing the house, Petre fell in love with Cargill's daughter Margaret. After a difficult courtship (due to Petre's staunch Catholicism and the Cargill family's equally staunch Presbyterianism) the couple were eventually permitted to marry, the wedding taking place in the villa's principal salon shortly after its completion in 1877. The building was gutted by fire in the 1940s, and is today a preserved ruin. Petre and his wife had thirteen children; Petre himself had been the third child of sixteen.

In 1903, Petre was appointed Consular Agent for Italy in Dunedin following the death of Edward Cargill. He was a founder member of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, was elected a Fellow in 1905, and was president of the Institute in 1907–08. Unusually for a man at the peak of his profession, Petre was known as congenial and popular. He died at Dunedin, in December 1918, following 42 years of architectural practice, and was buried at the Andersons Bay Cemetery, Dunedin.