Pauline Hanna and Philip Polkinghorne, pictured in 2018, owned a private and secluded Remuera home, shielded by a tall gate and hedge. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
Pauline Hanna and Philip Polkinghorne, pictured in 2018, owned a private and secluded Remuera home, shielded by a tall gate and hedge. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
A beloved woman’s body found in its entryway and stashes of methamphetamine scattered throughout its rooms - if only walls could talk.
A grand, multimillion-dollar Auckland home has been playing a central role in retired eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne’s murder trial this month.
Polkinghorne’s wife, Pauline Hanna, 63,was found dead near the Upland Rd home’s staircase in April 2021.
She was dishevelled, injured and covered by a duvet when emergency responders rushed in that Easter Monday morning.
Police would also find more than 37g of methamphetamine and a pipe in the two-storey home, which has an estimated property value of $5.3 million, according to website OneRoof.
During the trial prosecutors have been guiding jurors step-by-step through the house as they point to evidence that they say proves Polkinghorne, 71, strangled his wife before staging her death to look like a suicide.
Defence lawyers reject that, saying Polkinghorne and Hanna loved each other and prosecutors have been “desperate” to find evidence “of a nature that frankly never existed”.
To the outside world, the couple had appeared to have it all.
Married for 30 years, they had previously owned a home built in the 1970s on Ōrākei Rd in Remuera.
That comfortable home sat on a 607sq m section of land along one of Auckland’s elite streets.
121 Upland Rd Remuera, the house where Pauline Hanna was found dead on April 5, 2021.
But then in 2002, the couple eyed a move closer to the water and sold up for $620,000 (with the home now estimated to be worth $2.4m).
Using the sale proceeds, they bought their Upland Rd home, paying just over $1m.
Not long after - in 2003 and 2004 - the council issued a consent for building works, indicating the pair worked to improve the house.
Although they didn’t have children together, Polkinghorne has three children from a previous marriage, and their Upland Rd home offered twice the floor space of their previous house at 376sq m.
Just a short hop from Ōrākei Basin, it also boasts ocean views, especially from its upper deck and second-storey study.
And, hidden behind tall gates and a hedge, it’s private.
Philip Polkinghorne arrives at the High Court in Auckland, where he's standing trial for the murder of his wife Pauline Hanna. Photo / Michael Craig
“So private behind immaculately groomed hedges in manicured grounds, this magnificent 376sq m home was superbly designed with a clever floor plan for unparalleled family comfort,” a 2022 NZ Sotheby’s International real estate advertisement for the home states.
The home’s four bedrooms and a large office all open to the outdoors “and are cleverly organised across different levels in two separate wings”, the ad continues.
“Parents enjoy their own private suite of rooms in a wing connected via the office across an internal bridge.”
In the days after Pauline Hanna's death, tributes from family, friends and colleagues portrayed her as elegant, driven and unflappable.
The home is also packed with storage space, has a “substantial library” and a beautiful outdoor room “where you can bask in the sun gazing at the panoramic city view or check out the action on Ōrākei Basin”.
There’s even “a handy wine cellar at the bottom of the stairs so you can grab a bottle on your way to the living [room]”, the ad says.
Polkinghorne and his sister took over ownership of the home when Hanna died in 2021 as her survivors.
He then listed it for sale twice, trying and failing to sell it first in 2021 and then in 2022.
When NZ Sotheby’s International took over the listing in June 2022, its advertisement proclaimed “vendor demands action”.
Sissons said the family home was unique. “The thing people like about it is the separation between the two sets of living areas with the kitchen in the middle.”
Ray White agent Gerard Charteris, who had been the selling agent before Sissons, earlier told the Herald Hanna’s death and the drugs found there hadn’t deterred buyers.
“I think there will always be some uncertainty in people’s minds, but we had good offers during the campaign,” Charteris said.
“It’s a very specialised house in a wonderful location; the master suite is amazing. The house has been blessed and deep-cleaned three times for drugs - there was substantially less than what is an acceptable level of contamination.”
Photos from inside eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne's Remuera home have been entered into evidence at his murder trial in the High Court of Auckland. He is accused of having strangled wife Pauline Hanna before staging the scene to look like a suicide by hanging.
However, Herald columnist Steve Braunias had a slightly different take on the Upland Rd mansion in recent articles written from the courtroom during Polkinghorne’s six-week trial.
He was among those in court - including jurors - who saw a video that showed all the rooms in the house and was also shown pictures, such as of pieces of rope and slices of bread left in the toaster.
He called it “a boring, impersonal castle decorated with a few bland landscapes, a bookshelf containing only a few bland reference books, and a massive, savagely designed, very distressing silver-framed mirror in the hallway that looked like it had come from the set of Game of Thrones”.
Yet no matter which way the home is viewed, the forensic analysis of evidence in it has played and will continue to play a key role in the trial.
