A lot has changed on Vincent Street in the last 73 years, but one of its residents has remained the same.
Kevin Glenny has lived here most of his life, watching the street transform from two secluded farmhouses along a single gravel road, to the buzzing street it is today.
And after all these years, 75-year-old Kevin and his wife Roswyn are waving goodbye to Howick.
Kevin was just two-years-old when his father swapped their small St Heliers home for the three-acre property.
An old black and white home movie shows Kevin at six-years-old running around the farm, back then a big stretch of open land.
A classic old farm house can be seen in the distance, surrounded by fields filled with cows and chooks.
“Hard to believe this is what it used to look like, eh?” Kevin laughs.
In 1954 the land was subdivided.
“My father wanted to buy a caravan for £1000, and this section was the last section to go,” he says gesturing to the red brick house he now lives in.
“It was a sod of a section with deep gullies and steep slopes. I definitely didn’t want it, and I didn’t want to live next to my parents, but I bought it and my parents got their campervan.”
After Kevin and Roswyn married and lived in Moore Street for two years, they decided to build on the plot of land they owned in Vincent Street.
“Forty eight years later, this is the only house we have ever owned,” he says.
“And for all its flaws, it’s worked for us,” Roswyn adds.
But Roswyn reckons it’s not the house they will miss but the people of Howick.
“The neighbourhood children who spent their early years playing here with our son and daughter, the short walks into Howick that would take over an hour because every few steps there would be someone to stop and chat too,” she says are the things she will miss most.
“But you get to a stage where the land is too big and the stairs are too much.”
So the pair will be packing up the big house and moving to Pokeno to be closer to their daughter in a house that is easier to maintain.
“We are looking forward to a new chapter in our new home. We can make some new friends, and share our new adventure with our old friends,” she says.
“I will miss the bloody storage though,” Kevin laughs.
