What is "tophouse"

Tophouse, also known as Tophouse Settlement, is a rural locality in the Tasman District of New Zealand's South Island, some 8 km northeast of Saint Arnaud. It is named after a hotel established in the 19th century to service drovers transporting their sheep between Canterbury and Marlborough. The hotel is still in operation today and has an eventful history, including a double murder suicide in October 1894 (see below). For many years, "Tophouse" referred specifically to the hotel, but it has also been used to refer to the general vicinity, and on 20 February 2001, the New Zealand Geographic Board assigned the name "Tophouse Settlement" to the area.

Tophouse is located near State Highway 63. There were also plans to establish a significant railway junction in Tophouse. One plan from the 1880s for the route of the Main North Line from Christchurch to Marlborough and Nelson proposed extending the Waiau Branch line (then terminated in Culverden) via Hanmer Springs to Tophouse, and then building one branch down the Wairau River valley to Blenheim and another to Nelson. This proposal remained under consideration until the 1930s, when a coastal route via Parnassus and Kaikoura was chosen instead of the inland Tophouse route.