Homewood Stoves takes its name from Homewood Bay in the Pelorus Sounds, New Zealand, where David William Foote, with his wife Laura and their eight children, ran a sheep farm and guesthouse in the beginning of the twentieth century.

Homewood is also the name of the farm in Northland, NZ, where David K. Foote (grandson of David W. Foote) and his wife Penelope built their home and raised their five children.

(Click on any image to enlarge)

It was here in the Whangarei countryside that the Homewood range was designed and developed over more than a decade. Today, the original Homewood stove is the centre of the kitchen at Homewood Farm – and Penny is coming up to her 5,000th loaf of bread cooked.

Homewood Farm is also the final resting place of the Homewood Cabin – the display cabin that David and Penny would erect each year at various field days around the country.

Not content with an “ordinary” life, David chose to spend his adult life self-employed – building houses (including our own), boats, furniture and engaged in miscellaneous carpentry – so that he could pursue a wholesome self-sufficient lifestyle of farming, gardening and oil painting on his own land with his growing family.

When Penelope’s Shacklock No. 1 Orb wood stove gave up the ghost in the mid ‘90s, David put his decades of design and crafting experience into creating her a new stove. David incorporated all the ideas and efficiency improvements that his years of hands-on wood stove use had given him, and came up with the Homewood Heritage. David crafted all the casting patterns himself, beginning work in the garden shed before moving on to more appropriate premises…!

We have been growing steadily since we opened for business, and we now have a long list of satisfied customers, with David’s stoves dotting New Zealand from top to bottom – including out to the Chatham Islands! Homewood Stoves has stayed very much a family business in its growth, and David and Penelope are very pleased to have their youngest son Zak and his wife Janie return to Whangarei to join them in the business – hopefully letting them spend a little more time with their four (and counting!) grandchildren.

We value the good “old fashioned” way of doing things here at Homewood – we elevate quality, durability and sustainability above mass production, cheap imports and false economy – so David personally oversees (and is integral to!) the handcrafting of each and every Homewood stove in our workshop, while developing the final stoves in the Homewood Collection.

More information:
Our stoves
Feedback from our customers
Frequently asked questions
Contact us