• Heritage NZ Inventory - Link: https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/3152/Aigantighe%20Art%20Gallery
• District Council Heritage - Link: 

‘Aigantighe’ was built as a retirement home for Alexander (1832-1920) and Ellen (aka Helen, 1854-1955) Grant. Although it is said to have been erected in 1908, Alexander Grant is listed as being resident in Wai-Iti Road in 1905-6.

A number of tender notices placed by the architect JS Turnbull in the local newspaper during the period 1904-6 could be for the Grant residence. The Grants had previously farmed Gray’s Hills Station, north-east of Lake Benmore. They were married in 1878 and had three children, including a son James who took over Gray’s Hills and a daughter Jessie who became a painter.

Alexander and Helen Grant named their town house ‘Aigantighe’, a word said to mean ‘at home’ in Gaelic. After Alexander’s death Helen Grant hosted charity events in the garden of ‘Aigantighe’ and always intended that her home would become an art gallery; accordingly, she left ‘Aigantighe’ in her will to the people of Timaru.

The house reopened as an art gallery in 1956 and numbers among its collection artworks from the Grant family and from the South Canterbury Arts Society.

Additions to the house were made in 1978 and it is now the South Island’s third largest art museum (Te Ara). The property has been developed as a sculpture garden and the gallery is open six days a week.