A House Built From Three Coastlines
The Former Ringer House (旧リンガー住宅, also written Kyū Ringā Jūtaku) is a single-storey merchant's residence at Minamiyamate-machi 2 in Nagasaki City, built around 1868 and designated an Important Cultural Property on 11 June 1966. It stands inside Glover Garden, on the plot where it was first raised.
Walk the veranda and look down. The paving is granite shipped from Vladivostok. Look at the outer walls and you are looking at sandstone quarried on Amakusa, the islands across the sea to the west. Look up at the roof and it is sangawara, the ordinary pantile of a Japanese house. Three sources of stone and clay, three different distances, held together by a timber frame put up by Japanese carpenters.
That mix is the point. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the construction as timber and stone, with a building area of 350.8 square metres. The plan follows the British colonial bungalow as it had developed in India: one floor, verandas wrapping three sides, a central entrance opening onto a corridor with four principal rooms arranged left and right, a kitchen and a maid's room attached at the rear. High ceilings and large openings move air in the Nagasaki summer. Coal fireplaces handled the winter.
Nothing about it is grand in the European sense. It is a working house for a merchant who needed to sit on a hillside, see the harbour, and get through the humidity.
Frederick Ringer and the Address Called Niban
The land was taken on a perpetual lease in 1864 by Alexander Glover, younger brother of Thomas Glover, and the house went up in 1868. Frederick Ringer (1838 to 1907) acquired the lease and the building six years later, in 1874, and moved in properly in 1883 after his marriage, living there with his wife Carolina. The family called the place Niban, from the address Minamiyamate No. 2.
Ringer had come to the work from Jiujiang in China, where he had spent close to a decade as a tea inspector before Thomas Glover brought him to Nagasaki in 1865 to oversee the tea trade of Glover & Co. He left that firm in November 1868 and set up Holme, Ringer & Co. with his English colleague Edward Holme, taking over the tea business and opening an office in the Ōura waterfront district.
What followed reads like a list of everything a treaty-port merchant could plausibly attempt. Export trade with Vladivostok and other foreign ports. Agency work for overseas firms. An English-language newspaper. A hotel. Involvement in laying Nagasaki's water and sewer lines. Trawl fishing, pioneered in Japan together with Kuraba Tomisaburō, Thomas Glover's son and an employee of the firm. He also served as honorary consul for Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The Vladivostok granite under the veranda is not decoration; it is a trading route showing up as building material.
Ringer died in 1907 while travelling in England. His second son Sydney (1891 to 1967) took the house from 1913 and, apart from the war years, the family remained until the sale to Nagasaki City in 1965. Designation as an Important Cultural Property followed in June 1966, and restoration work returned the building to its earlier appearance in 1973. One point deserves a note: the Agency's own descriptive text, written in the 1960s, states that the house passed down to Ringer's grandchild Mania Ringer, while Glover Garden's account names Sydney as the last occupant. The two records have not been reconciled.
Visiting: Where It Sits, What to Look For
Glover Garden opens daily at 8:00 and closes at 18:00, with last admission twenty minutes before closing, and it extends its hours into the evening during summer and other set periods. Admission was revised on 1 April 2026 under a Nagasaki City ordinance change and now stands at 1,300 yen for adults and 650 yen for elementary, junior high and high school students. Photography is permitted in the grounds; commercial use requires prior permission from the garden office. The nearest approach is the Ōura Tenshudō tram stop, then a walk up the slope, with moving walkways easing the climb inside the park.
Ringer House was open to visitors as of spring 2026, while restoration closed the Former Alt House and the Former Jiyūtei nearby. Building closures here run for years at a time, so the garden's notices page is worth a glance before travelling.
Three of the nine historic buildings in the garden stood on this hillside in the foreign settlement period and have never moved: the Glover, Alt and Ringer houses, all Important Cultural Properties. The other six were brought in from elsewhere in the city and rebuilt. Knowing which is which changes how the park reads.
Inside the house, the disc music box draws most visitors. It is roughly a century old, and of the seven surviving discs, five have been digitised so that the sound can be played back. The quieter reward is the veranda. Stand at the corner facing the harbour, where Ringer would have stood, and the working port is still there below, cranes where the sailing ships used to be. In his last years, ill with heart disease, he had the slope up to the front door surfaced with asphalt so a rickshaw could carry him home, which is remembered as one of the earliest asphalt roads in Japan.
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Q&A
- Can I go inside the Former Ringer House, and what does it cost?
- Yes. The house is inside Glover Garden and the interior is open to visitors, with the garden ticket covering it. Since 1 April 2026 admission is 1,300 yen for adults and 650 yen for elementary, junior high and high school students. The garden opens at 8:00 and normally closes at 18:00, with last entry twenty minutes earlier.
- Was the Former Ringer House moved to Glover Garden, or is it on its original site?
- It is on its original site. Along with the Former Glover House and the Former Alt House, it was built during the foreign settlement period and has stood on this Minamiyamate hillside ever since. The garden's six other historic buildings were relocated from elsewhere in Nagasaki and reassembled here.
- When was the Former Ringer House built, and when was it designated an Important Cultural Property?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates construction to around 1868, the first year of the Meiji era. Designation as an Important Cultural Property came on 11 June 1966, under designation number 01637, the year after Nagasaki City purchased the property from the Ringer family.
- What makes the construction of the Former Ringer House unusual?
- It combines a Japanese timber frame and pantile roof with stone outer walls of Amakusa sandstone, and the veranda floor is laid with granite brought from Vladivostok. Stone-walled Western-style houses of this date are rare in Japan, and the material sources trace the owner's trading network.
- Can I photograph the Former Ringer House?
- Photography for personal use is permitted within Glover Garden. Commercial photography requires advance permission from the Glover Garden management office. Some buildings in the park close for multi-year restoration work, so checking the official notices before a visit is sensible.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Ringer House / 旧リンガー住宅 |
|---|---|
| Location | Minamiyamate-machi 2, Nagasaki City, Nagasaki Prefecture (within Glover Garden) |
| Designation | Important Cultural Property (Structure); designation no. 01637; category modern era / dwelling |
| Year Designated | 11 June 1966 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Timber and stone construction, single storey, pantile roof, building area 350.8 m² |
| Owner | Nagasaki City |
| Public Access | Open within Glover Garden, 8:00 to 18:00 with extended evening hours in set periods; adults 1,300 yen, students 650 yen (rates from 1 April 2026) |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database — Agency for Cultural Affairs
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/102/3529
- Cultural Heritage Online — Former Ringer House
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/187676
- Glover Garden official site — Former Ringer House
- https://glover-garden.jp/about/ringer-house/
- Glover Garden official site — visitor information, hours and admission
- https://glover-garden.jp/guide/
- MLIT multilingual commentary database — Former Ringer House
- https://www.mlit.go.jp/tagengo-db/R1-00711.html
Last verified: 2026.08.20