In 1849, Swede Charles Eberhard Suisted built a barn in which his family lived while they waited for their homestead to be completed in 1851.
The barn was then used as stables and still survives as a farm shed.
Trust Otago-Southland area manager Owen Graham yesterday said the Goodwood farmstead was being proposed for greater heritage recognition because of its link to one of Otago's earliest Scandinavian settlers and because it was a rare New Zealand example of Swedish settlement and building design.
"Despite the stables' modest appearance, there is considerable architectural significance that makes the building an important reminder of what life was like for Otago's pioneers."
The farmstead was understood to be second only to Johnny Jones' Matanaka, at Waikouaiti, as the oldest farm building still in existence.
Mr Graham said Mr Suisted, at 2m and 140kg, was "literally and figuratively, a larger than life character" who came to Otago from Wellington where he had been a hotelier after arriving in New Zealand in 1842.
He bought 550 acres of land near Pleasant River for 200, established squatting rights further north and named his estate Goodwood.
Over the next 22 years they had 15 children, 12 of them boys.
The stables were built by superintendent carpenter John Seed with the exterior of kauri timber.
Swedish motifs and design elements are evident and it may be the only farm building in the country with a "pan iron tile" roof.
Mr Suisted sold Goodwood in 1856 and later returned to Wellington where he ran the Equator Hotel on the waterfront before going bankrupt.
He died in 1860.
The old stable has been owned since 1941 by the Kensington family.
Barbara Kensington said it had been used for storing hay but now contained machinery.
Descendants of the Suisteds visited at times.
Mrs Kensington was happy with the proposed recognition of the building, but pointed out that it was on private land and with no general public access.
Public submissions on the registration proposal close on February 19 and a decision will be made after April 30.
If category 1 status is conferred, the trust will be able to pay for maintenance of the building.
Asked if the trust should be investing public money in a private property where public access was not possible, Mr Graham said: "I guess it's how you value heritage . . . do we just turn our back on them because the owner has his own life to get on with, running his farming property, or do we give him some assistance to help manage a piece of national heritage?"
