Community hub to rise from ashes of historic westside home
Council will prepare a masterplan to revive the site where one of Brisbane’s grandest homesteads burned to the ground last month.
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The site of magnificent westside homestead Hawbryn House could become a hub for the local community under a Council masterplan.
Anstead residents were left distraught after the sprawling property, relocated from Kangaroo Point, was gutted in a suspicious blaze on October 17.
Police are still investigating the cause, but the Hawkesbury Rd house was regularly targeted by vandals.
Pullenvale ward Councillor Greg Adermann said while the homestead could not be saved, adjacent Sugars Cottage — the former residence of a pioneering family of the same name — was unharmed.
Cr Adermann said Council bought the property four years ago to connect two adjoining bushland blocks.
There’s nothing locked in but the whole site has so much potential and so many possible uses,’’ he said.
“We will come up with a masterplan after we have had a chance to consult with community groups and decide what can be done.
“There is a stables, a shed that would be ideal for a Men’s Shed group, an area a pony club could use and a greenhouse that a conservation or other group could use.
“It just has so much potential.’’
Cr Adermann said the police Special Emergency Reponse Team had previously been granted permission to use the property for training, which Council had hoped would help deter vandals.
Moggill Historical Society president Neville Marsh said the MHS would like to look at using the cottage for its meetings, as well as for archive storage and a museum display.
He said it was a relief Sugars Cottage survived as it was a fine example of a “vernacular inter-war Queenslander bungalow’’.
Hawbryn House was moved to the site in 1981 by the Burton-Jones family but the cottage, built by Harold Gordon Sugars, has been there since the 1920s.
After he died in 1978 the cottage became part of the Hawbryn property.
The entire property changed hands in 2013, when new owners Stefan and Lisa Dopking refurbished the cottage.
Council then bought the entire site in March, 2017.
Joan Burton-Jones, who now lives in England, said she was “shocked and saddened’’ when she saw TV footage of the ravaged house.
She had sold the property to Council with the caveat that the homestead be fully restored.
“My husband and I bought the land in Anstead from Pioneer Gravel, who had done tests on the land but found it had insufficient gravel to make it an economic proposition for them,’’ she said.
“In 1980 we found and bought Hawbryn from Queensland builder Sir John Pidgeon and moved the ground floor in six pieces, and the upstairs floor in truckloads of dismantled tongue and groove boards.
“It was moved from its original site in O’Connell St, Kangaroo Point, to Hawkesbury Rd, across the Story Bridge, along Milton Rd, through Kenmore Rd and Mt Crosby Rd in the dead of night, with traffic lights being lowered everywhere to allow its passage.
“We were told that it was one of the largest moves ever made in Brisbane.’’
She said Mr Pidgeon sold it because Council would not let him develop the riverside land the house was built on.
“Sadly, Brisbane has lost many of its finest old homes over time and I find it tragic that Hawbryn is now added to that list,’’ Ms Burton-Jones said.
“Hawbryn was one of the very earliest of Brisbane’s Federation homes, complete with working bells that rang in each room and a little gas ring in the father’s dressing room for waxing his moustache.
“There was also a hand-carved racquet stand for family tennis racquets.
“The signatures and date of its first painters, written above the lintel over the large front door where they thought it would never be seen, were all things we’d faithfully preserved.’’
Hawbryn had belonged to one of Brisbane’s early solicitors, Maldwyn Montgomery Edwards, and his family.
They built bedrooms for each of their children, plus a teacher, nurse and housekeeper.
The wide back veranda was closed in and became their schoolroom.
Ms Burton-Jones said she and her husband had a propagation house built on designs provided by Gatton Agricultural College.
“The gardens at Hawbryn became a celebrated part of the Australian Open Garden Scheme, with proceeds donated to the Australian Koala Foundation and the bilby fence (in western Queensland).
Hawbryn supplied the plants for the first Australian Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show and excess plants were sold through a wholesale nursery the couple established.
