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A history of
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By Jeanete Zanotto |
Acquisition of the landSpring Hill was surveyed from bushland in 1856 and the western side of what is now known as Bradley Street became described as Portion 222 in the Parish of North Brisbane, County of Stanley. The street is named after Patrick Bradley, who acquired a parcel of land by Deed of Grant from the New South Wales Governor Sir William Thomas Denison on May 17, 1859, just prior to Separation. Early Post Office Directories do not list a Patrick Bradley in the Brisbane area. However, the first landowner may have been a labourer, 32, who arrived in Moreton Bay on the ship “America” from Derry, Ireland, in January 1853 with his wife Elizabeth and son James, 10. Immigration records show both Bradley and his wife could read but not write and had no relations in the colony. The population of Brisbane at the 1861 census was just 6000. At this time some elite housing had begun to appear along the ridges of Wickham Terrace and Gregory Terrace, but subdivision of the lower-lying hollows and proliferation of small wooden cottages to house a rapidly growing Brisbane workforce was yet to come. The nearest intersecting street, Boundary Street, was so named because it followed the line of a fence built in the 1840s. Aborigines camped in nearby Yorks Hollow were forbidden to cross it. It is not clear whether the collapse of the London banks in mid-1866 and the Depression which followed until 1872 was the reason Bradley failed to develop the land. Bradley died without a will in 1876, and the land was subdivided by the Curator of Intestate Estates in February 1885. Construction Three months later, on May 20, 1885, subdivision 3 (the 15.7 perch or 397m2 parcel of land represented by the current Group Title) was sold to Spring Hill baker Henry Hugall. This was an investment for the Scottish-born Hugall, who arrived in the colony in the late 1850s. His bakery was nearby at 94 Leichhardt Street, between Fortescue and Little Edward Streets, next to the then Cairns Arms Hotel. Hugall never lived in Bradley Street, preferring Leichhardt Street, which was the business centre of the suburb, and later “Tarilla” in prestigious Hanlon Terrace (renamed Eldernell Ave) in Hamilton. However, he owned the property in Bradley Street for 35 years – until his death at age 81 on February 3, 1920. At the time of his death the bakery was still going strong and continued in his son William’s hands long after that. Hugall’s occupation was listed on his Death Certificate as “master baker” and his will gave trustees power to carry on his business as “master baker” after his death. Together with his father, John, the Hugalls represented at least three generations of bakers. Hugall married in Brisbane at age 37 and at the time of investing in Bradley Street had a young family, aged around 5, 3 and 1. He may have acquired other property over the years with his will declaring real estate assets of around 12,356 pounds, together with debentures, war bonds, livestock, carriages or motor cars, harness and saddlery, and furniture. When Hugall bought the land in 1885 there were four residents on the western side of Bradley Street, between Boundary Street and Gregory Terrace – a carpenter, jeweller, clerk and builder. By 1887 Hugall’s three identical houses had brought the number to seven, one was added in 1890, another in 1892, but then no further residences were listed in the 1900 edition of the Post Office Directories. Records indicate that the main development in Spring Hill occurred between 1864 and 1888 and William Clarson’s lithographed drawing Brisbane 1888 appears to confirm that the area was built out by then. Social Conditions By the late 1880s Brisbane had become established as a service town for the region with a strong manufacturing sector in brewing, milling, meatworks and clothing and administrative, religious and educational functions (Ronald Lawson, Brisbane in the 1890s, UQP, 1973: 59). The first stage of the tramlines for horse-drawn trams was being constructed. It was a boom period for immigration and for building in the period leading up to the crash of 1893. Census data indicate a population explosion from 37,053 in 1881 to 101,554 in 1891 (growth had slowed to 119,428 in 1901). Bradley Street reflected the conditions of the time. According to Lawson, “Spring Hill was the most densely settled part of Brisbane, crowded with small workingmen’s ‘humpies’, often with verandahs right on the street, and seldom lined or including a bathroom, set on tiny allotments: (1973: 108). By the turn of the century the suburb was overcrowded and slum-like in parts as Victoria Park, the hospital and Exhibition Grounds prevented a spread northwards and workers continued to seek lodgings close to their work. The same year Henry Hugall bought land in Bradley Street the government, recognising that small lot subdivision was encouraging the “growth of squalid slum areas” passed the Undue Subdivision of Land Act prescribing a minimum allotment size of 16 perches and regulating the width of roads (Lawson: 100). Many architecturally significant buildings were also being built in Brisbane at this time. They include Ardrossan Hall in Gregory Terrace (1884), the Treasury Building (1885), All Hallows (1885), the Plough Inn (1885), the Bellevue Hotel (1886), Customs House (1888) and Breakfast Creek Hotel (1889). The Spring Hill Baths, in nearby Torrington Street, bear the year 1886. Building Features 84 Bradley Street was built probably in late 1886. It is a colonial worker’s cottage of the late Victorian era, typical of that built by common folk in Brisbane in the 1880s. It began life as a simple four-room cottage with a fireplace, steeply pitched pyramid roof and stepped verandah at the front. Although modest in design, it includes a number of decorative features of the time, including beading between the vertical joints of its timber walls, acroteria (galvanised-iron decorations) on the gutters, turned posts, latticework and decorative brackets on the verandah, and fretwork panels over the bedroom doors. Its floors are 6-inch hoop pine tongue and groove, now darkened by water damage near the fireplace, due to the use of this area as a kitchen in the early days. The fireplace has a brick chimney which would have housed some kind of stove originally. Plain for more than a century, the fireplace is now adorned by a timber double-shelf mantelpiece with mirror typical of a slightly later period and a tiled cast-iron grate. The house has a light timber frame exposed in the bedrooms and clad with weatherboards on the exterior. The windows are an early type of double hung sash, lifted manually without the benefit of a counterbalanced pulley and supported by brass stays. The front door is a solid four-panelled cedar door typical of the 1880s to 1910s with a brass doorknob and knocker and a rectangular glass fanlight overhead. There is a substantial gap under the door to allow the fireplace to draw oxygen. The front bedroom has a type of unglazed double-opening french doors, while the back bedroom has a brass rimlock similar to the original. The narrow verandah is framed by a two-rail dowel balustrade typical of the 1880s to early 1910s. Its floorboards, which had perished, were replaced by kwila in 2001. Its roof is convex in shape, made of corrugated iron and separate from the main roof. The house is set off the ground with a mix of concrete and steel stumps which have replaced the earlier timber stumps. An extension was added some time before 1924, when drainage plans indicate an internal toilet and bath in the back section behind the fireplace. At that time the kitchen sink was still in the dining room area close to the fireplace. The house is one of three identical buildings. Other “triplets” in a similar building style can be found at Fortescue Street, Spring Hill and near the Docklands development at Kangaroo Point. Occupants In 1887 the occupants of the western side of Bradley Street included a railway porter, moulder, carpenter, baker (Thomas Ray), clerk and bootmaker. Across the street were a plumber, blacksmith, tinsmith, puntman, bank messenger and draper. Post Office records indicate an itinerant population in the area, with a turnover from year to year. The earliest residents of 84 Bradley Street appear to have been a moulder (1887), shipwright *1889), watchmaker (1890), silver polisher (1892) and railway clerk (1893). Street numbering appeared in its current form in 1901 and it appears residents at 84 Bradley Street from the turn of the century were fairly stable. They were: Mrs Forbes (1900-1904), John Anyon (1905-1925/6), James Geddes (1926-1933) and Cordaly, Jno (1934-1942+). Subsequent OwnersA year after Henry Hugall died, the land was registered under the name of the executor of his estate, the Union Trustee Co. of Australia, and remained in trust until November 17, 1933, when it was sold to Thomas Dinsdale of Sandgate. It is interesting to note that at the time Hugall was buying the land in 1885 Dinsdale was a carpenter living in Hope Street, Spring Hill. The houses remained in the family until 1948, when they were sold to Mrs Amy Black free of mortgage. Three years later Wojslaw Przygodski was nominated as trustee and the houses mortgaged back to Mrs Black. Snippets of Polish newspapers from 1951 were found in the house when carpets were lifted for floor polishing in 1996. In 1954 Anthony Ohlobla and Michael Hatlow took one-third and two-thirds shares in the three houses. In 1963 they sold to Alfred and Elizabeth Bryant, who transferred title to Valerie Denby (spinster) in 1966 but retained a mortgage over it. On her death the houses were willed to Ray and Julius Cesar Monty and Louise Bussett. The following year, in 1975, a company by the name of Bradley Street Investments picked them up, and so began a renovation. In 1978, they were sold to Wendy Callinan, wife of barrister Ian Callinan QC, and in 1984 to two investor couples T & D Saunders (a valuer) and M & L Hodges, who were also renovating the neighbouring properties No. 98 and No. 102. It was at this time that work such as painting, opening of verandahs, and excavating for car parking was carried out. In July 1985 they placed the houses on a Group Title so they could be sold separately. Work started on No.84, but money ran short for No.88, and No.92 was still in a rundown condition when Debra White, one of the new breed of professionals recognising the charm of Spring Hill, picked up No.84 in 1986 for $58,000. Debra installed security grilles and lived in the house until her marriage to Brisbane footballer Gene Miles. Brisbane journalist and lecturer Jeanete Zanotto bought it at auction in August 1993 and lived in it until her marriage in 1999. It has now returned to its roots as a rental property. Copyright Jeanete Zanotto 1993, 2003 |
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