2022 Houses
A little background on the houses highlighted in 2022
Aldeburgh House
Much has been written about the Queensland heritage-listed property that stands proudly on the corner of Hodgkinson and Deane streets, best known as Aldeburgh.
This famous house is named after the town in Suffolk, England, where the man who built it - Alfred Edwin Daking-Smith - grew up as a child with his grandmother after the death of his parents.
Daking-Smith set about building this large residential villa in 1896. It was described as "one of the most attractive examples of residential architecture" on the goldfield. The bungalow was designed by architect WHA Munro and built by T B O'Meara. It had large bay windows, cathedral glass, embossed stamped paper frieze and eight bedrooms. One of the most unusual features, a defect of sorts, is the unusual paint that adorns the interior.
The Manse
The house at 23 Anne Street, Charters Towers, has a long association with the heritage-listed Church of Christ located next door.
The home was originally built as the parsonage for the Lutheran Pastor in 1889. The parsonage was designed by Constantin Mathea, with Reverent Martin Eberhard was the first to take up residence in the home, although he was the second pastor assigned to the St Johanne's German Lutheran Church.
Though the Lutheran community remained active in Charters Towers until the start of the First World War, the rising anti-German sentiment and the discontinuation of German aid saw the church disbanded and the chapel and parsonage were sold to the Church of Christ.
It remained in the church until 2012 when it was purchased as a private residence for the first time.
Davies House
In 1889 William Levi Davies applied for a Miner's Homestead lease over a parcel of land described as adjoining "GSH near the Columbia". The area was subdivided and the property as this location became known as 21 Davies Street, in the suburb of Richmond Hill.
A small, low set miners cottage was the first house built on the property, thought to be sometime in the 1920s. In the 1940s the house was demolished and replaced with the six-room home that stands there today.
The mainframe of the home was shifted from a vacant high set house called Ross's, which occupied land at the rear of Davies Street. Moving homes was typical of the era.
The property features a verandah along the full length of the front of the house, with vertical dowel balustrading that was common from the 1880s to the 1920s. High ceilings and French doors keep the house cool in summer, making the most of the breezes in leafy surrounds.