Talking History: Lost Houses – the stories remain!

by Pauline Peel | Sep 30, 2024 | Annerley, Events, Fairfield, News, Recent Events, Talking History, Tarragindi, Yeronga, Yerongpilly

Local author, Ashley Hay recently wrote of the changes in our suburbs …’Presence and Absence. Absence and presence. The streets of our town are being transformed, yes.‘ The houses and streets of our town are being transformed but the presence of the ‘lost’ houses remains through the stories that are told.

Thank you Denis Peel, Lyn Burnett, John Horder and Kate Dyson for sharing your stories about some of the lost, found and mystery houses of our area at the Lost Houses talk on Saturday 28 September. It was a fascinating and moving conversation.

I was lucky enough to be in the audience. Here is a brief insight into what each of the speakers had to say. We’ll let you know when the full talks go up on this website.

If you have a story of a lost house to share with us send us an email on [email protected] or contact us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ASHGInc

The talk began with an acknowledgement that the people of the Yerongpan clan on whose land the conversation was being held built the first dwellings in the area. The dwellings ranged from small family sized structures to much larger covered areas. There are many thousands of years of stories of the people who lived here.

Below – the Lost Houses panel. From left Denis Peel, Kate Dyson, Lyn Burnett and John Horder.

Denis Peel (below) took us through the stories of some houses and the different ways they are lost.

Below: 6 Inchcape Street – this house was built around the 1930s. In WW2 the teenage sons of the Kinman family who lived there made their pocket money by running errands for the American servicemen stationed around the corner in Ashby House. 6 Inchcape Street was ‘lost’ to a fire in the 1950s, replaced by a chamfer board house and more recently was demolished to make way for the third house in 90 years.

Below: Juliette Street. This photo is from the Frank and Eunice Corley house photo collection in the SLQ. The man at the window looking at Frank Corley snapping his house in Juliette Street around 1970 is also looking straight ahead at the building of the initial segment of the south-east freeway. Later this Juliette Street house was ‘lost’ when the land was resumed for the continuation of the freeway.

Below: 20 Lisle Street, Tarragindi (Photo: Frank and Eunice Corley collection. SLQ).

Alex and Edith Romow were owner-builders of 20 Lisle Street in the 1950s. Denis interviewed Alex and Edith as part of the ASHG Frank Corley house photo project. Theirs is a post WW2 story of survival. Alex who was Ukranian had fought in the Red Army at Leningrad and was captured by the Germans. He escaped from prison camp twice and spent the last few months of the war hiding in the barn of a Danish partisan farmer. In 1953 Alex and his new wife Edith, a German, migrated with their baby daughter and settled at 20 Lisle Street, Tarragindi. Together they laid every brick, board and tile in this house learning as they went from their German speaking neighbour John Ehm who was a bricklayer. After Alex passed away in 2019 and Edith moved out, the house was sold and lost via demolition soon after.

Below: The two houses on the corner of Hyde Rd., and Kingsley Parade, Yeronga (Frank and Eunice Corley House photo collection, SLQ).

Most recently the local area has experienced a spate of disappearing houses as part of the buyback of houses in the flood zone. Ashley Hay wrote about it in the May 2024 edition of the Monthly. She writes: ‘You walk the dog early one morning and a house down the road has disappeared.’

2 Kingsley Parade is one of the houses that was bought back. Among the people to have lived at 2 Kinsley Parade was the Brisbane River pilot and Harbourmaster Richard (Dick) Hildebrand, who as Harbour Master at Thursday Island in 1952 was attributed with saving the pearl lugging fleet during a cyclone. Di Baker and family lived here from 1970 to 1983 and later an immigrant South African family lived there.

Below: The demolition of the house at 2 Kingsley Parade. (Photo taken by nearby resident Ross McDonald). The house next door at 66 Hyde Road was another ‘buy back’ and was removed on the back of a truck.

There’s a Tom Waits song: House where nobody lives.

‘They remind me that houses are just made of wood
What makes a house grand, oh, it ain’t the roof or the doors
If there’s love in a house, it’s a palace for sure
But without love it ain’t nothin’ but a house
A house where nobody lives
But without love
It ain’t nothin’ but a house, a house where nobody lives.’

Lyn Burnett’s story of 19 Albemarle Street is a story of a house where there was lots of love, fun and joy.

Below: 19 Albermarle Street, Yeerongpilly as Lyn knew it.

The house is no longer to be found on a map, but it is still there in the bones of a residence at 50 Soden Street. For Lyn it remains her home and all the memories that go with that.

Lyn’s paternal great grandparents, Willian and Susan Rogers (nee Cook) from County Armagh in Ireland and their family were the first generation of Lyn’s family to live in the house from 1920. Lyn’s Nanna and Pa (Fisher) moved to the house to live with Susan after William died. Lyn’s parents Roy and Val Fisher lived in the house from their marriage through to when they sold the house in 2017.

The Yeerongpilly property originally bought by Lyn’s great grandparents in 1920 consisted of 3 blocks of 16 perches nos. 70,71,72 in Soden St (originally Herbert St according to the map of Lathorn Estate in 1885). The house, though always faced Albemarle St (Margaret St., till 1941).

Below: 2 photos of 19 Albemarle Street, now 50 Soden Street under construction and finished.

There were Council restrictions on the property that included keeping the front character of the original home and not building underneath due to a watercourse issue. What a change Lyn and her mother found when they were invited back to see what the new place looked like in 2018.

Lyn says she can still see the old house in the new house!!

Below: Lyn’s father Roy always loved trains. He became a train driver. Val’s mother was a station mistress.

Below: The original kitchen – simple and functional. Roy loved bright colours. Notice the hexagonal table.

Below: The garden was a pride and joy and won prizes at local events. Below: Val and Roy in front of their azalea bush.

The house was full of music – below. Roy Fisher in the middle.

Lyn closed by agreeing ‘that house and home are inextricably linked together…. When one remembers the house, you lived in as a child, all the memories and emotions associated with the actual building are hard to separate from the home…. I believe my house is not really lost but transformed, and my home is now very much a part of me.’

John Horder (below) gave a brief history of his family home at 59 Dudley St West. The house was owned by Charles and Ivy Caroline Boettcher (Nee Hall) from about 1926. Charles was a Master Builder and likely built the house.

John’s family moved to 59 Dudley Street West (photo below) near Annerley shopping Centre in 1960.

The house had been owned by the Boettcher family for about 34 years. The Horder family’s move to Dudley Street West was convenient for the family. It was close to John’s father’s work at the Ipswich Rd. Bus Depot (now Target) and the children were close to the newly opened Yeronga High School. The house had a large art studio downstairs which proved very useful. John’s mother sewed overalls at home as a piece worker for Halco Overalls in Grey St., South Brisbane. John’s father made toys, some were sold at the Dickie and Jones Newsagency in Ipswich Road.

59 Dudley street was spacious and enabled the family to provide accommodation for 3 boarders at any one time. The family and the boarders sat around the octagonal table for their meals and had many great conversations. John’s father stayed in 59 Dudley Street until he died in 1994. It was then sold to Energex and after a few years was sold for removal.

Below – 59 Dudley Street, today, The house has been removed and the site is part of the extended Annerley Energex substation.

Below: the House at 59 Dudley Street West has a new life at Wivenhoe Pocket near Fernvale. The house had about 34 years with the Boettcher family, 34 years in the hands of the Horder family, a few years rented out by Energex and two more decades with two new owners at Wivenhoe Pocket.

Kate Dyson discussed several mystery and ‘lost’ houses including Seiano (the former home of the Cilento family), 60 Aubigny Street and 65 Park Rd.

The house below was for many years a landmark on Ipswich Road, opposite Chardon’s Corner hotel. It was famously known as the Cilento family home, Seiano: but where did it go to? And does it still exist?

The house was most probably built for Matilda Auslebrook around 1916. The house passed through several more hands before Raphael and Phyllis Cilento (later Sir and Lady) and their family of 6 children settled there. (For more information read Chapter 8 by Stephen Sheaffe in the ASHG publication Women of Stephens and The Accidental Present by Ross Wilson. The latter provides more information about the relationship between Oodgeroo Noonucal (Kath Walker) and the Cilento family).

The land was sold to BP to build a petrol station, and the Cilento family took their home Seiano, sawn into 3 parts, on the back of a truck in the dead of night, to 268 Vulture St at Kangaroo Point until plans for the Captain Cook Bridge pushed their way through in the late 1960s. And that was apparently the end of Seiano or was it? There is a family in Sandgate who believe that they live in the old Cilento house. Another house mystery to be solved.

Annie and Ted Mackenzie’s house, 60 Aubigny St., Annerley got lost in the night. The photo below, from the Frank and Eunice Corley collection was taken around 1970 and was the home built for newlyweds, Annie and Ted McKenzie in the 1930s in Aubigny St., Annerley. The house was there when Kate moved into her house in Moorooka around the corner. Annie and Ted got a Workers Development Board loan, Annie drew up her plans for what her ‘dream house’ would look like. The house served them well for many years – with 3 children and trees planted in their garden for their birth days. After Annie and Ted sold the house it stood for another 30 years until the house and land were sold. Kate recalls hearing the creaking and groaning of a truck taking away the house in the night. She wonders if the house was protesting as it was hauled away.

Below is what took the place of Annie and Ted’s house. Kate wonders if the Jacaranda planted for Annie and Ted’s wedding, and the other trees such as Laburnum, frangipani, bauhinia and 3 book pines planted for each of their children in 1940, 42 and 44 are still there in the back yard.

And finally 65 Park Rd., Yeronga: a house that was never intended to be moved from its site and to get lost, but it was anyway due to an apparent oversight by Brisbane City Council. A sad story of a heritage ‘lost’ house.

As the Tom Waits song says ‘houses are just made of wood’ it’s what happens inside that’s important. The stories of houses, our homes tell us stories about the times in which people lived, the development of our community and universal stories.

Thanks for reading. Watch out for the full stories when they are posted to the website. And particular thanks to Denis, Lyn, John and Kate for this great Lost Houses conversation.