Shafston House

About

Shafston House is a heritage-listed villa at 23 Castlebar Street, Kangaroo Point, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Robin Dods and built from 1851 to 1930s. It is also known as Anzac Hostel, Ravenscott, and Shafston International College. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 7 February 2005.

Shafston House comprises a group of buildings constructed between 1851 and the 1930s, set in substantial grounds with frontage to the Brisbane River. The main house was constructed in several stages between 1851 and 1904.

The southern part of Kangaroo Point along the riverfront as far as Norman Creek was surveyed into acreage allotments by James Warner in mid-1850. The Rev. Robert Creyke ( Church of England ) purchased from the Crown two of these allotments (eastern suburban allotments 44 and 45) containing just over 10 acres with frontage to the Brisbane River, just within the Brisbane town boundary. A deed of grant was issued to him in November 1851. On portion 44 he constructed a single-storeyed house that he called Ravenscott. Creyke joined a number of Brisbane's early gentry and pastoralists from the hinterland who, in the 1840s and 1850s, established town estates along the Brisbane River, most of them just outside the official town boundaries. These included Newstead House (1846) near Breakfast Creek, Toogoolawah (later Bulimba House ), (1849–50) across the river from Newstead, Riversdale (now Mowbray Park, early 1850s), Milton House ( c. 1852 or 1853) just beyond the western town boundary and Eskgrove (1853) downstream from Shafston and Riversdale.

An 1851, sketch of Ravenscott attributed to visiting artist Conrad Martins shows a long, single-storeyed, low-set residence with verandahs and hipped roof, overlooking the Brisbane River. The grounds were mostly cleared and included outbuildings, the whole enclosed by a post and rail fence.

In December 1852, Creyke's Kangaroo Point property was transferred to Darling Downs pastoralist and politician Henry Stuart Russell, who in his memoirs states that he "completed" the house and renamed it Shafston, likely after his wife's birthplace in Jamaica. This implies that the core of Shafston House incorporates the earlier Ravenscott. Russell also purchased a number of neighbouring blocks to create a town riverine estate of over 44 acres (17.6 hectares).

In April 1854, Russell advertised Shafston for letting or sale. At this time the house, constructed of brick and stone, contained a drawing room and dining room separated by folding doors, five large bedrooms, closets and a roomy pantry. A passage 67 feet (20 m) long ran nearly the length of the house. Beneath the drawing room was a stone dairy, larder and wine-cellar 8 feet (2.4 m) high. There was a verandah 160 feet (49 m) in length. At the rear, attached via a covered way, was a brick service block, which included a large kitchen (stone flagged), two servants' bedrooms, large laundry, store rooms and offices. Off the laundry was a drying yard enclosed by a paling fence. A large brick outbuilding contained a two-stall stables, coach-house, harness room and 2 grooms' rooms, with a loft over all. Other improvements included a fowl-house, well and a garden of about 3 acres enclosed by a paling fence. The whole property, which comprised approximately 44 acres, was enclosed with a four-rail hardwood fence. Most of the improvements had been made within the previous 18 months (that is, since late 1852 when Russell had acquired the property).

Shafston did not sell in 1854 and was offered for sale again in October 1855. By this time Russell had vacated the premises and it was operating as a boarding house. The ground floor comprised 8 rooms, staircase and china closet and had hardwood joists and flooring. There was a verandah front and back, the front verandah being 56 feet (17 m) long and 10 feet (3.0 m) wide, under which there were three spacious cellars. French doors opened onto the front verandah. The dining and drawing rooms were separated by folding doors. The attic contained three rooms, two of which were large enough to make suitable bedrooms "if required". This suggests that the 5 bedrooms mentioned in the 1854 advertisement were all located on the ground floor. Attached was a kitchen, servants' rooms and pantry, with a verandah at the front. There was a substantial stable 25 by 15 feet (7.6 by 4.6 m).

Again the property did not sell. Tenants in the 1850s included Nehemiah Bartley and Brisbane solicitor Daniel Foley Roberts and his family.

A sketch of Shafston dated c. 1858 shows a substantial, single-storeyed house with a front verandah, a high-pitched roof, attic rooms and three dormer windows overlooking the Brisbane River.

Title to the estate was transferred to grazier and sugar-grower Louis Hope in October 1859. It appears that Hope did not reside at Shafston. Gilbert Eliot, Speaker of the Queensland Parliament, tenanted Shafston House from 1860 to 1871 and tenants in the 1870s included William Barker of Telemon Station and Dr and Mrs Henry Challinor.

In 1875, Hope subdivided the property and in late 1876, during William Barker's tenancy, Shafston House on just over 4 acres (1.6 hectares) of riverfront land was advertised for sale. The house contained 9 rooms on the ground floor and had changed little since 1854: a brick and stone house with a roof of hardwood shingles and iron, drawing room ("the largest and coolest to be found in any private family in this colony"), dining room, five bedrooms, closets, dressing and bath rooms, kitchen and about six servants' apartments, a large brick stable with two stalls, coach-house, man's room and hay-house and galvanised iron and underground water storage tanks. No sale was transacted at this time and in August 1881 the same advertisement was run in the Brisbane Courier.

In mid-1883 Shafston House was transferred to Mary Jane Foster, wife of Charles Milne Foster of Brisbane ironmongers Foster and Kelk. Foster had learnt the family ironmongery business in Lincoln, Yorkshire and after emigrating to Queensland he established in Brisbane with his brother-in-law the successful ironmongery firm of Foster and Kelk. The Fosters, who resided at Shafston House until 1896, reputedly remodelled the house in the early 1880s, the architect for this work thought to be former Queensland Colonial Architect, FDG Stanley. The remodelling at this period appears to have included replacing the verandahs in their present form, adding the entry portico and more elaborate and picturesque Gothic detailing. The bay windows also were probably added at this time.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s the house was occupied sequentially by tenants E. B. Bland, manager of the BISN Company; John F McMullen; and William Gray of Webster & Co.

By 1903 pastoralist James Henry McConnel [ Wikidata ] of Cressbrook in the Brisbane River Valley, had occupied Shafston House as his family's town house. Title to the property was transferred to him in 1904 and in that year he commissioned noted Brisbane architect Robin Smith Dods to undertake a third renovation of the house. Dods' contribution appears to have been the elaborate timber work in the front hall and the two main public rooms (drawing and dining rooms) and likely the windows in the dormers. His work includes decorative elements like the fireplaces, timber fretwork to the entrance and the cupboard below the stair.

Shafston House remained the McConnel home until c. 1913 and in 1915 it was leased to the Creche and Kindergarten Association as a teacher training centre.

In 1919, in the aftermath of the Great War of 1914–1918, the property was acquired by the Commonwealth government and converted into an Anzac Hostel for the care and treatment of totally and permanently incapacitated ex-servicemen. Anzac Hostels were established in most Australian states at this period.

At this time the property consisted of the main house, kitchen block, stables and a bush house. The 1919 alterations were extensive. The main house initially served both hostel and administrative functions, with the former drawing room being converted into a ward, the dining room retaining its original function and the bedrooms occupied as nurses room, matron's room, etc. A study and a bedroom at the western end of the house were combined by the removal of a wall to create a recreation room. The attic level, which in 1919 was a single open space, was partitioned into bedrooms for nurses and a box room, with the landing retained as a common room. The kitchen courtyard was roofed and two new rooms were constructed in that space. A timber laundry block was constructed to the south of the kitchen and the stables were converted into orderlies' quarters.

To accommodate the returned servicemen a large open-sided ward block was erected in the terraced front grounds to the northeast of the house in 1919, connected to the house via a covered way. This single-storeyed building was high-set on stumps with an attached ablutions block on the eastern side. It demonstrated aspects of public health theory, especially the benefits of fresh air in the recuperative process and in maintaining good health, popular at the time. Theory was translated into practice in a number of government designs for public buildings such as open-sided school blocks and hospital wards in the 1910s and early 1920s.

Anzac Hostel received its first patients on 19 July 1920 and functioned as a repatriation hospital until c. 1969.

In the late 1920s and 1930s the Commonwealth subdivided and sold the southern part of the property, reducing the house grounds to just over 2 acres (0.8 hectare ). At this time the early brick stables building, which was located on the subdivided land, was demolished and replaced in 1928 by a small timber building constructed to the northwest of the house as quarters for orderlies working at the hostel. This building comprised three rooms and a verandah and toilets at the rear. The 1919 laundry block was moved to a position just east of the kitchen block and a new garage was constructed in the southwest corner of the remaining grounds, near Thorn Street.