| Historical notes: | The
entire block bounded by Ross Street, Park Street, Euroka Road and
Burfitt Parade was part of the 7 hectare (17 acre) grant made to Donald
Ross in 1869. Ross sold the land in 1880 to Richard Hamment (LTO,
vol.88 fo.73). Hamment was a railway fettler, who had with his wife
Sarah settled in the district when the railway was first being laid in
the mid-1860s (plaque on park gates). By 1900 the large rectangle of
land had been vested in the three sons of Richard and Sarah, Richard
David, George and Joseph (LTO, vol.516 fo.158).
In December 1903 the block was sub-divided and sold at auction as
the Hamment estate. The advertisement in the Nepean Times on 12
December 1903 reveals that there were at that time only two houses on
the block, one a five-room brick cottage, the other a small
weatherboard. The sub-division plan which shows the location of the
sixteen lots into which the estate had been split marks these two
buildings on Park Street, one at the present no.31 on the Ross Street
corner, the other (known to have been the brick house) at no.39 on the
Euroka Road corner (ML, ZTP: C2/1). No. 39 was occupied by the Hamment
family and was not sold (Mrs J. Peard).
The allotments offered for sale at the end of 1903 did not all sell
quickly. Lots 11,12 and 13, which correspond respectively to 15 and 17
Euroka Road and 5a Burfitt Parade (the railway carpark), were finally
sold together on 12 April 1906 to J.T. Morten, a local Glenbrook
contractor.
Morten, however, soon sold lots 11,12 and 13, just over a year later, on 30 March 1907, to John Muir of Camperdown in Sydney.
The first rate-book for Glenbrook begins in 1907 and shows John Muir
occupying a house on his Euroka Road property (J.Low). The house was
clearly not built by the Hamment family before the sub-division, so it
must have been built either by J.T. Morten in 1906-7 or by Muir in 1907.
Since Morten was a building contractor, there is a likelihood that he
built the house speculatively on lot 11 and almost at once sold it with
its hectare (2a., 3r., 3.5p.) of land.
This house on lot 11 is now 15 Euroka Road. It was called Thurso
and, although there is no documentary evidence of this name before 1923,
it is tempting to postulate that Muir, who has a very Scottish name,
had associations with the far north of Scotland and named the house
Thurso in 1907. At all events, John Muir, his wife and daughters lived
in the house until World War I. Muir had sold part of the southern
lots, 12 and 13, to the Railway Commissioners in 1911, when the new
Glenbrook station was at the planning stage. John Muir seems to have
died by 1917, when Barbara and Clair Muir sold the house and the
remaining parts of lots 12 and 13 to Colin Smith (1879 - 1939), the
wealthy and eccentric owner of Logie (now the Officers’ Mess at
Glenbrook RAAF Base).
Smith clearly bought the property as an investment, possibly for
leasing: he sold it after two and a half years in January 1920 (a year
before he sold Logie itself) to Mrs Sarah Lister, the wife of a
Rockdale auctioneer.
Mrs Lister sold the property in 1927 to a schoolteacher, Bernoni
Charles Humphreys, and a Sydney law clerk, Charles Eugene Baker.
Humphreys knew Glenbrook well. In 1900 at the age of 29 he had been
appointed the sole teacher art Glenbrook public school and he and his
wife, who taught sewing like most principal’s wives, stayed until 1912,
through the period of expansion which culminated in the brick schoolroom
being built in 1911 (Aston, 15-20). From 1913 until 1931 Humphreys
taught at Ebenezer on the Hawkesbury (where he was known as Benjamin,
not Bernoni) and he retired from schoolteaching at the age of 60 in 1931
(Brill, 10-12).
It is likely that Humphreys bought 15 Euroka Road in Glenbrook in
1927 with a view to his retirement. The role of the co-owner Baker is
not known. From 1932 until 1938 the Public Trustee held the property
for the Humphreys family and transferred title in 1938 to Miss Sarah
Humphreys of Lindfield who in 1942 gave the title to Mrs Esther Hannah
Humphreys, presumably
Bernoni’s widow and Sarah’s mother. Esther was already resident in Glenbrook, almost certainly in the family home.
The Humphreys had an association with the house for 21 years. Old
Mrs Esther Humphreys finally sold it in 1948 to a local railwayman,
William Arthur Butler and his wife Anastasia.
The house was next sold to Garnet and Constance Harrison in 1950. In
1959 the land to the south, the remaining part of the original
sub-division lots 12 and 13, was sold and in 1961 lot 11 alone with the
1906-7 house was sold to Bert and Rae Thomas. The house is now owned by
Val and Bob Muldoon, who have remedied years of neglect and reversed
unwise alterations. |
