Warriston is a heritage-listed duplex at 6–8 Musgrave Road, Red Hill,

City of Brisbane The City of Brisbane is a local government area (LGA) which comprises the inner portion of Greater Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Australia. Its governing body is the Brisbane City Council. The LGAs in the other mainland state capitals ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. It was built . It is also known as Berley Flats. It was added to the

Queensland Heritage Register The Queensland Heritage Register is a heritage register, a statutory list of places in Queensland, Australia that are protected by Queensland legislation, the Queensland Heritage Act 1992. It is maintained by the Queensland Heritage Council. As ...

on 21 October 1992.

History

Warriston was built for David Pringle Milne, a

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

west ward alderman from 1870–76, retired boot and shoe importer/manufacturer, and proprietor of the Glasgow Boot and Shoe Mart in Queen Street. The semi-detached houses may have been named after

Warriston Warriston () is a suburb of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It lies east of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden in Inverleith. The name derives from Warriston House, a local mansion house demolished in 1966. In July ...

, a northern district of

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

. In 1866 and 1874 Milne had acquired two blocks of land fronting

Petrie Terrace Petrie Terrace is an inner suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In the , Petrie Terrace had a population of 1,168 people. Geography The suburb is by road west of the Brisbane General Post Office. The precinct is bordered ...

(renamed Musgrave Road in 1888), and was recorded as resident on the site from the late 1860s. The kitchen houses attached to the present Warriston may be the original Milne residence. The Milnes occupied No. 2 Warriston (the northern house and closest to the corner of Earle Street and Musgrave Road) until David Milne's death in 1897, while the other side was let to a succession of middle class occupants. These included surveyors WM Davidson and CT Bedford, Albert E Harte (a prominent Queen-street stock and share broker), and Captain James C O'Brien of the Queensland Defence Force. During the 1890s a private school operated in Warriston No. 1. From the 1910s Warriston served as a boarding house, and in the second half of the 20th century was converted into twelve flats (known as Berley Flats), the verandahs being enclosed and the exterior sheeted with asbestos-cement and stucco. In 1986–88 new owners undertook a careful restoration and recycling project to convert the semi-detached houses (at that time still flats) into offices.

Description

Warriston stands on the crest above the Normanby Fiveways, on the edge of the suburb of

. The building is associated visually with the

Normanby Hotel Normanby Hotel is a heritage-listed hotel at 1 Musgrave Road, Red Hill, Queensland, Red Hill, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by John B Nicholson and built in by Thomas Game. It was extended in 1917 to a design by Georg ...

, and together these buildings frame the view of the city from Musgrave Road. Warriston comprises a pair of two-storeyed, semi-detached timber residences with verandahs on both levels, front and back. They are surmounted by a corrugated iron roof with a single hip to the front, but with a divided roof to the rear. Separated by a brick

party wall A party wall (occasionally parti-wall or parting wall, shared wall, also known as common wall or as a demising wall) is a wall shared by two adjoining properties. Typically, the builder lays the wall along a property line dividing two terraced h ...

which does not rise above the roofline, from the street, the two houses appear as a single entity. A double staircase with a cross-braced timber balustrade leads to the first level, which is high set at the front. Decorative timber detailing to the front verandahs includes cross-braced balustrades with central rosettes, deep valances on the first level, and double posts with capitals and

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

. The rear verandahs have been enclosed. The side windows, which are sashed, are shaded by galvanised iron hoods with timber fretwork infill and curved timber brackets. Each house is a mirror reflection of the other, with the front door opening into a long hall along the brick party wall. This hall is broken into two sections by an arched screen, with the stairway rising from the rear. The core of each house consists of a pair of reception rooms separated by folding doors on the ground floor, and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, both levels opening onto the verandahs front and back. The kitchens are located in a single-storeyed, low-set, timber building attached at the rear. It is square in shape with a short-ridged roof of corrugated iron and verandahs to either end. Although the former houses now function as offices, the fabric and structure are largely intact. Paint analysis has permitted repainting to the original colours. The building is one of few 19th century semi-detached houses surviving in Brisbane, and is even rarer for its timber construction.

Heritage listing

Warriston was listed on the

on 21 October 1992 having satisfied the following criteria. The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history. Historically it is significant in illustrating the pattern of development of Petrie Terrace, one of the earliest suburbs of Brisbane. The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places. Warriston, erected , is significant as a rare, intact timber example of the 19th century semi-detached house form in Brisbane, and in particular of the common-roof type. The place is important because of its aesthetic significance. It is important for its aesthetic contribution to the Petrie Terrace/Red Hill townscape, and for the quality of its restoration and recycling, demonstrating that 19th century form and 20th century function can be compatible.

References

Attribution

External links

{{Commons category-inline, Warriston, Red Hill Queensland Heritage Register Red Hill, Queensland Houses in Queensland Articles incorporating text from the Queensland Heritage Register