Grange House, later known as Coorooman, has occupied its prominent position in South Brisbane for over 140 years. It’s seen the city grow to the point that its once fine views are now obscured by modern high rise development. Grange House has also been home to a number of people who made significant contributions to Queensland. In this post I trace its history and shed some light on the mystery of its origin.

The land

Grange House is built on a long ridge that extended from near the South Brisbane Municipal Chambers, now part of Somerville House school, to Hampstead Road. I described some of the associated history in my post “South Brisbane War Memorial Park and the Disappearing Ridge”. The ridge is clearly visible in the extract from Ham’s 1863 map of Brisbane below.

On this map I’ve marked the ancient Aboriginal pathways that were recorded by surveyor Galloway¹ in 1856. The ridge itself was the location of an habitual camp site². A painting by Thomas Baines shows this and is based on a sketch he made in 1855 from a location close to where Grange House now stands.

A series of small creeks flowing down from Highgate Hill fed swampy ground and a string of water holes which are marked on Ham’s map above, just south of the ridge and camping ground. According to a 1923 newspaper article, the name of the area was “Cum-cumbookie-bah” or “Place Where We Get Crayfish”. The names of the streets on either side, Water Street West (now Dorchester Street) and Brook Street reflect this feature.

Early houses built along the ridge, and marked on the 1863 map above, were “Cooltigue” (see my post The Blakeneys of Highgate Hill) and “Cumbooquepa“, built by the Stephens family and with its name derived from the Aboriginal name of the location.

Thomas Blacket Stephens

Thomas Blacket Stephens and his family emigrated from Lancashire to Sydney in 1849. With a background in woollen mills, he worked in Sydney as a wool broker before moving to Brisbane in 1853, where he established a wool-scour and fellmongery .

From 1842, when Moreton Bay was opened to free European settlement, the NSW colonial government progressively sold off land at auction. Stephens was often a buyer, and in June of 1856 he purchased a total of 27 acres at South Brisbane for a total of just under £223. This included portion 147, which is the location of Grange House. Stephens eventually accumulated almost 100 acres of contiguous land.

By 1860, he had built the family home Cumbooquepa.

Following separation from New South Wales in 1859, the new Queensland Government subsidised immigration and Brisbane steadily grew in population. In 1862, Stephens decided the time was right to subdivide some of his land as the Cumbooquepa Estate.

The Bell and Love families

In 1863, subdivisions 16 and 17 of Portion 147 were purchased by the Bell and Love families for a total of £288. This is the land on which Grange House would eventually be built.

David Bell and Helen nee Paton with three of their children arrived in Brisbane in 1849 onboard the Chasley. This was one of the immigrant ships organised by the Reverend John Dunmore Lang. Bell worked for Captain Robert Towns managing his punts on the Brisbane – Ipswich run until 1863, when he built a substantial two floor brick store in Stanley Street, South Brisbane.

The year before, the Bells’ daughter Ann had married Harry Clifford Love, who went into partnership with his father-in-law David Bell. The land purchase was probably a joint venture, as it was registered in the names of their wives, Helen and her daughter Ann.

The partnership was dissolved in 1868 and a few months later Bell and Love tried unsuccessfully to sell the land. Ownership then passed to the Love family.

David Bell continued to expand his business until the opening of the Victoria Bridge in 1874 led to a great loss of patronage, as shoppers passed him by and frequented the city. He became insolvent in 1876. For more on the unusual story of the bridge see my post The Fascinating Story of the First Victoria Bridge.

Ann and Harry later moved to Sydney where Harry became a successful tea merchant trading as Clifford Love and Company Limited. One of their sons, Sir Joseph Clifton Love, took over running the company and manufactured products such as ‘Uncle Toby’s Oats’, ‘Wade’s Cornflour’ and ‘Laundrena Starch”.

Ownership of the land passed through various members of the Love family before in 1878 being reported sold in a weekly summary of land sales. The two subdivisions went for £350, just £62 more than the previous sale price in 1863. Following on from the financial crisis of the late 1860s, Queensland was in the grip of yet another depression.

There is no mention of a house being included, and the cost of construction of such a substantial dwelling would have been at least £1,000. This is a strong indication that Grange House had not yet been built.

James McGhie

James McGhie, the new owner of the land, had gone to the Gympie gold fields in 1867. Having done well there, in 1869 he established a saw milling business at Cootharaba in partnership with Abraham Luya. They mainly handled Kauri pine as well as cedar and beech.

McGhie, Luya and Co. operated several steamers which transported timber, merchandise, and passengers to and from Brisbane. Passengers could then take a coach on to Gympie. In Brisbane, they docked at Noosa Wharf, adjacent to their timber yards in Stanley Street and close to the location of Grange House.

The house is built

Whilst the sale of the land was reported in early 1878 in the newspaper referred to above, the title wasn’t transferred to James McGhie until some 18 months later. He held the land for just three years after which it was transferred to Janet Burns, the wife of John Burns, in March of 1882.

Grange House had been built by this time. In the same month, the Burns’ previous home Grange Cottage in Upper Edward Street, Spring Hill, was advertised for sale. Also, John was looking for a gardener at Grange House, Water Street West, in April of 1882. It would seem that the house was constructed sometime between 1878 and 1881. This could have been as an intended home for James McGhie or perhaps it was built specifically for the Burns family.

Grange House is built over 3 levels. The main floor has 4 large rooms with an encircling verandah. Stairs lead up to 4 rooms in the attic, two of which have distinctive dormer windows. The bottom floor is constructed from brick and comprises 2 large rooms. There is also a servants’ wing and separate wash house.

The house exhibits characteristics typical of the 1870s, including decorative barge boards and a smaller distance between the upper floor level and verandah than was typical in the 1860s.

One of the mysteries of Grange House is why the front door faces Vulture Street, as from 1865 until 1885 both of the two allotments between the house and that street belonged to other parties. In 1885, one of these allotments was transferred to Janet Burns. This purchase hints that the original intention when the house was built may have been to extend the land holding down to Vulture Street.

There is no photographic evidence of a staircase at the front of the house and images from around 1910 show a side staircase entry.

Entries in Post Office Directories for Grange House appear from 1883, and all give its address as Water Street West, now Dorchester Street. This is the rear of the house where the servants’ wing is located. Water Street appears unnamed on early maps such as that by Ham from 1863 above, and the name begins to be mentioned from the early 1880s.

The Burns family

The first occupants of Grange House were then Janet and John Burns.

In 1863, a 22 year old John Burns arrived in Brisbane on board the Duke of Newcastle along with his 17 year old brother James.

The two brothers started a business in partnership in 1865, although James struck out on his own a few years later. James eventually became the major shareholder and managing director of the well known trading and shipping company Burns, Philp & Co. Ltd.

John Burns leased a shop at 102 Queen Street, later the site of Her Majesty’s Opera House, from 1868 until around 1874. He then moved to a new building built for Moses Ward at 296 Queen Street, designed by architect Richard Gailey..

In 1869, John married Janet Forsyth who, like him, was from Stirlingshire in Scotland. The names of their two Brisbane homes, Grange Cottage and Grange House, perhaps recall Grange Burn, a creek near Polston, John’s birthplace.

At the time they purchased Grange House, the Burns had two children, Margaret and David. Their first born Janet had died at 4 years of age. In 1884, just two years later, John died “from an abscess in the head, which originated from concussion of the brain which occurred about fifteen years ago”. A few months after his death, Janet and her children Margaret and David left for a trip home on the RMS Dorunda.

John’s company, J&J Burns, was sold to R. W. Thurlow & Co. and in November of 1884, Grange House was advertised for let, fully furnished. In May of the next year ownership of the house passed to Boyd Morehead and Peter MacPherson. They were members of Brisbane’s close-knit Scottish community and probably had been friends of John Burns. Both were politicians and Morehead served as Premier for two years from 1888.

The large house attracted wealthy tenants including in 1885 businessman John Parry de Winton, his wife Dora and their two young children. De Winton was certainly used to large houses as his family home was Wallsworth Hall in Gloucestershire, England.

William Stephens, the eldest son of T. B. Stephens, is listed as an occupant on the 1887 Post Office Directory but there are no newspaper reports mentioning his stay here. At that time, he had not yet married.

In 1888 title to the land was transferred back to Janet Burns. She continued to let out the house but also lived there, at least spasmodically. Given the size and prestige of Grange House, the occupants once again were from the wealthier parts of society.

Amongst the residents in this period were Charles Henry Holmes, the first leasee and manager of Her Imperial Majesty’s Opera House, Elliot Bland, General Manager of the British India and Queensland Agency Company, and William Sewell, Manager of the South Brisbane branch of the Queensland National Bank, and their families.

In 1898, Janet died unexpectedly at Grange House from cirrhosis of the liver³. Title to the land passed initially to her brother James Forsyth as executor of her will, and shortly after was transferred to her children, David and Margaret.

By 1905, the second of the blocks of land in Vulture Street in front of the house also had come into their possession.

This is possibly when the brick fence that stretched the full length of the Vulture Street frontage was built. By 1924, the land fronting Vulture Street had been sold, subdivided into three lots and houses constructed.

More renters

Grange House operated as a boarding house for a period of time. With gas and water connected, it was able to offer a bath, which was still not common in 1900 Brisbane.

The Board family

In 1902, the house was once again let as a single home and the Board family moved in. They were to reside at Grange House for nine years. George Leonard Board was born in Geelong in 1852. His father owned a cotton mill there and later moved to Pimpama in Queensland to take up cotton cultivation. As he was having difficulty in this endeavour, he went to the USA to learn more and never came back.

In 1877, George married Sophia Deighton, whose parents were Edward Deighton and Emma nee Stephens, a sister of T. B. Stephens, mentioned above.

George entered the Queensland Lands Department and after various country appointments became Queensland’s first Inspector of Forests, performing the job from 1901 to 1905. Although provided with very inadequate resources, George set in motion the process of better understanding the State’s timber species and resources, reservation of land and the introduction of a royalty system. He moved through other roles in the Department, retiring as Undersecretary of the Department in 1921.

At the time they rented Grange House, the Boards had 7 children between the ages of 3 and 24, two of their daughters having previously died young. In January of 1909, another daughter, Dorothy, was a guest of the Flewell-Smith family of Lowood. Frances Flewell-Smith was another of the Stephens clan and a cousin of Dorothy’s mother Sophia. After a very hot day, a group decided to go swimming in the Brisbane River.

Sixteen year old Dorothy got into difficulties in the middle of the river and her second cousin, 17 year old Stephen Flewell-Smith, jumped in fully clothed to swim to her aid. The Queensland Times reported that “the grim Reaper Death, using the merciless waters as his instrument, claimed as victims…” both Dorothy and Stephen. Stephen was posthumously awarded a Royal Humane Society medal.

Another of the Board children, Marjorie, who spent much of her childhood at Grange House, became a highly respected Army officer and Red Cross official. Her married name was Marjorie Roach.

In 1910, Sophia’s step-mother Anna Deighton died at Grange House whilst visiting. The following year, the Board family moved to a house Carenya down the street.

During the time of the Board family occupancy, the owners David Burns and Margaret, who by then had been married to Clarence Smith for 4 years, tried to sell the property, without result.

Dancing lessons

Grange House continued to be rented out while a buyer was sought. John and Florence Holst took advantage of the large double room to give dancing lessons, morning, afternoon and evening, over a six month period.

In 1912, the house was sold to Lionel Clive and Emma Jane Ball and the two blocks of land on Vulture street to Thomas Edmonds.

The Ball family

Emma Jane Ball was the daughter of Edwin and Jane Macaree who had arrived in Rockhampton in 1861 with just seven shillings and sixpence. They eventually developed extensive business interests in the Rockhampton area including a brewery, sawmill and property at Coorooman Creek near Emu Park, where Emma Jane was born. Grange House became Coorooman.

Lionel Clive Ball was born in Sydney in 1877 and graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Engineering in mining and metallurgy. He spent 46 years with the Queensland Mines Department, becoming Chief Geologist of the Geological Survey Office in 1931. Professionally he was known as L.C. Ball and he was referred to as LCB or LC by colleagues.

Amongst his many notable achievements were involvement in the search for oil and rare metals and the introduction of new technologies to mineral exploration geology activities. In 1934, he took a leading role in the first aerial geological survey of Northern Australia. The importance of LC’s work can be gauged by the continuing frequent references to his work in geology papers and articles up to this day.

LC also contributed to studies of Queensland dinosaurs and was a member of the Anthropological Society of Queensland. He investigated and photographed sites of archaeological and cultural importance to Indigenous Australians.

Emma Jane and LC had two daughters, Rose Emerald and Cherry Eileen, before moving into Coorooman and a son, Clive Wolfram, was born the year after. Both Rose’s and Clive’s middle names reflected their father’s geological interests. LC was an authority on rare metal ores such as tungsten-bearing wolfram.

In a 1991 interview associated with the heritage listing of Coorooman, Rose Fuerst nee Ball recalled how the house still had remnants of days passed such as a bell system to call the maid, a triple earth closet in the grounds, and gas light fittings in bedrooms. Coorooman was full of old furniture and indigenous artifacts lined the hallway. Under the house were her father’s dark room and a workshop with stuffed animals. The wash house had a copper and tubs and Rose recalled how the maid would wash the blankets by treading on them.

Rose also recalled⁴ how her father had the original wood shingle roof replaced with galvanised iron due to the risk of fire started by the cinders from the steam trains that passed nearby. The main rooms, which have separating folding cedar doors, were the scene of family entertainment with the large doors acting as the stage curtain.

Rose was active in elocution and theatre, had lessons with Rhoda Felgate and appeared in at least one Twelfth Night Theatre production, in 1945. Rose was also a talented artist and studied at the Brisbane Technical College and later at the Art Institute of Chicago.

From her dormer window, Rose could admire the view from the mountains to the bay, see the time ball at the old windmill observatory dropping at 1pm, watch birds sitting on the clock hands at the South Brisbane Municipal Chambers and observe the activity at the fire station just below the house.

Unfortunately, the views described by Rose Ball are now hidden behind high rise development.

LC was a skilled photographer. He photographed geological and mining subjects, the people he met on his wide travels, as well as his family. Many are held by the State Library of Queensland. The current owner of Grange House/Coorooman found a dark room replete with chemicals when he purchased the house in 1976.

In 1918, Rose started attending The Brisbane High School for Girls based in Erneton on Wickham Terrace. Luckily for her and Cherry, the school moved in 1919 to the much more convenient location of nearby Cumbooquepa and a year later acquired the new name of Somerville House. Old Cumbooquepa had been demolished to make way for the railway in 1890 (see my post Gloucester Street Railway Station for more.).

The Ball’s son Clive studied at Brisbane Boys Grammar School and the University of Queensland, obtaining Bachelor and Masters degrees in Science, and worked as a geologist. During World War Two he served with the RAAF and was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery as a navigator during bombing missions over Germany in 1944 when his aircraft was attacked by night fighters. He later continued his career as a geologist in Canada.

In 1943, Emma Jane passed away at Coorooman. The following year Rose, who had been working with the Red Cross, married an American serviceman, John (Jack) Arlington Fuerst, and later moved to the USA. Jack Fuerst was based in the Somerville House campus, commandeered for US Army use. From there, he could wave to his fiance Rose at Coorooman across Stephens Road.

LC cared for Cherry, whose life was tragically affected by polio, at Coorooman until his death in 1955. The house was sold the year after. Rose, husband Jack and son John returned to Australia to care for Cherry in 1959.

The Cox family

The new owner of the house was Owen Herbert Cox who was born in Warwick in 1915. The family moved to Brisbane and Owen completed an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner with the Intercolonial Boring Company in 1939 and also studied for a Diploma in Engineering. He married Edna Drew in 1940.

Owen was of an entrepreneurial nature, and in the early 1950s, he was a partner in the firm Atom Electrical Manufacturing Pty. Ltd. They built electrical motors and in 1952 developed a sealed motor for use in mines. In 1953, he founded a company that manufactured air compressors under the name Air-Rite.

However, his lasting legacy is in the field of ride on mowers. Owen saw the need for a rugged unit built for Australian conditions and began manufacture of the Cox Mowmobile. In the mid 1960s, he took out two patents relating to innovations in mower design. One of his inventions is still in use in the company’s products today and is known as “Live Drive”.

Owen and Edna had a retail outlet at nearby 61 Ipswich Road where they sold their compressors and spray equipment as well as products of other companies such as mowers and outboard motors. The company moved to larger premises at Woolloongabba in 1968 and then to Acacia Ridge

The Coxs lived at Coorooman until 1962 and the house was then divided into flats.

Later Years

Owen Cox sold Coorooman in 1973 and it quickly passed through several hands before the current owner purchased it in 1976. This makes him the longest occupant at 46 years, compared to the Ball family’s 44 years.

In the absence of State heritage legislation, the National Trust of Queensland commenced a list of places of cultural significance in the 1960s and Coorooman was listed in 1982. With the research material available at that time, it was thought to have been constructed in 1864 and designed by the noted architect Robert Gailey. In 1984 it was also listed on the now defunct Register of the National Estate, and remains on the Australian Heritage Database.

It’s thanks to the current owner that the house was preserved through those years when heritage buildings had no legal protection in Queensland, and so much of our built heritage was demolished.

Following the enactment of the Queensland Heritage Act 1992, Coorooman/The Grange was entered into the Queensland Heritage Register in the same year. The citation states that the house “was constructed by c1882, when it was known as Grange House. Materials and stylistic details suggest it was erected much earlier, probably in the 1860s.” My research, detailed above, indicates that the house was built between 1879 and 1882.

Grange House is an impressive and important part of our local history.

© P. Granville 2023

References

Most references appear as hot links through the post.

1. Survey Plan B.1234.28 Sheet 1A. Plan of 32 Suburban Allotments, Surveyor J. Galloway, 24-11-1855.
2. Dr Ray Kerkhove, Aboriginal Campsites of Greater Brisbane, 2015, Boolarong Press.
3. Queensland State Archives, Item ID ITM2811277
4. R.E. Fuerst, Early Recollections of South Brisbane, unpublished, courtesy of Professor John Fuerst.