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Whepstead is a heritage-listed villa at Main Road, Wellington Point, City of Redland, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by architect Claude William Chambers and built in 1889 by Patrick Horisk. It is also known as Bay View Private Hospital and Fernbourne. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. == History == Whepstead, a large two-storeyed timber residence with a substantial attic, was constructed in 1889 for Gilbert Burnett JP, a Wellington Point landowner, sawmill proprietor, and member of the Cleveland Divisional Board. Originally called Fernbourne, the house was designed by Brisbane architect Claude William Chambers and constructed by Cleveland builder Patrick Horisk. When first erected, it was considered one of the finest houses in the district, with unrivalled views of sea, shore, headland and islands. Set in a very fine, well-established garden, Fernbourne replaced an earlier Burnett family home on the same site.〔 Burnett had emigrated from England to Queensland in 1866, aged 20 years. He married Martha Ann Dawson in the late 1860s and in the early 1870s first managed his father-in-law's sugar plantation at Tingalpa, then was employed as overseer at Ormiston House Estate, Louis Hope's sugar plantation near Cleveland. In April 1875 he acquired from Hope a seven-year lease, with an option to buy, on the bulk of the Ormiston estate west and north of Hilliards Creek near Wellington Point. This land he purchased from Hope in 1881.〔 Burnett called his Wellington Point estate ''Trafalgar Vale'', developing it initially as a sugar plantation, dependent on indentured labour from the South Pacific Islands. He purchased Hope's sugar mill machinery and set up his own mill about a quarter of a mile west of Hilliards Creek. By mid-1883, Burnett's cane fields at Trafalgar Vale were well established, and he had operating the sugar mill (using the open-pan system which produced a dark sugar), a sawmill, and a bone-mill, the latter providing fertiliser for the cane. Burnett also was buying up local cane for crushing, and reportedly was considering ordering a large new vacuum pan to produce white sugar, which had proved highly successful in northern mills.〔 The sawmill at Trafalgar Vale was established initially to cut timber for extensions to Burnett's sugar mill, but local orders for milled hardwood had encouraged him to expand his sawmilling operations. Subsequently, political antipathy toward the indentured labour system and the potential expense of converting his sugar mill to the vacuum pan method, prompted Burnett to turn to sawmilling as his principal enterprise. By November 1884 he had ceased the cultivation and manufacture of sugar at Trafalgar Vale, and had established in its place what he claimed was the largest country sawmill in the colony.〔 Between mid-1883 and late 1884, planing and dressing machinery to work soft timbers such as pine, cedar and beech were acquired; the Eucalypta, an long steamer, was built for Burnett to transport cypress pine from the Moreton Bay islands (Amity Point on Stradbroke Island, Coochiemudlo Island and Macleay Island) and hardwood from the Tweed Heads, Nerang, Coomera and Logan River districts to his mill, the timber being unloaded at Hilliards Creek; a wharf with a large overhead travelling crane was erected on the creek about 300 yards below the mill buildings; a tramway was laid to transport logs from the wharf to the mill (in 1885 the tramway was extended about three-quarters of a mile to give direct access to the bay); and an 8-ton boiler was installed to generate the steam to drive the horizontal saw, circular saws, planning machines and lathes, which could produce 40,000 feet of dressed timber a week. The South Pacific Islanders had gone. In November 1884, Trafalgar Vale sawmill employed about 40 non-indentured workers, most of whom lived in cottages near the mill. By 1889 the number of employees had risen to 50. Several of Burnett's sons also worked in the family business.〔 In the mid-1880s, Burnett entered into partnership with a number of Brisbane businessmen to subdivide much of the former Trafalgar Vale plantation as the Wellington Point Estate. The estate sold reasonably well, as the railway line was about to be extended to Wellington Point and on to Cleveland. Further subdivision and sales were made by the syndicate in the late 1880s, by which time the railway had arrived.〔 Gilbert Burnett was an important identity in the local community. He was a major employer of local labour, a Justice of the Peace, a member of the Tingalpa Divisional Board for many years, and first chairman of the Cleveland Divisional Board in 1885. In 1889, he replaced his earlier and more modest home with the large timber house now known as Whepstead, but initially called Fernbourne. Constructed of cypress pine supplied from the Trafalgar Vale sawmill, it was a large and flamboyant house with 14 rooms on three levels, designed to impress. The ground floor comprised drawing room, dining room, breakfast room, study, bathroom, pantries and wide entrance hall. From this hall a substantial timber staircase led to the first floor and the four principal bedrooms, all of which opened off a central hallway and onto wide, encircling verandahs with magnificent views of the surrounding country and out to Waterloo Bay and Moreton Bay beyond. Another staircase led from the first floor hall to two well-ventilated attic bedrooms. It is not clear whether any sections of the earlier house were incorporated into the new structure. In April 1889, architect Claude William Chambers had called tenders for alterations and additions in wood to a villa residence at Cleveland, and this is thought to refer to Fernbourne. Physical evidence suggests that the earlier kitchen wing was retained, but that the main part of the house was completely rebuilt.〔 In 1889, Fernbourne sat in a substantial garden of approximately 4.5 acres (1.8 hectares), which had been laid out in the mid-1870s in association with the first Burnett residence. The garden contained an established orchard and vineyard, flower beds, kitchen garden, ornamental shrubs and trees, bushhouses with ferns, orchids and palms, and several fountains of stone and rock work. One of the most substantial and aesthetically pleasing in a district renowned for its fine gardens, the Fernbourne garden was watered from a bore deep, which fed a large tank on a stand high, creating sufficient pressure to feed the baths and taps in the house and kitchen, as well as to operate the fountains. Within the grounds were the stabling, outhouses and a kitchen, all of which may have dated to pre-1889.〔 Fernbourne was built during the wave of boom-time investment and speculation which characterised the late 1880s, but in 1891, as the boom burst and the credit squeeze tightened, Burnett was declared insolvent. His fine new house, together with its grounds of just over 4.5 acres, was put up for auction in October 1891. Title was transferred a month later to Edward Robert Drury, general manager of the Queensland National Bank Ltd. When the Burnett family left Fernbourne , they erected a smaller house on the eastern side of the railway line at Wellington Point, still on part of their original Trafalgar Vale estate and near the sawmill. This, their third home in the Wellington Point area, they also named Fernbourne, and it is likely that the first Fernbourne was renamed Whepstead at this time - certainly it had acquired this name by 1909, when the house was up for sale.〔 Despite the insolvency, the Burnett family continued operation of the Trafalgar Vale sawmill until , when fire may have destroyed the mill. From 1899 to 1913, Gilbert Burnett, with his substantial knowledge of timbers and sawmilling, held a government position as a Ranger of Crown Lands in the Brisbane and Ipswich districts. He died at the second Fernbourne in 1925, and his name and those of his children are perpetuated in the names of the streets surrounding Whepstead.〔 After the Burnett family left the first Fernbourne (now Whepstead), there followed a succession of owners and lessees. In the late 1890s the house was occupied by James Vincent Chataway, Minister for Public Lands and Agriculture 1898-1901. Mrs Emilie O'Connell, widow of Hon. William Henry Bligh O'Connell, Secretary for Public Lands from 1899 until his death in 1903, appears to have occupied Whepstead from until it was purchased by pastoralist Edgar Gustav Parnell in 1911. The Parnell family resided at Whepstead until the mid-1930s, and reportedly made some changes to the grounds.〔 In 1943 Matron Ethel Dolley purchased the house and converted it into the Bay View Private Hospital. The grounds remained largely unaltered, but the house was sheathed in fibro, with louvre windows along the verandahs. A toilet block was erected post-1945. The property remained a hospital until 1973, when it reverted to a private residence. In 1977 the remaining land around Whepstead was subdivided, and the house on 5050 square metres was sold and refurbished as a restaurant. A number of owners since have maintained Whepstead as a restaurant and function centre.〔 The smaller Fernbourne was burned down in September 2012. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Whepstead, Wellington Point」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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