Headingley House, Woollahra trophy home sold by John Spender
Headingley House, the Woollahra home of John Spender QC, has been sold, price undisclosed.
It was his diplomat father, Sir Percy Spender, who bought it from the Kater pastoralist family in 1949 for £11,676.
The dapper Queen's Counsel, who now does commercial arbitration, moved into the stunning Georgian-style Wellington Street residence in 1985.
While he was the Member of the House of Representatives for the seat of North Sydney - before Joe Hockey's election - he would occasionally take the trip from his eastern suburbs home to the lower North Shore electorate in his late father's white Rolls Royce.
His politician father, an eminent jurist, had left his bar practice in 1949 and entered, as member for Warringah, the federal political arena when the Liberals took office and Sir Percy Spender became minister for external affairs, during which he negotiated the ANZUS Treaty.
He then was posted to Washington in 1951 as Australian ambassador and in 1958 was appointed Australia's first judge of the International Court of Justice. In 1964 he became its president.
The Spenders' overseas posting spanned 16 years.
The Kater pastoral dynasty headed by Sir Norman was centred around the 1900 Federation Cudal property Nyrang. Sir Norman, who was trained as a doctor, then took over the Egelabra Stud at Warren in 1910. He died in 1965.
The LJ Hooker marketing noted the Woollahra house was built in the 1880s and then redesigned by acclaimed architect Professor Leslie Wilkinson in the 1930s.
On listing, selling agent Bill Malouf said he was not indicating a public price guidance, pointing to several recent Woollahra trophy home sales that all were in double digit millions instead.
The street talk is $13 million plus.