Summer Beach Spotlight: Cottesloe 1890s mining boom offering with captain’s turret

Summer Beach Spotlight: Cottesloe 1890s mining boom offering with captain’s turret
Jonathan ChancellorDecember 8, 2020

Belvedere, a limestone 1897 Cottesloe residence, has been listed with $5.5 million-plus hopes. 

It’s been listed by Perth lawyer Liz Barclay through estate agent Justin Davies of Space Real Estate. 

The heritage-listed house with turret views to RottnestIsland is one of three limestone homes in a rare grouping that includes Tukurua and Le Fanu. They are examples of grand beachside homes exhibiting the affluence that accompanied the gold boom of the 1890s. 

Belvedere was constructed by a wealthy mining investor, J. J. Campbell, who managed a tin mine in Queensland and built Belvedere for his father, mother and siblings. 

It was used as a family residence until the 1930s, when it was let out as a boarding house. 

In 1974 the house was put on the market as a development site but purchased by Loretta and Tom Pell, who restored the house for family use. 

Belvedere was set for demolition in 1974 but the

Rosendo Street
house, which sits on a 1,300-square-metre block, was saved and restored to its former Federation Queen Anne-style glory. 

Cottesloe was named by Governor Frederick Broome, in 1886, soon gathering the wealthy of Perth during the summer months as the beach is sheltered from the south-west winds in summer and protected by reefs and islands off the coast. 

Although the Perth-to-Fremantle railway opened in 1881, the beach remained relatively unsettled, with only six permanent residents living there in 1893. 

But by 1897, the population of the Cottesloe area was approaching 1,500 permanent residents. 

Its three-storey, 11-metre-tall tower was reputedly built so that retired sea captain Thomas Campbell could watch shipping movements with a telescope. 

The property which originally stretched to the beach reserve is now 50 metres from the beach. 

It has five bedrooms, two bathrooms, wrap-around verandas and pool. It last traded in 2005 at $3.85 million. 

Another Cottesloe Federation Queen Anne-style property, Trafalgar House, constructed in 1915 for William Liddell, the manager of Hoskins Foundry and Kalgoorlie Foundry, is listed through Chris Shellabear at Shellabears.

 

 

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.

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