Stanton Bed & Breakfast

Okay, I know that under the ‘History’ heading you can find out all about Stanton’s beginnings and everything in between, but this photograph prompts a quick architectural/veranda explanation.

When Stanton was first built in 1817, and as evidenced by other historical photographs and paintings, she was a typical rectangular symmetrical unpainted Georgian house, built from convict bricks produced on site … and … no verandahs!

The rather wonderful sandstone steps, worn to a frazzle by 188 years of constant to-ings and fro-ings, are original, but when, around 1940, the new owners, the Cockerills, decided to graft wooden verandas to the front and two sides, the steps were fortunately moved and re-used.

Waste not, want not. In 1940, the new flooring was wooden, both top and bottom, and the only access to the upstairs veranda was via an external wooden staircase which snaked around beside the chimney breast at the rear of the house (think about it, or have a look at the floor plans we’ve included somewhere in this site).

Yep, no doorway through the now library upstairs, that was just a window. (According to my neighbour Phil, who is a past resident of Stanton, the many kids who lived here used to careen around the veranda, jumping in and out of each other’s bedrooms and generally causing utter mayhem, and scaring the living daylights out of any visitors — nice touch, I think.)

When the Rumley family bought the property in 1988, Ian Rumley set about correcting that access with the conversion of the window to French doors upstairs, and replacing the by-then rotting downstairs floorboards with the beautiful and immense sandstone blocks you see today.

A visitor to Stanton soon after we arrived asked whether we were going to be ‘Georgian purists’, and remove the verandas altogether, in addition to stripping the paint off the bricks, and return her to her ‘former glory’.

“Mmm … no”, I said. Most houses grow with their owners and their needs and budget, even the brilliant ones like Entally and Clarendon up near Launceston.

The symmetry of Stanton is not lost by their addition, and the living quality, which is after all the important thing, is enhanced. The house seems to sit comfortably with her new protuberance, and since arriving, we have replaced the rather dangerous upstairs floorboards and joists, and installed lighting both upstairs and down.

Our neighbours joke that when the lights of Stanton are a-glow, the whole valley suffers a power melt-down, but it is a magnificent sight to behold (and the pizza man can’t miss it on a dark night.)

As for removing the paint from the brickwork, I have yet to be convinced that the cure is not more dangerous than the disease, since convict bricks shatter and fall to powder much easier than their modern counterparts, but who knows, maybe one day …

Meanwhile, follow the trend of family, friends and guests alike, and take your drink/nibbles/book/crossword/newspaper/guitar/camera out to the verandahs and enjoy the view. The builders of Stanton would surely approve.

Late in the afternoons, the light in the Back River area is a visual feast. In 1817, the Shone family originally built the house facing north/south, which is the optimum arrangement in the United Kingdom for light and warmth, but not ideal for Australia.

By the 1830-40s, the colonials had worked it out, but by then Stanton was well established, so north/south it is. This is not without its advantages. We face down the valley towards Mt Field in the southwest, and so are witness to the most amazing sunsets.

The only thing that could be better is sunsets over water, so some kind soul created the front dam! (At least they didn’t have to go to the lengths that some gentry did in the English counties, which involved moving whole villages which were blocking their outlook.)

The addition of willows, poplars and other deciduous trees only enhance an already spectacular view, framed as it is by the surrounding hills and mountains. We have many plans to increase the number of trees at Stanton, especially varieties like Japanese maple, silver birch, crab-apple, liquid amber, and other colourful autumnal celebrities.

The “Autumn in the Valley Festival” in April is the most important in the area, and not without cause.

The Derwent River is blessed with wonderful treed banks, craggy cliffs, energetic rapids and artistic bends, forming the backdrop to the festival which is held on the Esplanade in New Norfolk.

The river is central to the town’s existence, its importance deriving originally as a transport and logging route, but now as a recreational venue, never more in evidence than at the festival when many Hobartians and tourists alike arrive via ferries and sailing ships from Hobart.

Good music, local food and wine, produce and artworks, and a chance to spend a day ‘at play’ with the locals. Highly recommended.

Simple, efficient, elegant, modern — with a salute to past eras.

One of the more amusing stories came when, prior to dividing a larger bedroom into two mirror-image bathrooms, a gentleman was shown around the house, and said, “Well, of course, you’re going to put in authentic Georgian bathrooms, aren’t you?”

Slightly stunned, I thought he was having a go, then realised, no, he’s serious.

“What, a pot under the bed, a tin bath in front of the fire, and a jug and basin in the corner, with the use of an outhouse during the day?”

Spluttering, he recovered his equilibrium, and joked it off, for of course, he had meant a Victorian bathroom.

Another well-meaning friend was adamant that we should have large spa baths in the bathrooms, but I replied that I thought guests would understand that the integrity of the house, and indeed the skillion roof, didn’t leave enough room for these, and besides, we have the heated spa house in the garden which is a much more social way in which to “spa”.

Architecturally, Stanton has several stand-out points, the most obvious being the staircase, the fireplaces and chimneys, and the beautiful pit-sawn floorboards.

There are only three sandstone cantilevered staircases in Australia, and this is one of them. (I believe there is one other in Tasmania and the other in Sydney.)

When the Rumleys arrived in 1988, a length of plumbers’ pipe was used as a railing, and so Ian Rumley sourced the present simple wooden banister from an old house, Belmont, in Hobart which was being restored.

I was therefore really chuffed when Mrs Helen Andrews (nee Shone) visited and mentioned that, when she lived at Stanton as a girl, the original banister was very similar to the present one. Some things were obviously meant to be.

The five chimneys of Stanton accommodate seven fireplaces, and five of the surrounds are unusually made of sandstone.

In Georgian times, these would often have been painted to highlight the stonemason’s skill with carving, and we have left the fireplace in the living room in its original form, warts and all to illustrate that fact.

Interestingly, it wasn’t until a former resident of Stanton gave us a scanned copy of a watercolour from pre-1940 times that we realised that there had been a sixth chimney, in the now extended single-storey wing in which Mark and I live.

This housed the washhouse, and the chimney serviced a large boiler. At the same time, a newspaper photograph taken from the rear of the house in 1935 showed an open but covered walkway across the rear of the house, leading to that washhouse.

It is gratifying to know that these areas, and indeed the extension, lie over the site of a similar structure.

Thomas Shone at Stanton

Here is the potted history I’ve been promising (threatening?) to write for ages.

Anything to get my web master off my back … also I thought it was appropriate that it be written as we approach the property’s 190th birthday this December.

On 23rd December 1816, Thomas Shone arrived in the Derwent Valley, at what was to become the property Stanton.

Thomas came from Sydney, having served four years of a sentence for passing a forged note in Shrewsbury, England, where he worked in a solicitors’ office.

His pardon came gift-wrapped with a 60 acre land grant and three convicts, and with the Van Diemen’s Land hierarchy trying to ‘domesticate’ the areas outside of Hobart Town, Shone was given a wooded tract of land just outside of the fledgling township of New Norfolk.

This area had been settled largely by free settlers from Norfolk Island, displaced by that island’s closure as a convict ‘depot’ in 1808.

The area still is home to the descendants of these rugged individuals.

The name ‘Stanton’ was chosen by Thomas as an acknowledgement of his home village of Stanton-upon-Hine, in the old county of Salop, England.

He wasted no time in clearing land, erecting rough fencing for stock, finding a water supply (the area now known as Magra was originally called Back River, after the small river near Stanton) and erecting rough shelters.

Lil and Amy Shone with cousin Florenza in the middle

Using a north/south alignment (as was the custom in England), a house site was chosen on gently sloping land above a spring creek, surrounded by hills, and facing towards the opening to this ‘hidden’ valley.

The bricks were made by the convicts on the property, and the two-storey Georgian Stanton dates from the following year, 1817.

There is some evidence that the front of the house may have been built first, and then when more bricks and money became available, the back sloping section was added.

The original kitchen was a separate building at the rear, and a variety of outbuildings were erected nearby, including an oast house, stables, shearing sheds and quarters, barns, and smaller homes for other family members and retainers.

The ravages of bushfires through the 19th century have meant that these have disappeared, but thankfully the home itself was saved.

Bushfires remain a threat, and as recently as January 2003, a helicopter was uplifting water from Stanton’s largest dam to help in saving neighbouring properties.

A subsequent additional land grant of 60 acres, and Shone’s success at raising sheep and cattle, and growing wheat, barley, hops, vegetables and soft fruits, meant that he was in a position to purchase further land totalling approximately 200 acres in the Back River area.

(He also owned farms at Ouse and further along the Derwent towards present day Bridgewater.)

Minnie Estelle Shone [December 20 1911]

The Shones’ success as farmers did not escape the attention of bushranger Martin Cash.

This Irish convict had been at Norfolk Island, escaped from Port Arthur, and ranged around the southern parts of the Midlands and Hobart with his gang members Jones and Cavanagh.

Cash’s Cave remains in the heavily bushed gully in the hills behind Stanton, and it was from here that he watched the property until, in February 1843, during an afternoon social gathering, he and his gang kidnapped a neighbouring farmer, James Bradshaw, and used his identity to gain entrance to the house.

Once inside, they herded the family, servants and friends into the living room, until 16 people were at gunpoint.

Removing valuables from their person and from the house, the Cash gang made off back into the hills, eventually being captured finally in August of that year, after a celebrated foot chase through the streets of Hobart.

This robbery is celebrated in Cash’s autobiography, and is the subject of a chapter of Frank Clunes’ book, Martin Cash (1955).

An interesting postscript to the event is that, during the enquiry into the robbery, the presiding magistrate decided that ‘Thomas Shone is not a fit and proper person to be supervising convict labour, and they will therefore be removed.’

Shone understandably petitioned his innocence, the crux of the matter seeming to be that the powers-that-be suspected Shone of at worst complicity, at best sympathy, with the bushrangers, and that he was not deemed to have put up a sufficient fight during the robbery.

Shone protested that he and his family and friends were at gunpoint, the bushrangers took many things of value from the house, and what else was he supposed to do?! Authority won out, and Shone lost his convicts.

Amy and Lil

Thomas Shone’s family owned Stanton until 1935, when the three brothers who conjointly owned the property, decided to sell up.

But … by the terms of their father’s will, they were bound to allow their mother and any unmarried sisters to have the use of the house until such time as they died, remarried or chose not to reside there.

By 1935, their mother had passed on, but two spinster sisters remained.

Their solution was to sell to a distant cousin, James Cockerill, but with very strict provisos regarding the division of the house — the Shone sisters had the use of the sitting and dining rooms downstairs, and the three bedrooms across the front of the house.

The Cockerill family lived in the three back bedrooms, and the two larger rooms downstairs, with all residents of the house having common use of the front hall and staircase.

Eventually (in their 90s!) one of the sisters passed away and the other moved into New Norfolk, and the Cockerills gained the use of the entire house.

Walter Stone (grandmother Morey’s brother) down in the orchard

Around 1940, the 2 storey wooden verandahs were added to Stanton, and unfortunately paint was applied to the beautiful honey-coloured bricks.

We have restored the verandahs, but removing the paint has been put in the ‘too hard’ basket for now - convict bricks are notoriously brittle and the cure may be worse than the disease.

The Cockerills remained at Stanton until 1988, when the house and its remaining 16.5 acres were purchased by Ian & Bev Rumley from Bushy Park.

Much work was required to halt the building’s decline and the Rumleys were responsible for building the sympathetic outbuildings and single storey extension of today, and with their convict brick facings and period fittings forming a sort of courtyard, they mirror what was a common arrangement of buildings in working properties.

For Stanton was always that - not a grand manor house like Tynwald, no history of being a large and prosperous inn like Glen Derwent, no huge estate like Askrigg, Stanton was a family property, prosperous yes, but always full of life, love, children and music.

Being the owners of a property with such a long history is wonderful - we still pinch ourselves to believe that we live here.

But it is also a huge responsibility, not just to the past, but to the future.

We have met so many descendants of the Shone family, and are friends with the Cockerill/Burn families, that it is almost like having extra families.

Indeed when tracing the Shone family tree, it occasionally feels like mine! It has been an honour to open the house to the public for the first time in its history, and we derive much joy from watching guests’ faces when they realise that they are actually going to sleep in one of the oldest houses in Australia.

It still blows me away too.

A family gathering