278 Harcourt Street, Teneriffe

This large timber home was probably built sometime between 1879 and the late 1880s for Robert Skerrit Exton. Exton established a successful painting and decorating business in Harcourt Street in the 1870s before taking on George Gough as a partner and moving their premises to a fine new warehouse at Petrie Bight in the 1880s. Exton and Gough worked on major Brisbane buildings including the Treasury Buildings, Custom House, and the stained glass windows of St Stephen’s Cathedral.Title to ‘Cluna’ passed to Robert Exton’s wife, Rose in 1896 and to their spinster daughters Ada and Amy in 1939 before passing out of the Exton family in 1985. Extensions by the firm of J Hall & Son were added to the house in 1893. A small building at the rear of the property is possibly the original stables or buggy shed of the house.