Hatton's Shophouse

Ellen Maud Dinneen, a spinster, bought the 6.5 perch block of land on 5 October 1888. Ellen Dinneen was the daughter of Margaret Dinneen, a long-term Spring Hill resident. Margaret owned a site slightly uphill from this one on Berry Street from 1867, where she operated a boarding house. Ellen married one of the boarding house tenants, David Owens, on 28 May 1889.

Ellen Owens mortgaged the site for £350 through Charles Bertrand Lilley and Thomas O’Sullivan on 24 September 1889. This mortgage was probably used to pay for the erection of the shop/house at the corner of Berry and Amy (now Sedgebrook) Streets. According to the 1890 edition of the Queensland Post Office Directory, there was house under construction on this site during 1890. By 1890 Spring Hill was the most populated suburb in Brisbane and the demand for accommodation was too high to leave a site vacant. The Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885 attempted to avoid the creation of slums, with Spring Hill as a particular focus, but legislators had considered the impact on owners of small lots. The Act did not apply retroactively, so allotments of less than sixteen perches which had been created before the Act – like Owens’ land – were not affected. 

In 1889 a W Owens advertised for tenders from plumbers and gasfitters for the Berry Street job, suggesting that the Owen family participated in the construction of the building. The building was completed by 1890, and a year later was valued at £225. The store was leased to grocer Alfred Hatton, formerly occupant of a shop on the opposite site of Berry and Amy Streets.

The building is typical of a number of shop/houses built around Brisbane during the nineteenth century, with the ground floor used for retail or trade purposes while the owner lived on the floor above. Vertical development was a way of maximising the available space on small sites in packed suburbs. In Berry Street, tenants sub-let properties, offering rooms with ‘every convenience’ for lease, while storekeepers and dressmakers rented the downstairs shop. Its corner position was an advantage for multi-tenanted dwellings, allowing maximum light and air to reach each room, and the Berry Street location was convenient for Spring Hill and city workers.

Berry Street grew significantly in the 1890s, with boarding houses and multi-tenanted dwellings built near Wickham Terrace. The Amy and Berry Street corner formed a small commercial precinct with shops on each side of Amy Street. Civic works were undertaken, including the improvement of drainage and the installation of street lighting. From the late 1890s the corner became a place for political meetings, where candidates addressed their potential constituents.

In the 1910s Ellen Owens defaulted on rates over land she owned in Caboolture and Ithaca and those properties were sold. In 1916 her Berry Street shop was offered for sale by order of her mortgagees. The ‘two-storied shop and dwelling’ had six rooms and was ‘recently renovated’. Bridget Cullen purchased the property with a £250 mortgage in 1917. The Cullens owned a number of properties in Berry Street and appear to have lived elsewhere, but they ran the grocery store through the 1920s. Hygienic standards were apparently lax though, as Mrs Cullen was prosecuted in 1922 for having ‘food or garbage on [the] premises… which would have a tendency to furnish food for rats’ (Telegraph 21 June 1922 p3). In 1927 the property was sold to Alexander Fites, a hotel proprietor from Charleville. It was referred to as ‘Central Store’, with self-contained flats above.

Over the course of the twentieth century the building developed as a landmark for photographers and artists sketching Berry Street, situated at a bend in the road and the striking two-storey building was highly visible from the Leichhardt Street end of Berry Street.

The shop continued to be used for retail purposes through the twentieth century though it has since reverted to dwelling only. It has been held by the family of the current owners since 1964.

1. Brisbane City Archive Brisbane Images

2. Brisbane City Council Archives, map of Spring Hill, 1865

3. Brisbane City Council, Properties on the Web, Building Cards

4. Brisbane City Council aerial photographs, 1946, 2012

5. Brisbane City Council’s Central Library, local history sheets

6. Department of Natural Resources, Queensland Certificates of Title and other records

7. John Oxley Library, Brisbane Suburbs – Estate Maps

8. National Library of Australia, Trove website, The Brisbane Courier, The Courier Mail, The Telegraph.

9. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Picture Queensland

10. Queensland Government, Queensland Pioneers Index 1829-1889, (Brisbane: Department of Justice and Attorney General, 2000)

11. Department of Attorney-General and Justice, Queensland Births Deaths and Marriages Historic Records

12. Queensland Post Office Directories, 1868-1949