47 Mclean Parade, Ashgrove

This was the earliest houses built on the Grove Estate, one of the first suburban housing estates in the Ashgrove area. It was not until the introduction of a tram line to the area in 1924 that suburban development in Ashgrove began in earnest. The district's earliest extant house was built at St John's Wood around 1865. The following year Waterworks Road was built to provide access to Enoggera reservoir and a few scattered farms and gold diggings were established. By the mid 1870s when construction began on Alexander Stewart's home  Glen Lyon, the district was still mostly bush and vacant land.

The Grove Estate, comprising more than 500 residential allotments, was released for sale in  1884, following an unsuccessful attempt to sell the land under the name of the Holmesbrook Estate in the 1870s.

Auction posters for the estate showed it as an idyllic rural outpost Xv4dth scattered farmhouses nestled among native bush. The estate was marketed to s the middle class: advertisements invited "Private Gentlemen, Government Officials, Merchants, Clerks and others on the lookout for a first-rate Suburban Site" to inspect the estate. Despite glowing descriptions: "Thé two main portions that comprise the Grove Estate embrace the most available and empathically the most charming sites in this portion of the parish of Enoggera...", It • was not an immediate success. Buyers were attracted to areas with easy access, better public transport and more local services and amenities. Apart from a few exceptions, those who did eventually buy in this locale were not the middle class families envisaged, but members of the working class, such as John Yardley, who could not afford land in more convenient suburbs.

Years after the estate had been offered, few houses had appeared. An 1891 map of a nearby estate, shows less than 40 scattered residences at the Grove Estate by that stage. By the turn of the century, fewer than 50 houses had been built. Ashgrove as a whole remained a rural outpost, dominated by dairy farms, market gardens and some scattered villas. A few more houses were built between 1900 and the 1920s, and the area consolidated during the interwar period.

John Yardley purchased this 16 perch allotment in 1886 and two years later borrowed El 00, presumably to finance the consfruction of this house. It is possible that nearby Yardley Avenue was named after this early resident. John and Emma Yardley had two sons: John Levi and William. John Yardley died on 26 December 193 1, aged 87 and his wife passed away less than a month later. As John Yardley died without a will, his property passed to the Public Curator of Queensland as trustee. The Yardley's unmarried son John inherited the property, and lived here until his death in 1958. The property again passed to the Public Curator and after a series of ownership changes, was acquired by the present owner in 1992.

1. Allom Lovell Marquis-Kyle, "Local Area Containment: An Historical Analysis" 1991

2. Brisbane Courier, 4 October 1884

3. Grove Estate Map 1884

4. Forest Grove Estate Map 1891

5. Queensland Post Office Directories

6. Queensland Family History Society, Toowong Cemetery Monumental Inscriptions, Vol 4, 1988

7. Titles Office Records