Wilmington

‘Wilmington’ was constructed circa 1920 by C.H. Mossop, for the family of Thomas Henry Ogilvie, a Fortitude Valley dentist. In 1919-20 Ogilvie had purchased three subdivisions of the Perry Estate, Bowen Hills, offered for sale in the 1910s. Although Bowen Hills was in the process of becoming an industrial area, it retained pockets of elegant residences such as this area which featured, among others, ‘Cintra House’ and ‘Miegunyah’. Ogilvie’s house, set on the hill above Perry’s Park, had street frontages to Folkestone and Jordan Terrace and was two storeyed in part, to compensate for the slope. The house was sold in 1932 to Edith Keen, whose family had built and owned the nearby ‘Abbotsleigh’. Renamed ‘Norwich’, the large brick residence remained the Keen residence until the 1980s. The house is an existing example of the status and prestige of this locality in the early twentieth century.