35 Amy Street, Hawthorne

During the 1860s and 1870s land in the district remained in large holdings of generally around 50 to 100 acres and was mainly used for farming.  Bulimba residents and farmers travelled to Brisbane using an overland track that passed through Galloways Hill before joining the track that linked Brisbane and Cleveland. From 1864 a licensed ferry operated between Bulimba and New Farm. 

Pollet Cardew resold almost 73 acres of his land in 1874 to William Baynes who resold it to Robert Muter Stewart in May 1875.  Stewart was a partner in the firm Scott, Dawson and Stewart and served as Colonial Secretary of Queensland from 1876-7.

In the 1880s Brisbane’s economy boomed and immigrants poured into the colony. A suspension bridge across the river linking Hawthorne to New Farm and Fortitude Valley was proposed and numerous large land holdings were subdivided and sold. Not least of these was Stewart’s holding. Stewart had been appointed a director of the Queensland National Bank in 1885 and relocated to London, forcing the sale of his land. Subdivided into 375 allotments, the ‘Hawthorne Estate’, Stewart’s 72-acre allotment, was offered for sale from 1885, including his residence, ‘Hawthorne House’ (approximately the intersection of Virginia and Aaron Avenues, but later burned down).

The two subdivisions (55 and 56) on which this house stands were purchased from Stewart by James Hipwood as part of a parcel totalling more than two acres in July 1887. Hipwood, an Alderman in the City Council, was at that time Lord Mayor of Brisbane. The property appears to have been an investment; Hipwood resided in Coorparoo.

Hipwood held on to the property until April 1902 when he sold it to James Liddle, head piano tuner for H.J. Pollard and Co. The Liddles – James and wife Jeanie – had relocated from Langshaw Street, New Farm, and moved into Amy Street around 1891. 

The Liddle family suffered a series of misfortunes in the early 1900s. The death of Jeanie in 1904 was followed by the death of their son James, who had also been a piano tuner, in 1907. James senior died in 1911 and the house passed to his oldest grandchild, Josephine, as administrix. The house was eventually owned by all of the surviving grandchildren in 1921, but it was primarily the residence of their mother, Annie Nancy Liddle. After her death in 1948, her daughter Jeannie lived in the house. It was finally sold out of the Liddle family in 1973. The property has since had a number of owners, and was purchased by the present occupants in 1993.