Pill Residence

After William Quentin Markwell purchased Portion 146, on 26 February 1886, he subdivided the land and created the Burwood Estate. This estate fronted the Main Gympie Road and it included Nundah, Sport, Kedron, Hill (now Childers) and Water (now Boothby) Streets, as well as a proposed sports ground reserve bordering Kedron Brook. While these streets were shown on the estate map, they had not been gazetted by the Kedron Shire Council and therefore did not officially exist at the time that the land was put up for sale. On 22 August 1886, I.J. Markwell auctioned the 252 allotments of the Burwood Estate. The first auction was held at 88 Queen Street, in the City and inducements included free lunch and free transport to and from the auction.  

Subdivisions 178 to 181, totalling 1 rood, 24 perches, was sold to Jane Kent, the wife of Robert Kent, on 19 March 1889. There is no evidence to suggest she constructed a house there at this time. Indeed, in 1890, she is recorded additionally as the owner of subdivisions 218 to 223, an area of 2 roods 16 perches that backed onto her original Burwood Estate purchase.

On 8 May 1909, the title to Subdivisions 178 to 181 was transferred to Stephen Pill. He already owned subdivisions 184 and 186 (in Hill Street) since March 1891 and subdivisions 215 to 217 (in Water St) since March 1892. His name first appears in Queensland Post Office Directories in 1900 under a Gympie Road, Kedron address and at the time Hill Street was not listed as an address in the directory.

Pill had been associated with Kedron’s major industry, tanneries, since 1889. In that year, he worked with Alf and Harry Maggs, Bert Burnett and Harry New at Paul Maggs’s Edinburgh Tannery in Ramsey Street. In 1892, Pill began to dig tannery pits in the backyard of his Gympie Road residence. The site expanded into his Cornwall Tannery, which produced a range of sole and upper leathers for shoes. By 1907, Pill had expanded even further by taking over Patrick McGlynn’s Eclipse Tannery that operated beside Kedron Brook at the end of Hill Street.

On 27 February 1917, Pill took out a mortgage on his Hill Street land through the English, Scottish and Australian Bank Limited. This mortgage was possibly used to pay for the construction of Pill’s house on the land at subdivisions 184 and 186. With his old residence now a part of his tannery, Pill needed a new house that was close to his business. He took out a second mortgage, through the National Bank for ₤2,000, on 24 September 1924. This was possibly used for business purposes as the Cornwall Tannery continued to operate, despite a disastrous factory fire in the mid-1940s, until 1973. 

After his death on 18 February 1923, Pill’s property was transferred to his widow, Elizabeth Pill, with the Union Trustee Company of Australia Ltd as devisee in trust. The title remained in her name until 13 August 1950, when it was transferred jointly to Naomi Craigie and Florence E. Craigie. The family home quickly returned to the Pills, when Stephen Pill & Son Pty. Ltd. obtained the property on 6 August 1951. When Johnson & Sons Pty. Ltd purchased the Cornwall tannery in 1960, they also gained ownership of the Pill residence. Since then, the house at 12 Childers Street has been transferred to the Estates Property Investments Corporation in August 1973; to Boponia Pty. Ltd. in September 1973; to Geoffrey Mitchell Glanville in February 1977; to Lionel and Arrianne Beckett in June 1980; and to Roydon and Mary Hollis in November 1993.  

The house, built in a simple, elegant form echoing the Federation style, appears to be in fairly original conditions.

1. Brisbane City Council, Properties on the Web, website

2. Brisbane City Council, 1946 aerial photographs.

3. Department of Natural Resources, Queensland Certificate of Title records

4. John Oxley Library, Brisbane Suburbs – Estate Maps

5. Queensland Post Office Directories, 1868-1949

6. Teague, DR., The History of Kedron, Colonial Press, 1976