A grand country mansion nestled in suburbia
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Imagine for a minute lifting an historic 1860s mansion – complete with ornate gardens and massive rolling hills – from the Southern Highlands and placing it smack bang in the middle of suburban Canberra.
Because that is exactly what Tea Gardens Homestead looks like.
Jessika Ahlgren and Tim Hubbard have spent five years restoring one of Canberra’s oldest houses, set on magnificent private gardens and backing onto the golf course at 10 Yirawala Street, Ngunnawal.
Of course, the home was there, long before the suburbs sprang up around it. And through the concerted efforts of this energetic couple, and a few families who came before them, it has remained – despite the ever-present threat of developers who have wanted to raze it and sell the land off in blocks.
Now with every room fully renovated, restored and decorated to Country Style Magazine level, and the gardens in such a state of green abundance that the house has featured in the Open Garden’s scheme, Jess and Tim have finished their labour of love, and this home is hitting the market.
Of course, it didn’t look anything like it does today when they bought it to blend their respective families and needed a large five-bedroom home close to schools and amenities.
The couple, who both enjoy busy careers in the property industry, bought the home as a deceased estate, and the first time they opened one of the original sash windows, it crashed to the ground (Tim has painstakingly restored each one since then). It was so full of cobwebs and spiders that it made their youngest daughter cry. The building was in a state of disrepair and deemed too damaged to receive heritage listing.
But Jess and Tim saw its incredible potential and wanted a creative outlet. They moved the family in and got straight to work.
“We have come a long way,” says Jess, whose obvious flair for design has turned the run-down and rambling homestead into the visual jewel it is today.
From the street, the view is actually of the back of the house – a stately, wide homestead built in red brick with original fixtures. But the front of the house, overlooking an expanse of green space, is picture-book perfect.
So, how did it come to be here?
In the 1800s, as Canberra’s forefathers moved in and took up various settlements, the lush land of Ginninderra appealed to one of the city’s first families, the Rolfes. At the time the homestead was built, it was connected via a dirt track to a road which was the precursor to the Barton Highway.
As the city has blossomed around it, the home has remained standing, and through a miracle of city planning, it has also kept its “acreage” through the Gungahlin Lakes Golf Course being established on its back border.
This means the kitchen, living areas and master bedroom look out onto rolling green hills and the meandering Ginninderra Creek rather than someone’s back fence and clothesline. All this, and yet the Gungahlin city centre and Canberra CBD are just minutes away. It is a location unlike any other.
And for lovers of classic interiors with a touch of provincial country, this home will positively set your heart aflutter.
With a bold colour scheme, including a navy kitchen and burgundy living areas, the home oozes sophistication. Pressed tin is used to great effect, both in the kitchen and in a brass feature wall for the home’s very own bar.
The “kids’” bathroom is a vision with its oversized copper bath, matching sink and tapware, while the master suite has a private oasis of walk-through wardrobe and enormous ensuite.
Heritage lovers will love the original light switches, feature walls which use bricks made on-site, and will picture themselves sitting in the beautiful, tiled verandah, which has been built in to make a garden room. Others will prefer the serenity of the front living room with its neutral colour scheme and fireplace. The former meat “room” is now a media room.
Like any functional family home, most of the action happens in the enormous country-style kitchen, where a humongous tree peeks over the vaulted ceiling skylights that Tim and Jess installed.
This part of the house is an addition to the original layout, but holds the distinction of having Jarrah floorboards that were offcuts for those used in the construction of New Parliament House. If you want a house with multiple historic connections to the city, then go no further.
The design choices are bold, but always beautiful. You could spend millions of dollars to live anywhere you want in Canberra, but you’d be hard-pressed to find an (oversized) kitchen sink with windows onto such extraordinary views as here.
Which brings us to the gardens. Part of the five-year program of making over this homestead was to create an oasis of outdoor living to take full advantage of the unique view. Tim and Jess have done the gardens themselves with the aid of their mate Craig, painstakingly planting the veggie garden beds, establishing a flower farm, re-establishing a small orchard, erecting modern sculptural screens covered in ivy and creating an epic sandstone firepit from which many a major party has benefited.
Indeed, this home easily holds 100 for a shindig, and that epic bar room is always the centre of attraction.
The couple has loved the challenges of giving this grand old dame a major facelift and pays credit to her “good bones”.
Despite having worked on many houses, Tim noted he had never seen one with such solid foundations and structural integrity.
“They really don’t build them like this anymore.”
It will be an absolute wrench to leave, but the need for intergenerational living means the family needs more space, and they do not want to mess with the home’s cohesive layout by adding more rooms, nor impinge on its views by building out the back.
She is perfect, just the way she is.
“We have made it as beautiful as we can make it, and now it is time for another family to love it as much as we have,” says Jess.
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Photography by Andrew Ly, Nineteen Creative
