Medical Superintendent’s Residence

Built-in 1898

Today known as Manor House stands near the eastern edge of the Central Administration and Services Area.  Built as a substantial residence for the medical superintendent and his family, it is highly intact and in 2020 the rooms accommodate offices with little alteration to the original fabric. It has been incorporated into a fenced high-security area and its open garden setting is retained.

The house faces southeastwards down the sloping terrain across Gailes Golf Course out to the surrounding landscape and distant mountains.  The northern verandah has been enclosed with weatherboards and timber casement windows, an early alteration in c1912.

The original terracotta roof cladding has been replaced with corrugated metal sheets which are not of state-level cultural heritage significance.  Two small freestanding brick outbuildings are retained to the house’s rear (north) – a former garage (coach house) and a smaller, square building (smokehouse)​

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Features of the Medical Superintendent’s Residence and Garden of state-level cultural heritage significance also include:

• Form, scale, and materials including a single-storey substantial low-set brick residence on sandstone foundation; asymmetrical plan form with projecting octagonal bay windows and verandah wrapping front and sides; two wings extending from rear to form U-shaped building around the rear courtyard; complex hipped roof form continuous over verandahs; face brick walls and chimneys, stone thresholds, rendered dressings, terracotta chimney caps; timber-framed floors, roof, and verandahs including timber verandah balustrades, board floors, ceilings, posts, and fretwork brackets; rendered masonry front stair; timber batten ventilated eaves; timber-framed window hoods with latticed cheeks; plastered masonry internal partitions; beaded board-lined ceilings

• High-quality timber joinery throughout the interior including board floors; multi-pane windows with coloured glass; moulded skirting boards, plate rails, architraves, and cornices; board-lined ceilings, coffering in hall and dining room; pressed tin wall lining in dining room fire nook

• Fireplaces (marble, timber, tile surrounds)

• The enclosure of the northern verandah (c1912)

• Original and early brass door, fanlight, and window hardware

• Spacious open garden setting with mature trees including jacaranda, fig, Indian siris, mango (Mangerifa indica), and hoop and bunya pine trees; former driveway approach from the northwest, encircling the house, turning circle in front of the house, and accessing the coach house at rear (drive is grown over with grass in 2020)

• The expansive vista from the front of the house and the garden to the east and southeast to Gailes Golf Course and the mountains beyond

• Former coach house and smokehouse and their original timber doors and windows, metal louvres of the smokehouse.

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