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Redleaf, Wahroonga, NSW

JONATHAN CHANCELLOR

Healthy interest

Our love of Federation architecture endures. The style was at its strongest just before and just after Australia’s Federation in 1901, as property owners in the former colony sought to adapt their abodes from British designs, taking into account our warmer weather.

Redleaf, the grand 1899 Howard Joseland-designed residence at Wahroonga, proudly sits on 5000sq m. It was one of the earliest homes designed by the respected British-trained architect after he arrived in Australia.

Joseland installed a sweeping veranda around the two-storey brick-and-shingle structure to capture the cooling summer breezes. Initially it was on a 6ha lot, when the solicitor Walter Parish of the Sydney legal firm Parish Patience and McIntyre, built on what was then known as Lane Cove Road.

The showpiece Federation arts and craft-style house has now been listed with hopes of fetching $10 million by the Moran healthcare family through Darren Curtis at Christie’s.

Greta and Doug Moran paid $38,400 for the property in 1967. As well as looking after the health of Sydneysiders, the couple were driven by a desire to preserve Australia’s heritage. They returned the property to a single-family home, with 10 bedrooms for their seven children, Kerry, Linda, Peter, Shane, Barbara, Brendan (deceased) and Mark.

It was the family’s first major home restoration in a portfolio that still includes Darling Point’s Swifts, Camden’s Study Park, Darling House at Millers Point and Paddington’s Juniper Hall.

Greta, credited with being the administrative powerhouse of the family operation, is now based in the luxury Moran retirement living community at Vaucluse. She is a direct descendant of one of colonial Sydney’s most colourful early settlers, Robert Cooper, who was transported after being caught smuggling fine French silks, cognac and ostrich feathers during the Napoleonic Wars. Later pardoned, Cooper built Juniper Hall, a fine early Sydney building on Oxford Street.

Redleaf’s 1899 design was considered avant-garde in its time. William and Rose Parish sold it to the Crane family in 1916 for £600. Arthur Crane died in the 1930s at Pevensey on nearby Ada Avenue. After many changes in ownership, the property was left to the Sisters of Mercy in 1948 by Violet Yuille, widow of Dr Alan Yuille. In 1999 the heritage architect Clive Lucas from architects Lucas Stapleton & Partners undertook its award-winning restoration, the tradesmen being careful not to trample the hundreds of camellias planted in the grounds.

Over the decades, bits had been added on to the residence, especially in the years it was used as a home for elderly nuns. It also escaped the extensive modernisation that transformed many other old homes in the area after World War II. The panama-hat wearing Lucas removed the four bedrooms that had been built onto the veranda, blocking the breeze and light. Underneath, he discovered the old footings, quarried from sandstone on the site. He removed a false ceiling in the billiard room and beneath it, covered by seven coats of paint, was the original cedar version.

Greta Moran and Lucas had a shared a passion for William Morris, so they used his wallpapers, designs and fabrics and restored the home’s original colour schemes. Simple leadlight with flowers such as hollyhocks and sunflowers survived. Cosy inglenooks around the fireplaces and seats in the big bay window were given new life.

The Wahroonga house won the Francis Greenway Award for Conservation from the NSW Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 1996. At the time, Greta said it had been like rediscovering the house and on its completion she was asked how it felt to live in a period piece.

“It seems normal to us,” she said. “I grew up living in my grandmother’s house. Maybe I haven’t progressed with the times. In a plain white box I would never feel comfortable; I like colour.”

Tim Smith, director of heritage operations at Heritage NSW, says recent studies of community attitudes to Federation homes confirm that not only do they retain their value over time, but investing in their restoration only increases their market appeal.