MILTON

Danesbank, built in the 1860s, was previously owned for 36 years by the late interior designer George Freedman

JONATHAN CHANCELLOR

Romancing the stone

The 1860s stone cottage Danesbank overlooks pioneering dairy farming land at Milton on the NSW South Coast.

Set on 28 hectares of rich volcanic soil, Danesbank is one kilometre from the highway, up a quiet country lane. The views from its wide verandas extend over the southern Shoalhaven towards the Jervis Bay headland, three hours’ drive from Sydney and 2.5 hours from Canberra.

The three-bedroom cottage, with four-metre-high pressedmetal ceilings, has a formal dining room and a drawing room with a cedar fireplace. The mid-Victorian era cottage was crafted from hand-cut local stone and timber for the Milton Court clerk of petty sessions John Valentine Wareham, in the 1860s.

It was built by master builder James Poole, with blackbutt and cedar floors downstairs and upstairs floors crafted from New Zealand kauri that had been ballast on the New Zealand to Ulladulla shipping trade route.

Danesbank, which is in the Woodstock enclave, is best known for its 36-year custodianship by Sydney interior designer George Freedman, who first bought the property in 1972 for $25,500 with his then partner Neville Marsh. It was expanded with the addition of a second portion in 1983 for $75,000.

Sympathetic improvements included a kitchen with louvred windows said to have been inspired by Glenn Murcutt. The design duo had used Murcutt for their Woolloomooloo office premises. The kitchen comes with a slow combustion fire, and the modern bathroom addition has underfloor heating. The house is shaded by a 100-year-old oak tree.

Freedman, aka Mr Colour, sold the Evans Lane holding in 2007 for $1.165 million to the current vendors.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Freedman was described as “the Godfather of Interior Design”. He died in 2016, aged 80. His first notable interior schemes included the executive suites for the Bank of New South Wales in 1970. He went on to attract residential, commercial and restaurant clients, including Tony and Gay Bilson, Damien and Josephine Pignolet, James Fairfax, the Oatley family, Lisa Ho, and Andrew Denton and Jennifer Byrne.

LJ Hooker Ulladulla agent Lisa Cox has listed the $2.5 million property, which has quickly gone under offer. “It is an old-world Australian icon nestled in the blissful NSW countryside,” she says. Cox recently sold Applegarth, an 1868 single-storey cottage, also built by Poole, that sits on a 20 hectare holding and was the home of former convict John Cambage and his wife, Emma. It was listed at $2.85 million, having previously been sold for $575,000 in 1996 after a modern rear addition.

At nearby Mount Airlie, a substantial double-storey classical Victorian stone home sold in 2013 for $1.03 million through the LJ Hooker office. The five-bedroom home on Woodstock Road was built in 1868 by Poole for David Warden, the district’s first mayor. The homestead, with its 260sq m ground floor space, is described in the Shoalhaven Heritage Inventory as being “undoubtedly the finest old home in the district”. A report by the Australian Town and Country Journal in the 1880s described it as “one of the handsomest south of Sydney”.

Comprising 4000 acres (1618 hectares) of first-class dairy land, Warden’s estate was the largest of its kind in the district. With the exception of the home farm of 400 acres, the remainder of the property was let out to 18 tenant farmers. Much of the dairy has gone, although there are still cattle farms, with Tillowrie, an 1897 farm listed for the first time, having been occupied by five generations of the Turnbull family. The elevated 56 hectare farm holds between 70 and 100 head of beef cattle and the current agistment agreement can continue should the new owner wish.

Danesbank’s dairy ceased operations in the early 1900s and Cox offers buyers details of the Nowra, Moss Vale and Braidwood weekly cattle sales, as cattle have been agisted in its northeastern paddocks.

However the property is now thoroughly modern, boasting what Cox describes as “a highly successful” self-managed Airbnb rental business that provides a “significant financial return” to the owners. Visitors to the romantic stone cottage love having the Milk Haus nearby as their local cafe. Danesbank is $375 a night, and booked out months in advance.

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