Thursday 18 April 2013

Dross amongst the gold


Outlandish is not the first word that springs to mind when one walks/scrambles around Castlecrag, whereas it was over in Paddington. Here, they like architecture to be avant-garde and edgy, but not eclectic.They are neither Newtown nor Fitzroy. In my gutter crawls I would frequently stumble [!] across a derelict building, but a small frission travelled my spine when I perchanced upon an abandoned building on Edinburgh Road.


The house is low, off the road, on a double-block with a due-north aspect over pristine bushland. Boasting unimpeded views of Crag Cove in Middle Harbour, this property traded in May 2011 for $2.4m.


Pick your draw up. It is derelict, right. Full or rats and roaches, snakes and spiders. And two years later, in a static market ... it sits here.

5 comments:

Kay L. Davies said...

Such a shame, Julie. It must have been nice once. I know you enjoyed finding derelict buildings in the city, but this seems so different.
What could have happened to the people who bought it two years ago to make them abandon it?
K

Joe said...

That's a handsome price for a property to be so derelict.

Joan Elizabeth said...

Here abandoned is just plain horrible. Clearly this place is destined for demolition so a fake castle can be built in its place.

Julie said...

Yes, I suspect demolition, too. The delay is probably the $AUD, and the purchasers probably from HK. The house, when built, will be stupendous, and a modern 'castle' in the eyes of the classic film.

Allan Lloyd said...

Hi Julie, I've been meaning to welcome you back to blogsville, albeit now on the leafy fringes thereof – and your recent references to the Burley-Griffens have finally got me off my bum.

The wonderful artist and racconteur Bernard Hesling (whom I've mentioned before in a response to one of your mentions of Bea Miles) lived in Castlecrag (at the 'White House', 4 The Redoubt, according to Wikipedia). In one of his delightful 'autobiographies', he talked about how the Burley-Griffins used unorthodox techniques in the construction of their houses, and mentioned a time when either he or a neighbour (I can't remember which of them) was locked out of his Burley-Griffin house, and decided to break a narrow window beside a much larger picture window in order to open the door from inside. The reasoning was that it would've been a relatively simple thing to replace the small pane of glass. But when it was shattered, that small window turned out to be part of a single huge sheet of glass with false frames stuck on to give the impression of separate windows.