Granite House

The quiet leafy hideaway that is St John’s Wood was once a centre point for Brisbane society and privy to Royal guests including the future King of England George V.

The U-shaped house where it all happened was St John’s Wood (after which the area is named) or Granite House, built in the early 1860s from locally quarried stone by local prominent builder and one-time Premier Joshua Jeays. But it wasn’t until after George Harding, an English barrister moved in (first leasing the house and in 1874 buying it), that the social whirl commenced.

With a family of twelve children to accommodate, he appointed eponymous architect Richard Gailey to design extensions, including stables and a ballroom and in 1879 he was appointed to the bench, thereby becoming Justice Harding. One of his local projects was to donate two acres for the building of Ashgrove Provisional School, now Ashgrove State School.

It was in 1881 that two grandsons of Queen Victoria, Albert and George, were doing their midshipsman training on HMS Bacchante and stayed at Granite House during the time. In 1901 as the then Duke of Cornwall, George returned with his wife Mary to open the newly formed Federal Parliament.

After George Harding’s death the subsequent owner went on to subdivide the estate in 1923, naming the housing estate ‘St John’s Wood’ after the house, around the same time the estate of nearby Glen Lyon was being subdivided.

Today the house remains reasonably intact including the internal central sky-lit ballroom, pressed metal ceilings, cedar joinery and polished floors.