Feniton is a heritage-listed villa at 388 Bowen Terrace, New Farm, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Robin Dods and built from 1906 to 1907. It is also known as Almaden. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 27 July 2018.
History The highset timber residence located at 388 Bowen Terrace, New Farm, originally called Feniton and later Almaden, was built on just over half an acre (approximately 2036m2) of land in 1906–07 for the Trude family. Designed by the renowned architect Robert Smith (Robin) Dods, the residence was subsequently occupied from 1916 to 1927 by Edward Granville Theodore, Premier of Queensland from 1919 to 1925. The property was reduced by one third in 1938, and in 2018 Feniton remains a private residence. Feniton is a surviving example of Dods' first quality timber houses from the middle period of Hall & Dods' practice 1901–09. With its generous setback and views to and from Bowen Terrace, the house is important for its Federation aesthetic, successfully combining Arts and Crafts and Classical elements, and also has a special association with EG Theodore, a person of importance in Queensland's history.
The New Farm area was traditionally the land of the Jagera and Turrbal peoples. After the Moreton Bay penal settlement was established on the Brisbane River in 1825, in the late 1820s food was grown on the river flats between today's Merthyr Road and the southeast end of the New Farm peninsula.
Following free settlement of Brisbane in 1842, the New Farm peninsula was surveyed and sold in the 1840s for cultivation and livestock, as well as residences for Queensland's pastoralists, merchants and politicians. In the late 1850s, subdivision of allotments overlooking the Shafston Reach of the Brisbane River, at the northwest end of Bowen Terrace, resulted in the construction of villas for Brisbane's business leaders during the 1860s, and more of Brisbane's wealthy inhabitants moved to New Farm in the 1870s.DNRM Survey Plan B12342, 1843Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017, pp.1-4 (based on Joint Expert Reports and other submissions, Appeal No. 2828 of 2016, Planning and Environment Court, (2017). Contributors were Drs Helen Bennett and Judith McKay, Susan Hill, John Taylor, Arno King, Peter Marquis Kyle and Michael Kennedy The subdivision of New Farm intensified during the 1880s, and transport improvements also encouraged closer residential settlement. Horse-drawn trams ran along Brunswick Street to just past Langshaw Street by 1895, and the electrification of this line occurred in 1897.Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017, p.3'McKellar's Official Map of Brisbane and Suburbs' (6 Chains to an inch) 1895, Sheet 5'Electric Tramways. New Farm Service', Telegraph, 22 September 1897, p.4. By 1914 the electric tram line ran down Brunswick Street, turned right onto Barker Street, then left onto Moray Street, and headed southeast until turning left onto Merthyr Rd and running northeast.Map, "City of Brisbane and Suburbs", 8 Chains to an Inch, 1914
Despite subdivision into smaller allotments, the area of New Farm between Brunswick Street and the Shafston Reach maintained grand homes on properties covering multiple subdivisions. Described in 1906 as the province of "the attractive homes and trim gardens of many of Brisbane's most distinguished citizens, who enjoy all the advantages of country air and surroundings within a twopenny tram ride of the city proper", Bowen Terrace and Moray Street included affluent residents drawn from the judiciary, politics, civil service, the church and business.'Brisbane's Suburban Beauties', Brisbane Courier, 12 May 1906, p12Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017, pp.3-4. To the north-east of Brunswick Street, working classes occupied homes within walking distance of their places of employment: the factories and shops of Fortitude Valley, the Colonial Sugar Refinery at New Farm, the Bulimba Brewery, and the large wool stores and wharves being established at Teneriffe. Feniton was one such residence.
The site of Feniton was once part of Eastern Suburban Allotment 15, a block of extending from Brunswick Street southwest to the Brisbane River, which was subdivided in 1874 as part of the Langshaw Estate - advertised as occupying "the very finest position about the city or suburbs for gentlemen's Villa Residences".Telegraph, 20 March 1874, p.2Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017 p.4Map, 20 chains to an inch, undated (s or later, but shows original New Farm land owners and allotment sizes)DNRM Survey Plan RP8634, 1874. After passing through the hands of various owners from 1875, three subdivisions of the estate, totalling 3 roods and 34 perches (3895m2), were by October 1881 consolidated under the ownership of Henry James Oxley, a well-known Brisbane accountant.DNRM Certificates of Title 10249147, 10299006, 10303172, 10316122, 10343024.
By July 1880 Oxley had built his home Mossleigh at the north corner of Bowen Terrace and Langshaw Street, with the remainder of his property, to the northwest, used as his garden. After Oxley's mortgagee obtained the property in 1905, just over half an acre - 2 roods and half a perch (2036m2) - of Mossleigh's garden was sold to John Elworthy Trude in 1906.DNRM Certificates of Title 10303172, 10316122, 10343024, 1105080Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017 p.5DNRM Survey Plan RP8651, 1906 (resubdivision of subdivision 12)'McKellar's Official Map of Brisbane and Suburbs' (6 Chains to an inch) 1895, Sheet 5 (shows location of the Mossleigh property).
Trude (1869–1952) was born in Poughill, Devon, England, and by April 1891 he was working in Brisbane as the local manager for Australian tea merchants Atcherley and Dawson. In July 1906 he married Phyllis Emlyn Gore, a member of the pioneering pastoralist family of Yandilla Station on the Darling Downs. From 1 October 1896 Trude was admitted as a partner in Atcherley and Dawson and when it was incorporated in New South Wales in November 1897 (with offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane), Trude was one of the new company's seven directors.Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017 pp.5-6'Weddings', Queenslander, 28 July 1906, p.13
The Trude's new house at 388 Bowen Terrace was named Feniton, after Phyllis' family home at Yandilla (in 1901, her father was living at Feniton, three miles upriver from Yandilla House) and an earlier Gore residence at Parramatta.Queensland Country Life, 12 March 1901, p.13 There is also a village in Devon called Feniton, about 26 km southeast of John Trude's birthplace in Poughill. Tenders for the house were called in July 1906, the tender of £980 from Louis Hammer, a building contractor of Deagon, was accepted, and the house was under construction by the end of August 1906.Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017 p.6.
Feniton was designed by architect Robert Smith (Robin) Dods (1868–1920), principal of the Brisbane firm of Hall & Dods. Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, Dods lived briefly in Britain before coming to Brisbane in the late 1870s. He later trained as an architect in Scotland and England under a number of esteemed architects who were working in the Arts and Crafts idiom. He returned to Brisbane in 1896 and started in practice with architect Francis Richard Hall (of John Hall & Son) as Hall & Dods. In 1904, Dods was also appointed Diocesan Architect for the Church of England's Brisbane Diocese.
The practice of Hall & Dods produced a wide range of accomplished buildings and was credited with achieving an "architectural revolution" in Brisbane. Dods was responsible for most of the design within the firm, integrating contemporary British design philosophies with the traditions of Queensland housing and the requirements of a subtropical climate. In 1913, Dods moved to Sydney to join the firm Spain and Cosh, which became Spain Cosh & Dods, maintaining his Brisbane association with FR Hall for several years. He died in Sydney in 1920. Dods was one of the few Australian architects to have his work published in the United Kingdom, and has been acknowledged as "one of the most significant early 20th century Australian architects" and as a rare practitioner of the Arts and Crafts style in Queensland.Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017 pp.5-13.
Arts and Crafts was an international design movement flourishing between 1860 and 1910, its influence continuing into the 1930s. The style championed traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and often applied medieval, romantic or folk styles of decoration. Arts and Crafts architecture is characterised by solidity and heaviness through well-proportioned solid forms, wide porches and prominent steep roofs. The texture of ordinary materials is expressed in the detailing and building composition is asymmetrical.
The most noticeable characteristic of Dods' Queensland houses was a general feeling of solidity and substance. This was established through a generous roof continuous over the verandah; enclosed or screened understorey to give the house a visually solid base; oversized individual elements; and dark coloured materials to give the house a weighty gravity. Chimney elements were generally tall and flat, topped with a plain rectangular shaft.Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017 pp.9-10. Dods pioneered in Queensland the use of linseed oil as a wood preserver and exterior finish and coloured it with various pigments. Red and deep brown were the most common colours and this finish on the exterior walls was offset with white or cream enamel paint on the trim.
The composition of facades and circulation routes is a more nuanced element of Dods' houses. Facades often only implied symmetry. Entries were often off-centre or perpendicular, emphasised by wide and expressive entry stairs. Projecting bay windows and corner fireplaces were recurrent elements, and these features are present in Feniton.
The health and comfort of the occupants were major considerations in Dods' designs. Living spaces were well-oriented and internal layouts permitted cross ventilation. Other ventilation devices included wide window and door openings, ventilated gables and ridges, and ventilation fleches. Door fanlights were often solid hinged panels, where not on an external wall. The houses were often provided with generous, considered service spaces including back halls and wash houses. Dods' houses are also notable for their informal spaces, including verandah "piazzas", a generous verandah area suitable for informal occupation and usually given a northeast aspect. Dods' piazzas were a principal external space, designed for the Queensland climate.
Interiors included fine decorative timber joinery and panelling. Fireplace surrounds and built-in cupboards were also a feature. Offices and halls, dining and drawing rooms often had pine boards up to the picture rail stained in a colour to simulate mahogany. This finish was used also on doors and windows as well as skirtings and architraves.Application to enter, dated 31 October 2017 p.10.
For the Trudes, Dods designed a highset timber house with verandahs on three sides. It was sheltered by a large, steeply pitched hip roof with a projecting gable over a front (southwest) entrance and over a piazza on the rear, eastern corner. The roof featured two tall, projecting, face brick chimneys and a ventilated ridge. The walls were clad in timber weatherboards, which were mitred at corners and extended down to the ground-plane, concealing the understorey. Exterior timber detailing was restrained and reinforced the solidity of the house, with oversized timber posts and curved brackets to verandahs.Almaden [image], , Theodore Family Collection.