However, on the Sunday after New Year, Lester and I headed over town to drop some things into the surgery (and to check out the new deli, bar and restaurant in the old Royal site. We were alarmed as we pulled up as the door to the upstairs was swinging open. Turns out that John, the electrician, was working away and he managed, by the end of the day, to have installed our door ringer + camera device. It was great to have the time to double check placements of points and switches.
For Christmas I gave Lester a fantastic book. We all know that people give others the present that they wish would be given to them. (This is why I never get the diamond ring or the Gucci handbag.) But this book is a winner - for both of us. It seems pretty nerdy, and, OK I admit, it is. It is called, Early Architects of the Hunter Region: A Hundred Years to 1940, by Les Reedman. I saw it in the only remaining bookshop in the Mall which I usually find has a hopelessly appalling selection. I thought that I would like to glance through this, so I'll buy it and give it to Lester. It was not until Christmas morning that Lester opened it and was delighted to find six pages devoted to William David Jeater, 1896 - 1981, of Jeater & Rodd and later Jeater, Rodd & Hay, the architect who worked on many buildings, including OURS!!
He came to Newcastle in 1925, (and in 1927 heped design the Congregational Church in Epping.) He worked on major alterations to the Wolfe St., Lyric Picture Theatre which was integrated with the 1890's Masonic Temple. He worked on the residence on the corner of Silsoe and Corona Sts, Hamilton, the Carrington Chambers in Watt St., In 1931 he was involved in remodelling the Charlston Studios in Hunter St., designed by Menkens in 1906. During The Depression, he altered the elaborate facade of the Legal Chambers in Bolton St. for Legacy House and worked on the Dungog Theatre, transforming it into a stuccoed Spanish mission style building.
He also altered the facade of Queensland Insurance Company at 59 Hunter St (that's us) by using a four inch thick, glazed terra cotta, "then on Sydney's Martin Place banks but not previously used in Newcastle." (NMH 9/3/1935). This was the first use of terra cotta facing in Newcastle.
He was a wonderful man; the "Professor of Architecture" at the "University of Changi" and was later a teacher in architecture at Newcastle Technical College. He went on to work on Wirraway Flats and the Arcade - remodelling of Municipal Baths - in Newcomen St, the Esplanade Hotel, Telford St.
During WWII he was captured in Singapore and he returned to Newcaste in middle age and ran his own practice from his home in Merewether.
It is quite significant to us, that Jeater worked on so many of the Art Deco buildings in Newcastle which Lester and I know and admire so much.
We talked to our local pharmacist who has worked two doors up from the surgery for centuries. He told us that he remembers when our building was MacDonald's Shipping Agency. So, maybe it wasn't the P&O Building until much later - possibly before it was the shop front used by the Wilderness Society - as it was when I first came to Newcastle. I will get the timeline of the tenants of this building sorted - soon.
Meanwhile, back on the home front in Stocko; it is Junk Clean Up Week. With the help of Carl, Bernard, Kieran and Liam, we must have put half a house out on the street: bikes, boards, furniture, golf stuff, art and painting stuff, tools, tents, ... masses of stuff. And guess what???!! Most of it has been "recycled" by the locals. Bernie calls them "The Gatherers". So much of our 27 years of junk has been gathered up by people who want and love our old stuff. How good is that!
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| A page from the excellent book by Les Reedman |
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| The front door - uninviting - terra cotta tiles on column |
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| close up of the door camera / speaker |
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