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New Publication
Miss Rose Adcock & Her Portable Iron Houses of
Snails Bay
$65.00 +$12.95 postage
Dr. Ray Stevens, 2025.
This important work by local conservation architect Dr. Ray Stevens began with the accidental discovery of a photograph of a curious house in Birchgrove. So the question came to mind, ‘what is this place and how did it come to be here?’
It turns out that the house was one of two originally located on Ballast Point Road, but it had actually been relocated. The two houses were erected by a young woman called Miss Rose Adcock. What circumstances, family relationships and personal character collided to motivate a young unmarried woman, born in Birmingham but living in Paris and aged only 23, to travel to a colonial settlement in Sydney and become an entrepreneurial property speculator and developer?
This story examines the physical and historical information on the pair of portable iron houses, which are likely the rarest examples in the world of portable houses by the maker Edward T. Bellhouse & Co. from Manchester.
Soft cover, A4 format, 334 pages in colour, 2025.