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Ray White Elizabeth Bay principal Ian Campbell and agent Renee Cross have just listed this grand Victorian Italianate three-level villa built in the 1880s called Oakleigh at 18 Ward Ave, Potts Point.
Oakleigh is an exceptional freestanding inner city home on 380sqm of land with 536sqm of living space which has been the home of one family for five generations.
The cherished home is scheduled to be auctioned onsite on Saturday September 24. It’s ready for renovation and adaptive to a wide range of sectors including owner occupiers, creative arts, medical professionals, hospitality, investors, heritage property developers and serviced apartments subject to council approval.
Celeste Coucke, an artist who lives in the Southern Highlands and her siblings grew up at Oakleigh, on the edge of Potts Point, just a short stroll to the harbourside.
Five generations of her family have called Oakleigh home. “My great grandmother Lucy Kendrick first managed the house from 1930, through the depression and war years, until her family returned as post war migrants in 1949,” Ms Coucke said.
In 1949 Lucy Kendrick’s musician daughter Beatrice, her Belgian husband Florimond and their daughter Cecilia returned from Europe and moved into the front rooms with Lucy.
While Florimond worked as an engineer on the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electricity Project,
Lucy’s daughter Beatrice Coucke took on the management of Oakleigh and its flats so that her mother could retire. In 1963, the Coucke family bought the property for 3000 pounds.
“During the bohemian heyday of the 1950s and 1960s, Beatrice and Cecilia hosted musical soirées that attracted cultural icons like celebrated poet Kenneth Slessor and composer Camille Gheysens,” Ms Coucke said.
“As a child of the 1960s and 1970s, Oakleigh was an excellent place for my siblings and I to play hide and seek.
“Growing up in a multi-generational family, our lives were shaped by family stories of tenacity in the face of hardship. We lived in an extraordinary home, immersed in the most vibrant, celebrated, scorned, historic, diverse, artistic and notorious community in Australia.”
In fact, the famous author Bryce Courtenay was so fascinated by their bohemian home and upbringing that in his 1982 book “April Fools Day” he wrote about a house called Maison Le Guessly, loosely based on Oakleigh.
The eclectic Potts Point home with a 13.56m frontage has an established garden with magnificent magnolias and parking for two cars.
Oakleigh was converted into studios in about 1920 with a further 12 rooms with kitchenettes added in a three story L shaped rear extension. The flats are in solid original condition. Each room has high, decorated plaster ceilings, original timber joinery and floors. Each has a water and gas connection and the floors on the ground level are jarrah.
Features
536sqm of living space
Versatile usage with multiple possibilities STCA
380sqm (approx.) land with 13.56m (approx.) street frontage
Italianate c1880s residence and c1920s wing
Both three-level buildings connected by timber verandahs
Residence with elegant façade and iron lace verandahs
Grand rooms with soaring ceilings and ornate wall friezes
Kauri floors, cedar staircase, fireplaces and a tower room
Interiors include 3 kitchens, 3 bathrooms, 3 separate toilets
Storerooms on each level; laundry accessed via the garden
Early c20th edition includes 12 rooms with kitchenettes.
Leafy front garden with spear point iron fence and gates
Garden features 2 x mature Magnolia Grandiflora trees
Off-street parking for two cars in gated side driveway
50m to cafe and dining scene on Bayswater Road
250m to Fitzroy Gardens and Macleay Street bistros
250m to supermarkets, city buses and train station
600m walk to harbourside Rushcutters Bay Park
