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About 

Stonehouse, Moore


Stonehouse is a group of related stone buildings, which were built in 1874 and continued through to the 1880s

It was originally to be a Grazing Property

Later evolving into a Stagecoach Stop, Wayside Inn, Mail and Supply Point.

The Property was named by Robert Williams “Stonehouse" after the village in England “Stonehouse”. Later the name was naturally believed to be due to the buildings on the property.

A rarity in the region and indeed country Queensland where most buildings were constructed from timber. The stone buildings were constructed from stones gathered from the ridge rising behind the buildings.

There is a section on ground near the stables that has been mined or levelled at stage, in time this may have been where the stones were collected from. 

The complex was listed on the Heritage Register in 2002.




The Stonehouse complex is known to have consisted of:


A two roomed Slab constructed hut.

The Wayside Inn and Homestead.

Kitchen & Pantry

Store

Butchers

Blacksmith, Carpentry & Buggy shed

Slaughter House

Stables (maybe x 2)

Tennis Court (Built later)

Queenslander Homestead (Built Later)

Even its on Street light

A grave site. Sadly that of Emma Williams in 1882 (The wife of Charles Williams), a few months after giving birth to her son. The grave site was washed away in a flood in the 1940s.

Along with the normal farm buildings such as a Barn, Pig pens, chicken coop

News paper articles in trove also list 9 apartments for accommodation.

And Stone stables 

The separation of Queensland occurred in 1859 and in the 1868 the Crown Lands Alienation Act was passed to make land available for closer settlement by drastically reducing the size of existing pastoral runs. This brought more settlers into the Brisbane Valley. In 1873 and 1874 around 30 members of the Williams family of Gloucestershire in England arrived in Queensland as immigrants. They settled in Brisbane, Ipswich and the Brisbane Valley. Robert Williams, a widower, had previously lived in Ipswich in the 1860s and in 1874 he selected two blocks of land totalling 2442 acres from the Colinton lease as a grazing property. His brother Charles with his wife Emma joined him. Charles, who was a stonemason, began work on a five-roomed stone house at the selection, which Robert had named Stonehouse after the village in Gloucestershire where he had lived. The new building was close to a two-room slab house that the family presumably lived in during construction. Building in stone was an unusual choice in this area, but a natural one for a family of stonemasons, given the ready availability of the materia on site. Because the house was built of stone, the name later became corrupted to "Stone House" or "Stone Houses".
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