22 Minnie Street, Brunswick VIC 3056
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Slice of history in the heart of Brunswick
Comprising seven principal rooms under the same impressively high roofline, the home’s welcoming interior offers four generous bedrooms all serviced by a neat bathroom.
Natural light fills the wide central lounge adjoined by a separate dining room and kitchen/meals to the rear complete with stainless-steel cooking appliances.
Additional features include gas heating, internal laundry facilities and new carpets over the original Baltic Pine floorboards, plus a low-maintenance backyard to enjoy with established perimeter gardens and high fences for privacy.
A short stroll to Sydney Road and Lygon Street cafes, restaurants and shops, this historic home also offers easy access to trams, local parks and popular schools, along with major supermarkets and Brunswick Station.
Owners Notes
We love this big beautiful 1850s home affectionately known as ‘The Big Girl’.
We were fortunate enough to buy her 26 years ago along with the 1800s cottage to the rear of ‘The Big Girl’ and the dilapidated stables/dwellings further to the rear. We wanted to preserve these old historic dwellings from being bowled over and replaced with townhouses.
We are only the 5th owners of this lovely home over her 170-year history.
Johann Christoph Hempel from Saxony Germany arrived in Melbourne in March 1851 and purchased the land where the house stands plus considerably more land as he ran a farm where most of the houses in this are stand today. He built the house in the 1850s as is evidenced by the torpedo bottles that we found when we restumped and replaced all the joists and bearers 12 years ago. The bottles have miners and their picks hand blown onto the glass. The story is that Johann got the miners, on their way to the goldfields further north, to spend some time for cash labouring for him on the house when it was being built.
Johann subdivided much of the farm around 1865 and sold the plots off for housing, being the houses, you see all around the Big Girl today. As we understand, all that remained of the original farm was the Big Girl, the 1800s cottage (apparently built for a daughter who got married) and the stables. We have slowly over 26 years fixed and renovated the buildings and had them put onto their own titles, the shared private walkway has always been there for joint access.
We absolutely love the area. You can walk to everything. We never drive when here. The neighbours are fantastic. We’ve often had lane parties at Christmas time with all the neighbours. We love the shared walkway with other two neighbours (the 1800s cottage and converted stables at the rear). It’s so lovely to, now and again bump into each other for a quick chat. We all look after each other and bring each other ‘s bins in and have been known to have a glass of wine and a game of bocce up the walkway.
We had planned to turn the rear 2 bedrooms and the kitchen area of the house into an open plan living / dining and kitchen area and just replace the lean-to laundry bathroom area. This isn’t hard to do as all bedrooms, lounge room and kitchen are built under the high original gable roof, the only lean to added was the laundry bathroom so no need to knock a lot of rooms down just renovate within under the main roof structure making it so much cheaper.
We’ve really enjoyed being here we would never move out of the area and we remain in the area. It’s just we realise we don’t need a house this big now as we spend much time in the country. So, we feel it’s time to gently hand over the baton to someone else to lovingly care for her and enjoy her next chapter.
We really hope the next custodians of ‘The Big Girl’ love her and enjoy her as much as we have. We feel we have been the custodians of this grand old dame and affectionately want to pass that over to the next people who will absolutely adore her and enjoy all that she has to offer.
