Apartment of the week: Take the floor in a 19th-century ballroom conversion
This charming sandstone home in Hunters Hill offers the opportunity to inhabit the past or the present by simply turning around on the spot. It was originally the ballroom of Llanthony, a grand Victorian mansion built in the 1880s and named after a 12th-century Welsh abbey.
Llanthony was converted to strata in 1980, with notable sensitivity to its history, and as such still retains plenty of old-world character. There’s even a stone water well on the grounds.
Fortunately, there’s also modern plumbing, including plenty of those newfangled gadgets known as taps.
As the former ballroom, 9/6 Everard Street sits off to one side of the main house and boasts its own wraparound courtyard garden and private entrance. It’s more like a house than a unit.
The north-facing living zone – with its marble fireplace surround, timber floorboards, adorable chandeliers, decorative-plaster ceilings and white sash windows – is deliciously “days of yore”, but if you turn around to face south, you find yourself very much in the 21st century.
A mezzanine level, accessed via an entirely contemporary glass and timber staircase, has been installed above the open-plan kitchen. It has potential as a study, single bedroom or storage area. There is more storage potential in the unlined roof space, accessed from the mezzanine via a pull-down ladder.
The elegant kitchen, with its classic white cabinetry and stone benchtop, works well as an intermediary between the two contrasting eras and areas.
A glass-panelled door and a small vestibule area separate the bedroom and bathroom from the living-dining-kitchen area. The big bathroom is another entirely contemporary zone. It’s a generous space that currently houses a shower, sink and toilet but could easily take on a tub.
- Related: Entrepreneur buys Victorian mansion on impulse
- Related: How top architects make heritage homes modern
- Related: Mansion with ballroom and secret pool to sell
The unit has its own off-street parking space and there is visitors parking on the property, too. On-street parking is easy to come by in this lovely, leafy area. Boronia Park, picturesque Princes St Lookout, the Lane Cove River and several clusters of high street shops all lie within an easy walk of apartment 9’s pretty front door.
Phillip Allison of Belle Property Hunters Hill says that while buyers are drawn to the apartment’s history, the picturesque setting and low-maintenance lifestyle it offers are also major attractions.
Allison has set a price guide of $1,375,000 for the property. See more photos on Domain here.
Download the Domain app to search for apartments on the market near you
