History and images of an historic Hunter Valley homestead



Saturday, October 24, 2009

Welcome to Skellatar House

Skellatar House is a large country house built in 1883, high on a hill overlooking the Hunter Valley town of Muswellbrook.
Keep reading to find out more about its fascinating history.

Granville and Yvonne Taylor bought Skellatar House in March 2005, having fallen in love with it at first sight on a very rainy day just before Christmas in 2004. They didn't realise then that seeing Skellatar House in the rain was going to be a very rare event, for the next three years at least.

This is a photo taken on Bridge Street, Muswellbrook, looking southwards towards the railway bridge. You can just see a fairly large house here on the hill, with white-painted lacework on the upstairs verandah. That's Skellatar House, just behind the Mount Providence Hostel on Tindale Street.



The substantial two storey late Victorian homestead has verandahs, with cast iron supporting columns and decorative lacework, on three sides of both storeys.
Construction of the main residence was completed in 1884, with the ballroom being added in the 1930's.
The main residence has timber bearer and joist-framed floors with kauri pine floorboards and brick footings.
The main rooms have 14ft ceilings and there are seven marble fireplaces.
The external walls are made of face cavity brick with double hung timber windows that also have timber shutters.
The red cedar internal doors have four panels and are surrounded by 7 inch wide cedar architraves.
The cedar skirting boards are 12 inches high, and there's a cedar staircase. In other words, there's a lot of fine woodwork in this house.

Click here to take a virtual tour of Skellatar House
Click here to skip the virtual tour and go straight to the history

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