374 Argyle Street

Before the railway, shops and stable yards, this was part of the country through which Charles Throsby travelled in search of routes for colonial settlement. A naval surgeon who arrived in Sydney in 1802, he became a grazier and explorer. In 1817 he explored west of Sutton Forest with Hamilton Hume; in 1818 he travelled with surveyor James Meehan before their parties separated and Throsby continued to the Shoalhaven and Jervis Bay.^[109]

His journeys connected the Highlands with the coast and the inland plains. In 1819 he travelled from the Cowpastures to Bathurst and drove cattle through a pass between the Illawarra and Robertson districts. Macquarie subsequently put him in charge of road construction towards the southern country, with Joseph Wild directing the work. In 1821, despite ill health and financial worries, Throsby crossed the Molonglo and Queanbeyan rivers in search of the Murrumbidgee. He became a magistrate for the new County of Argyle that year and joined the Legislative Council in 1825.^[109]

The land that became 374 Argyle Street was once part of the much larger Throsby's Park estate. In 1819 a government notice offered Dr Charles Throsby 1,000 acres for exploration work. It credited Aboriginal guides Cookoogong, also printed Coockoogong, and Dual with much of the expedition's success. While land was proposed for the European party, the guides received clothing, bedding and badges.^[58]

By October 1820, Governor Macquarie's journal placed Dr Charles at Throsby's Park. The grant register records the 1,000-acre grant as executed on 1 November 1822 and recorded on 20 November. Within that broad estate lay the ground that would eventually become this stretch of Argyle Street.^[59][85]

Throsby’s nephew, also Charles, managed the property during his uncle’s absences. By 1823 he had built a cottage; the growing farm employed stockmen, shepherds, ploughmen, a gardener and a shoemaker, among others, many of them assigned convicts. In the next generation the estate supplied food to road parties and mounted police, and sent provisions by bullock dray to the family’s more distant pastoral holdings. The substantial Throsby Park house followed in the 1830s. Decades later, subdivision and the railway’s arrival in 1867 helped turn part of the family estate into Moss Vale’s town centre. Throsby’s grant was the beginning of that family’s landholding here; the town grew through the work of several generations.^[110]

After Dr Charles Throsby died in 1828, the estate passed into the next generation's family arrangements. A trust involving his nephew Charles, Jane Throsby and W. C. Wentworth secured Jane an income of £300 a year from the estate. The younger Charles made his own will on 11 August 1852 and died on 27 September 1854.^[60]

The family's arrangements continued to shape the estate. The 1876 Throsby's Leasing Act set out the younger Charles's will, the interests that followed and Patrick Hill Throsby's role, and permitted leases over a specified area. Later instruments divided broad left-side and right-side estate interests between Francis Henry and the younger Patrick. In 1910 an assurance addressed restrictions on inheritance affecting land still unsold when their father died.^[82][86]

Money disputes also ran through the estate's history. Published correspondence in 1817 concerned a security deed and Blaxcell's Burnside bills. An 1828 obituary reported an adverse surety decision and an intended appeal. In 1842 another exchange disputed money recovered from a Mr Throsby; further Equity directions were reported in 1896.^[86]

The later parish map preserves those original grants beneath the town that grew across them. An undated poster for the estate of the late Oliver S. Throsby shows another generation selling 130 suburban lots near Throsby Park. Its buyers could pay 15 per cent down, another 10 per cent after three months and the balance over three years, with interest. Subdivision brought the family’s land within reach of purchasers who could not pay the whole price at once.^[4][187]

Three surviving portraits bring the estate’s first generations into view: Dr Charles Throsby, his nephew Charles Throsby Jnr, and Charles Jnr’s wife Elizabeth “Betsey” Throsby, painted as a seven-year-old in 1814.^{[120][121][122]}

Dr Charles Throsby (1777–1828).Source: ACT Government. Charles Throsby Jnr, around 1850.Portrait by Cornelius Delohery. Elizabeth “Betsey” Throsby, painted in 1814.Richard Read Sr, National Library of Australia.

Before Moss Vale became a town, the district’s colonial settlements gathered around the road and river crossing at Bong Bong and the farming country of Sutton Forest. Macquarie chose a government township site at Bong Bong in 1821. Police and military buildings followed, but the new southern road through Berrima in the 1830s drew traffic and government business away. Berrima became the administrative centre; its name also came to describe the wider district.^[111]

The railway changed the balance again. Moss Vale grew across parts of three estates: Throsby Park, the Hutchinson holding and Browley, established by John Waite. Land sales began in the 1860s as construction approached. Railway workers and their families brought immediate custom for a store, post and hotel, while traders from Sutton Forest and Berrima saw an opportunity beside the new line.^[112]

Jemmy Moss gives the town’s name a more personal history. The council’s heritage survey records that he was transported to New South Wales in 1828 for stealing, with a seven-year sentence, and became a valued employee of the Throsby family in the late 1830s. The railway heritage account describes him as a servant and herdsman. His work belonged to the same pastoral world as the grants and grand houses, but his home was much smaller.^[112]

Jemmy and his wife Mary Ann lived in a hut near present-day Spring Street and the railway station. Local histories associate the name Moss Vale with him and this little valley. A 1937 newspaper history placed him here before the town developed; a 1948 account repeated the naming tradition and traced the locality name to an advertisement in May 1864. By May 1867, the surviving auction advertisements were already using Moss Vale, although the approaching railway station was called Sutton Forest.^{[112][188][189][113]}

The council survey preserves a story about Jemmy’s worry when the estate was being subdivided. Oliver Throsby reassured him that he could remain in his home for life. It is a telling local tradition: the man remembered in the town’s name was concerned about keeping his own place as the surrounding estate became saleable blocks.^[112]

The same account records that Jemmy died in 1867 after an injured hand became infected, and was buried in an unmarked grave at Berrima Cemetery. The railway opened on 2 December that year. Its station eventually took the locality’s name, carrying the memory of a Throsby worker far beyond the small home where he and Mary Ann had lived.^[112]

An advertisement of 25 May 1867 shows that overlap clearly. Under the heading “Moss Vale”, auctioneer James Powell offered 24 portions of Oliver Spencer Throsby’s estate, each an acre or more, opposite the Sutton Forest railway station then under construction. Buyers could inspect the pegged-out land and obtain plans from Powell in Berrima. Another advertisement on the same page offered John Morrice’s Sutton Forest North subdivision. These were separate land offerings around the future railhead.^[113]

The following month, a newspaper reported buyers and prices from Morrice’s sale: James Clifford paid £45 for three roods, James Taylor bought two lots, and Lewis Levy bought three. It is a glimpse of the new town taking shape through individual purchases while the railway was still being built.^[114]

The Moss Vale Hotel site at 340 Argyle Street was licensed in 1866. It became the Terminus Hotel around 1868 or 1869, then the Royal Hotel in 1880. The building has changed since those early days, but the pub remains on the same site.^[2] A courthouse and police quarters followed near the station in 1880. They were demolished in 1915 when the railway yards expanded, and the present courthouse opened in January 1924.^[3]

By the turn of the century Argyle Street had become the town's busy civic and commercial strip. Blythman's cottage and stables joined it in the building programme documented in 1903.^[1][64]

Looking south along Argyle Street around 1900.

Newbury’s promoters sold a prospect of summer comfort as well as land. Their brochure praised cool air and fertile soil, and placed the villa sites opposite the Governor’s country residence. The plans name Mount Loftus Plateau and show Newbury Road crossing a proposed estate of streets and house blocks. These are plans for a subdivision beside the retreat, rather than a map of the Governor’s own grounds.^[4][187]

Three surviving versions tell different parts of the sales campaign. One leaves the auction day to be named; another adds Saturday 7 October in red over the earlier wording; a folded coloured brochure presents the estate and its surroundings across several panels. The printed material does not establish a sale year, so the versions are kept together here as a late nineteenth-century offering.^[4][187]

The Moss Vale suburban-portions poster invited buyers to an elevated tableland advertised as 2,300 feet above sea level. A free train was to leave Sydney at 9.30 in the morning, and luncheon was provided. The excursion helped turn a country land auction into a day out for prospective buyers.^[4]

The terms asked for one-third of the price as a deposit, with the balance payable after one or two years at six per cent interest. The plan’s streets and generously sized allotments give the sales pitch its practical form: a place to build away from the city, financed over time.^[4]

An auction plan for the town of Moss Vale shows how the railway and older roads shaped the settlement. It labels the main route as Old Argyle Road, marks Throsby Villa near the railway bridge and names a large McGregor parcel nearby. Other records were already using Argyle Street by 1884, so the older road label and the town address overlapped rather than changing on one known day.^[4][37]

Present-day 374 stands in the stretch immediately west of the railway bridge, beside or within the large parcel marked McGregor. The map gives the property a strong likely place in the town landscape before street numbers and Clarence Street took their modern form.^[37]

A second poster for the same Saturday auction turns west, offering the “Western Suburbs” at John Cullen’s Royal Hotel at two o’clock. It shows long blocks along Old Argyle Road and larger acreages beyond them. Together, the two plans show a town being sold in different forms: small sites around its existing landmarks, and more spacious ground towards its western edge.^[4][187]

Buying land in the growing town could be a day’s outing. For the Throsby Villa Estate auction on 14 October 1882, Hardie & Gorman offered special free train passes and provided luncheon. Their illustrated poster promoted villa and business sites, with the sale held on the ground. The railway brought prospective buyers as well as the customers and goods on which the town depended.^[4]

Surveyor W. H. Binsted’s plan shows the town spreading out from the station. Small lots line Argyle Street and the railway, while larger blocks extend towards Whites Creek. Spring, Park, Spencer, Lovelle and Gilchrist streets divide the estate. Around the station the drawing marks hotels, stores, the post office, a bank and churches: an established centre from which new streets and businesses could grow.^[4]

The poster also marks Throsby Villa itself and a Temperance Hotel among the town’s landmarks. Those existing buildings sit beside the proposed allotments: the sale was extending an inhabited railway town. Free travel and luncheon drew people to the auction, while the map let them picture a house block in relation to the station, shops and neighbouring homes.^[4]

One week after the Throsby Villa auction, another poster offered central sites beside the English and Scottish Bank and the post and telegraph offices. The lots fronted Old Argyle Road and the railway precinct. Buyers were offered 99-year leases with the right to purchase the freehold, showing how investors could enter the business centre without buying the land outright on sale day.^[4][37]

Alexander Campbell’s poster captures the station-side business centre being actively marketed, with existing banks, shops, offices, lanes and the railway drawn around the offered sites.^[37]

The Meryla Estate poster offered another vision of development beyond Moss Vale. It advertised the “Sanitorium of the South” and laid out a dense village grid with streets named Sydney, Argyle, Pitt and Loftus. The railway was central to the pitch: promoters could imagine a settlement of house sites where buyers might otherwise have seen country land.^[4]

The plan records that ambition particularly clearly. Its rows of proposed streets and lots should be read as the estate offered at auction, rather than a picture of a village already built.^[4]

The Loftus Estate auction offered twelve freehold allotments outside the compact town centre. The plan marks Elmwood beside blocks mostly exceeding twenty acres, a different scale from the tight business sites near the station. Buyers were being offered room for a country home and productive ground around it.^[4]

Richardson & Wrench’s Sydney auction terms required a one-third deposit, with the balance after one or two years at six per cent. The road frontages and acreage mattered as much as the town’s growing railway convenience.^[4]

Edinburgh House opened in 1888 near the station, beside the site soon occupied by the Masonic Hall. Mrs George Roberts advertised boarding accommodation with moderate charges and the convenience of the railway close by. A visitor arriving by train could find a bed here within easy reach of Argyle Street’s businesses. By March 1893, a newspaper feature was praising Miss Dunn’s hospitality and comfortable accommodation at the house.^[27]

The building also became a succession of shops. Macpherson and Harriss advertised their general store beside the Masonic Hall in 1894, selling crockery, ironmongery, tea, butter, cheese and bacon. Their September 1895 notice announced their removal from Edinburgh House. Abraham Salmon used the vacated premises temporarily in 1896 while builders raised his own flood-prone shop and dwelling, and the Sydney Drapery Company reopened at Edinburgh House that November.^[27]

A full advertising page from 18 September 1895 brings that move into the wider retail scene. Macpherson & Harriss placed a compact “Notice of Removal” at the lower left, telling customers they had left Edinburgh House for premises previously occupied by Mr Limond, near McCleery’s coach factory. Above it, Taylor Brothers filled the page with their “Universal Providers” display for drapery, clothing, millinery, boots and shoes. The contrast captures both the personal noticeboard character and the confident scale of Moss Vale’s shopping trade.^[118]

On 7 November 1896 the Sydney Drapery Company made Edinburgh House itself the headline. Its advertisement announced that the branch would reopen on Wednesday 11 November after buying a large bankrupt Sydney stock. The firm promised new seasonal goods and reminded readers twice that its address was “Edinburgh House, next to Masonic Hall”. On the same page, Taylor Brothers again presented its established Universal Providers store as the district’s broad everyday supplier.^[119]

After a period standing empty, Edinburgh House gained a particularly eye-catching tenant. Seed merchant Gerald Hemsley renovated it in May 1898 and filled its two large plate-glass windows with orchids, palms and ferns. The newspaper singled out the display as worth seeing and a welcome addition to the business end of Argyle Street.^[27]

By 31 May 1911, the town plan labelled Samuel Whyte’s tailor shop on the Argyle and White Street corner, beside the former Masonic Hall. His arrival date remains unknown. Maintaining that prominent frontage brought dealings with council: in 1912 it raised the condition of the shop’s awning, and in April 1913 A. M. Swan received permission to re-erect the balcony. In 1920 and 1921, auctioneers Wynne & Holt advertised temporary offices behind Whyte’s shop, reached from White Street. Tailoring at the front and professional rooms at the rear gave this corner a pattern of shared occupation familiar elsewhere along the block.^[53][27]

The Whyte family moved the business to 426 Argyle Street at Arthur Street in 1922. Edinburgh House remained beside the former Masonic Hall for another three and a half decades. It was demolished in 1957 for the widening of Kirkham Street, two years before the hall itself came down for the bank.^[28][10]

Edinburgh House, with part of the former Masonic Hall at left.

Lodge Harmony gave this stretch of Argyle Street an ambitious new building. Established in 1886, the lodge already had a life of its own before the hall: a January 1889 Masonic paper reported that members farewelled Senior Deacon W. Saunders, bound for Robertson, with an illuminated address and a Grand Deacon's jewel.^[139] The lodge secured its site through the Throsby family: Elizabeth Throsby granted a 99-year lease from 1 July 1890, with Patrick Hill Throsby joining the agreement, for just sixpence a year. Contemporary reporting celebrated Patrick’s provision of the land. The lodge undertook to improve it, and Sydney architect C. H. Slatyer designed a two-storey temple. Local builder James Linklater won the £625 contract against eleven other tenders.^[10][39][75]

The foundation ceremony on 4 October 1890 was a town occasion. Flags were flown and visitors gathered from across the district. Lord Carrington laid the stone, accompanied by Lady Carrington, their three daughters and the Hon. Rupert Carrington. The lodge presented him with a silver trowel and mallet for the ceremony.^[144] A choir of about thirty, conducted by V. Blomfield, joined the Moss Vale Band and organ music. Supporters placed £60 in offerings on the stone, and local women provided afternoon tea at the Centennial Hall.^[10]

The temple opened in April 1891 under the lodge’s master, Nicholas Herbert Throsby. David Baxter’s later history describes four rooms downstairs and the temple with two anterooms above, giving the building space for both lodge life and offices. Its formal dedication followed on 26 September, performed by the Earl of Jersey with Dr Harman J. Tarrant and J. G. Remington. Afterwards the brethren went to the railway refreshment rooms, where W. T. Lawrence served a cold supper at tables decorated with flowers, ferns and fairy lights.^[10][115]

Those confident beginnings ran into the 1890s Depression. Historian Alan Jacobs links the closure of Harmony and neighbouring lodges to that financial hardship. Harmony was still installing officers in June 1896, when H. A. Moss became master, but the building increasingly housed other organisations. By October 1892 the Sydney solicitors Alfred Shaw & Lucas were holding branch-office hours there every Wednesday and Saturday. By November 1898 Zouch & Co advertised upstairs above the Pastures and Stock Board office, and in March 1899 the stock and station agents gave their address simply as “Masonic Chambers, Moss Vale”.^[39][135]

In July 1900 the same front page carried two more Masonic Chambers advertisements. Throsby & Perry offered stock and station services, while Ernest Lyons advertised as an auctioneer and agent for stock, houses and land.^[138] The hall had a more sociable life too. In October 1901 visiting tennis players were entertained there after their match, with local music.^[145] The Dorcas Society formed at a meeting in the E.S.& A. Bank to help people needing clothing.^[149] In July 1903 it advertised its next meeting in an upstairs room.^[146] By December its members had helped ten families, including 22 children, with clothing and other necessities. About twelve regular workers used borrowed sewing machines, while a separate fund grew towards a machine of their own.^[147] In February 1904, a meeting of unemployed people in the hall urged the government to proceed with approved public works.^[143]

A July 1904 notice advertised the society’s next meeting at Oddfellows’ Hall.^[150] In September its secretary reported help for thirteen families, including 45 children, during the year. The society had also bought its own sewing machine for £2 10s.^[151] When bushfires left local families without homes or clothing in January 1905, the paper credited the society with a swift response, with members working long hours at home to meet calls for help.^[148]

In January 1906 the hall’s leasehold was advertised for mortgagee sale. The notice described a brick-and-stone building with six rooms and a hall. Five rooms brought in £46 a year, and an offer of £10 a year had been made for the meeting room. The 99-year lease then had 85 years to run at the nominal rent of sixpence a year. Albert Cornelius Mosley took a replacement lease in 1907 following re-entry; in 1925 he purchased the underlying freehold for £100.^{[39][75][136]}

The creation of Wingecarribee Shire in 1906 brought another use for the hall. Its temporary clerk began work in Masonic Chambers on 9 July, while the provisional council is separately documented meeting there by September. The first elected council met on 8 December. For more than a quarter-century, local roads, drainage and district administration were discussed next door to Blythman’s house and stables. The shire and Council of the Shire of Wingecarribee amalgamated on 10 February 1933, and meetings moved to the former municipal chambers near Arthur and Throsby Streets.^[142][11]

The rooms also served the town beyond formal council meetings. In January 1923 the Moss Vale Progress Association met there to debate why visitors were overlooking a district it promoted for its healthy climate and nearby scenery. Members blamed scarce accommodation and too much leasehold property remaining in the same hands for generations. They planned a concert and dance to fund town promotion and asked council to fix a dangerous rise in the footpath between Toose’s store and Winner’s.^[137]

A photograph catalogued around 1910 shows the hall towering over its smaller neighbours. Immediately to its left stands the weatherboard building at 374, with a striped awning and white picket fence; Edinburgh House appears at the right edge. Harry A. Wallis moved his butcher shop into the former hall around 1932 or 1933 and disposed of that business by September 1938. The building continued as a butcher shop and private dwelling.^[12][33][39]

Demolition in 1959 made room for the new Rural Bank. Workers recovered a bottle of district newspapers from April 1890, sealed into the old building. Those papers were enclosed in the new bank’s front wall with newspapers, coins and local-history records from 1959, carrying a small part of the Masonic Hall into its replacement.^[10]

The three leading figures in the hall’s ceremonies can also be seen here: Governor Lord Carrington, who laid the foundation stone; lodge master Nicholas Herbert Throsby; and the Earl of Jersey, who performed the formal dedication.^{[123][124][125]}

Lord Carrington, who laid the foundation stone.Public-domain portrait via Wikimedia Commons. Nicholas Herbert Throsby, lodge master.BDH&FHS, around 1899. The Earl of Jersey, who dedicated the hall.Public-domain portrait via Wikimedia Commons. The June 1959 report describing the building's history and demolition.

The first Austermere offering covered 600 acres. Its plan mixed farm and orchard blocks with residential sites around Lackey, Collins, Lytton and Braddon roads. Bong Bong railway platform appears within the estate, giving buyers a direct connection to the railway rather than simply a promise of proximity to Moss Vale.^[4]

The poster also set aside an eight-acre recreation ground. That small reservation helps explain the promoters’ larger idea: a place for homes and community life alongside working land.^[4]

On 23 January 1892, Peter Francis Hart the Younger bought three lots at the Throsby Park Estate auction. The auction plan places Lots 3, 5 and 7, Section 8, facing Argyle Street between White Street and the Royal Hotel precinct, with Clarence Street behind. Hart was a Sydney clerk, according to the deed. Alick Osborne formally conveyed the land to him on 2 August 1895 for £526 2s 6d.^[61][62]

The estate sale had taken years to arrange. In 1891 a newspaper reported that a court decision had cleared obstacles to subdivision. After Patrick Hill Throsby's death, an 1894 report described authority for a new trustee to sign purchasers' conveyances. Hart's formal transfer followed in 1895.^[83][84]

Hart bought a substantial holding: 150 feet along Argyle Street and 330 feet deep, with Goodridge's Lot 9 beside his Lot 7. The deed called him a Sydney clerk. He may have been the Peter Francis Hart, also known as Frank, associated with Waverley.^[62][87]

The 1892 poster made the Throsby Park sale another railway excursion, with a special train and luncheon. Its payment terms were ten per cent at the sale, fifteen per cent after three months and the balance over one, two or three years at six per cent interest. Hart’s three lots were part of this wider effort to sell the estate in manageable holdings.^[61]

The small car park across Clarence Street has its own history, beginning with two lots of the Throsby estate. On 31 December 1892 Patrick Hill Throsby conveyed Lots 2 and 4 of Section 8 to George Tate for £106. Tate, a sawyer, sold to butcher John William Norman in December 1897 for £100. These were neighbouring lands, rather than part of the cottage-and-stable title.^[180]

Surveyor George Henry Sheaffe bought the parent holding in June 1914 for £300, then sold it in December 1919 for the same amount to Thomas Edwin Pearson, a Manly manufacturer. Later division of this land would bring the Country Women’s Association and council into the story of the view from the stable.^[180]

Edward “Ned” Goodridge was already an established Moss Vale figure when he became the adjoining landowner in 1894. He paid £1,079 for a group of properties that included Section 8 Lots 9, 10 and 11; Lot 9 touched Hart’s Lot 7, later part of Blythman’s holding. Goodridge had arrived in Moss Vale about 1874 and worked as a builder and contractor before turning to hotelkeeping.^[76][88]

The Royal Hotel became his best-known business. In 1898 he took its long underlease for £5,700, with £20 a year in rent. His interests extended beyond the bar and accommodation: he served for years on the municipal council, including terms as mayor, supported the district agricultural society and sporting organisations, and laid out a bowling green before his first trip to England. On retiring from business for that journey, townspeople presented him with a testimonial marking his standing in the community.^[76][88]

There was an inventive side to his hotelkeeping. In 1899 he sought protection for an improved urinal with a filtered inner trough; a Western Australian patents index lists the grant by January 1900.^[141]

After returning to Australia, Goodridge took over the Terminus Hotel at Wollongong, became an alderman there and served on its works committee. His land in Moss Vale still tied him to this block. In August 1909, when Blythman sought drainage improvements, Goodridge agreed to pay half the cost of a connection through his land to the sleeper drain in Clarence Street. It was the practical business of neighbouring owners making their properties work.^[38][88]

Ill health eventually brought him back to live privately in Moss Vale. In 1911 council approved W. Jones’s application to build him a cottage in Elizabeth Street. His obituary also describes a new cottage behind the Royal Hotel: two days before his death, he went to see it. He died at his residence, Hazelton, aged 59, leaving his widow, and a large funeral gathered at Bong Bong’s Church of England cemetery.^[88]

The adjoining land continued to change after Goodridge’s death. A 1915 instrument records part passing to the Crown, adding another transaction to the history of the ground beside 374.^[76]

The first firm account of building a cottage and stables here begins with James Blythman, a Moss Vale livery-stable proprietor. He bought Hart's three-lot holding on 16 July 1903. A week later, Muriel McCarthy lent him £300 on mortgage, with advances tied to the building work. Blythman agreed to continue constructing a dwelling house and stables and to finish by 31 October. On 19 August, council gave J. Burnett permission to erect a cottage and stables for him in Argyle Street.^[63][64][65]

Blythman repaid Muriel McCarthy and discharged the building mortgage on 23 February 1907.^[66]

By May 1911, a town plan showed the arrangement clearly: a small weatherboard building beside the former Masonic Hall, the long building labelled ‘Blythman Livery Stables’ behind it, and a paddock alongside. Access from Argyle and Clarence streets gave the house and stable yard entrances at both ends.^[38][53][33]

Blythman's stable yard was part of a transport business he had built up over many years. Louise Blythman's obituary recalled that he was already conducting livery stables when they married in 1892. He held a cab licence by October 1893. By that December he had won the £141 contract to convey the mails between Moss Vale and Kangaroo Valley. By 1900 he was working with coachman Henry Bell. Their partnership ended on 30 September 1903, with its debts payable to Blythman.^[38]

His passengers could travel in considerable comfort. In October 1893 the local paper inspected a new brougham cab that Moss Vale coachbuilder T. Brownlow had made to Blythman’s order. Built a little wider than the usual Sydney cab, it seated two comfortably on buffalo-leather upholstery. Bevelled glass, ventilating back windows, green blinds and silver-plated fittings completed the interior. Outside, the cab was dark green with black lining and a lighter green picked out in fine lines. Strong springs were intended for the district’s hilly roads.^[116]

Working around the railway station also brought him before the magistrates. In December 1893 the Inspector of Nuisances summoned Blythman for leaving his horse and cab in the street while he went onto the platform. His solicitor challenged the council’s authority over railway land. The stationmaster and a former mayor gave evidence, and the bench dismissed the case with costs. In January 1895 the vehicle inspector reported Blythman running two cabs and a sociable without that year’s licences. Council referred the report to its by-law committee and warned the vehicle proprietors that legal proceedings would follow unless they obtained licences within seven days.^[117]

Louise was central to the business too. Her obituary credited her help with its success after their marriage in 1892. When their son Arthur went to the war, the couple decided to leave the livery trade for farming at Coramba, where James had selected land in 1911. They settled there in 1916 and became involved in local institutions; James served as a Dorrigo Shire councillor and president for several terms. The Moss Vale property remained in his ownership until its sale in 1920. When he died in 1940, aged 77, the local paper remembered his more than thirty years in Moss Vale and his Argyle Street stables.^[38][67]

At the property now known as 374, the stables had a frontage to Argyle Street and working access from Clarence Street. That arrangement served horses and coaches and, later, hire cars.^[38][40]

On 28 October 1903 James Blythman asked council to provide a bridge or pipes at the entrance to his Argyle Street property and a crossing over the drain so he could enter the same premises from Clarence Street. Council referred the improvement of Clarence Street to its improvement committee with power to act. In April 1904 it adopted the committee's recommendation for a drain in Clarence Street near Blythman's stables.^[38]

Today, Lot 31 DP 619860 still has two public addresses: 374 Argyle Street at the business front and 44 Clarence Street at the rear. That arrangement helps explain how front offices, rear residents, yards, horses and later vehicles could overlap without every user occupying the whole property.^[9]

374 is the small weatherboard building immediately left of the former hall. 1911: Blythman Livery Stables is named behind the weatherboard building, beside the paddock. Full 1911 plan, sheet one. Select it to inspect the original scan. Full 1911 plan, sheet two. Select it to inspect the original scan.

A later Austermere sale offered 1,000 acres from the estate associated with Sir John Lackey. This poster emphasised five miles of Wingecarribee River frontage, Bong Bong railway platform and Torrens title. It is a separate offering from the 600-acre sale of 1891, rather than another copy of that earlier plan.^[4]

The deposit was ten per cent, followed by five per cent after six months, with the balance in two yearly instalments at five per cent interest. The land was marketed through water, transport and relatively modest initial payments.^[4]

The neighbours had already appeared together in a 1908 council works report. For proposed kerbing along Argyle Street, it counted 100 feet of frontage for Goodridge and 76 feet for Blythman, with each to pay a share of the estimated cost. The report fixes their names and measured frontages in the same short stretch of street; it does not show that the work was finished.^[140]

In August 1909 Blythman and his neighbour Ned Goodridge found a practical solution to the drainage problem. Goodridge agreed to share the cost of connecting a drain through his land to the existing sleeper drain in Clarence Street.^[38]

Before the Rural Bank bought 374, the Government Savings Bank had rented two rooms in the School of Arts for £52 a year. Rural banking services joined it in 1921. The bank left those rooms in 1924 for newly completed shared premises, as banking expanded along Argyle Street.^[92]

Before the Rural Bank bought 374, banking had already been part of Moss Vale life for decades. The institution's wider history reached back to Campbell's Bank in 1819, the Advances to Settlers scheme of 1899 and the Government Savings Bank incorporated in 1907. The Rural Bank formally commenced as a separate institution on 1 July 1933. Later it became the State Bank in 1981-82, was sold in 1994, traded as Colonial State Bank from 1996 and was acquired by the Commonwealth Bank in 2000.^[23]

Its first documented Moss Vale rooms were in the School of Arts. In July 1914 the School reported leasing two downstairs rooms to the Government Savings Bank for two years at £52 a year. Rural banking services joined the existing savings-bank branch in September 1921. In March 1924 the bank gave notice to leave its two front offices at the end of the month. By May, a newspaper was describing newly completed premises shared by the banks, and a 1925 advertisement named H. M. Chard as manager. Neither gives those premises a modern street number.^[92]

The Government Savings Bank's substantial later building is identified in local-history research as 396-400 Argyle Street. Banking also occupied premises at 378 and 386 as the town's institutions grew and moved.^[5][92]

On 15 December 1931 the Government Savings Bank's savings and deposit business passed to the Commonwealth Savings Bank. The rural-lending operation emerged as the independent Rural Bank of New South Wales in 1932 and continued under the Rural Bank name until 1981, when it became the State Bank. Sir William Vicars resigned as a commissioner in 1933. Surplus 396 Argyle Street frontage was reportedly sold to J. J. and E. F. E. Schaefer for about £400 in 1935.^[5]

Council dealt with posts obstructing the Rural Bank premises in 1926 and alterations near the bank in 1928.^[16]

A 1937 advertisement described a bank beside H. S. Whitford and the Bank of New South Wales in Camden, another town served by the banking network.^[16]

McCleery’s Subdivision offered 86 home sites within an advertised four-minute walk of Moss Vale station. The full poster and enlarged plan show blocks along Hoskins and Barker streets beside Old Argyle Road and the railway. The auction asked for a quarter of the price as a deposit and promoted municipal water and electric light.^[187]

The detail contains a particularly bold sales promise: improvements to the railway paddock, including the removal of sheds, were said to be capable of raising nearby values by more than 100 per cent. It captures the optimism used to sell these blocks, rather than establishing that the works or the predicted gain occurred.^[187]

Railway expansion displaced Moss Vale’s first courthouse in 1915. A replacement site had been purchased by July, but wartime delays held up the work. The new courthouse beside Mack’s Theatre Royal finally opened in January 1924.^[3][89]

The railway brought a courthouse to this part of Moss Vale and later forced it to move. Between 1877 and 1880 officials considered several sites before choosing the railway corner. Patrick Hill Throsby's 1878 correspondence describes restrictions on one of the alternatives he offered.^[3][89]

Railway expansion displaced the first courthouse in 1915. A March newspaper report described wartime delays to the replacement; by July, a new site had been purchased.^[89]

The Justice Minister inspected the new site in 1922, and another report placed the proposed courthouse beside Tom Mack's Theatre Royal. It opened in January 1924, on the land now identified as Lot 2 DP 198566.^[3][89]

Edward Stanley Whatman was already advertising hire cars from his Argyle Street bootmaking business by July 1917, using Phone 114. Customers knew the business as ‘S. E. Whatman’, the initials used in its advertisements and painted on the stable front.^[38][44]

In 1918 Whatman took over the business at Blythman's stables. Council approved his signboard on 30 March. On 11 May Whatman Bros asked for electric light at the stables Blythman had recently used, and for time to transfer the vehicle licences. By 25 May, council had recorded Blythman's agreement to transfer the vehicle and driver licences to S. E. Whatman. The business was changing hands while Blythman still owned the land.^[38]

Local historian David Baxter places Whatman's car-hire and horse-cart business behind today's 374 around 1918. A July advertisement called it ‘Central Motor Garage and Livery Stables’, named S. E. Whatman as proprietor and described it as formerly J. Blythman's. In the surviving photograph, ‘PHONE 15’ is painted across the stable front, matching the advertisements.^[40][42]

S. E. Whatman's Central Motor Garage, c.1918; “PHONE 15” is painted on the stable front. Photograph supplied by David Baxter.

A. C. Rush bought Whatman’s livery-stable business on 16 November 1918. Whatman retained the motor side for a time. Rush’s February 1919 advertisement offered the services of his Central Livery Stables and Motor Garage in Argyle Street, using Phone 15.^[38][42]

On 16 November 1918, A. C. Rush bought Whatman's livery-stable business. Whatman kept the motor side for a time; by August 1919 A. M. Reynolds had taken it over. Rush and Reynolds were both advertising from Argyle Street in September 1920. Whatman's earlier Phone 114 was later reassigned to T. J. Winner.^[38]

On 17 August 1920, Tom Mack bought Blythman's three lots for £1,400. A former Moss Vale livery-stables proprietor, Mack also became involved with the nearby Royal Hotel and Theatre Royal.^[67]

Mack’s interests extended up the road. In 1921 Kate Goodridge assigned him the Royal Hotel underlease for £5,500, and he bought the underlying Theatre Royal freehold for £300. He returned the hotel underlease to Kate in 1922 while retaining the theatre parcel and access. Kate later supplied the money for him to buy the hotel freehold on her behalf.^[90]

Tom Mack, who bought 374 from Blythman in 1920, also became involved with the neighbouring Royal Hotel and Theatre Royal. In 1921 Kate Goodridge assigned him the hotel underlease for £5,500. On the same day, a separate deed transferred the underlying freehold of the 35¾-perch theatre parcel from the Throsby executors to Mack for £300, subject to the lease already over it. These hotel and theatre interests were separate from his ownership of 374.^[90]

In 1922, Mack assigned the hotel underlease back to Kate for £5,000. This time the agreement excluded the Theatre Royal parcel and preserved access to it, so Kate was not simply receiving the identical property interest she had transferred in 1921. In 1929 Mack acquired the hotel's underlying freehold, still subject to the lease, from the younger Patrick Hill Throsby's executors for £1,600.^[90]

Kate had supplied the £1,600 for the 1929 hotel purchase. A 1934 trust conveyance records Mack buying on her behalf and later conveying the freehold to her as trustee. Its coloured plan shows the hotel and theatre beside the neighbouring properties, including 374.^[90]

In 1953 the Public Trustee sold the hotel freehold from the Goodridge estate to William Lloyd Armstrong and Eileen Estelle Armstrong for £10,500. They held it as tenants in common.^[90]

Stephen Norman McLean’s signed survey records part of Lot 4, Section 2, DP 2940, around Browley, Wyatt and Yarrawa streets. Its bearings and boundary measurements show the town being divided at the scale of individual properties. This is a different section of the estate from the Section 8 lots that became Hart and Blythman’s Argyle Street holding.^[4]

An April 1921 advertisement offered Central Motor Garage services in Argyle Street. Later, brothers James Clifford and Hector George Whatman opened a Moss Vale garage near the railway bridge in January 1937, at what became 409-411 Argyle Street. They also ran the Bowral dealership. David Baxter records their sale of the Moss Vale business to Ted Archer and Bill Ward in November 1947.^{[19][40][42][44]}

An April 1921 advertisement offered the services of Central Motor Garage in Argyle Street.^[19]

The later Whatman Bros garage was a separate business operated by brothers James Clifford Whatman and Hector George Whatman. The same brothers ran the Bowral dealership, documented from August 1928, and opened the Moss Vale Central Garage in January 1937 at the later 409-411 Argyle Street site near the railway bridge. A 1938 burglary report places their Moss Vale premises against the railway embankment.^[19][42][44]

David Baxter's later research records that the brothers sold the Moss Vale business in November 1947 to Edward Alexander “Ted” Archer and Harold Richard “Bill” Ward. Trove independently confirms Archer and Ward advertising Central Garage next to the Moss Vale Fire Station by August 1949; a 1950 advertisement gives the address as 411 Argyle Street. The Bowral partnership continued until Hector left from 1 January 1961 and James Clifford carried on at 31-39 Bong Bong Street.^[40][42][44]

The brothers were related to Edward Stanley Whatman, which explains some of the confusion created by the repeated family and business names. The available family reconstruction identifies their father, James Whatman, as Edward Stanley's first cousin, making James Clifford and Hector George his first cousins once removed. The parent-child and sibling links are independently supported, while the final cousin relationship still relies partly on compiled family-history records.^[44]

In July 1924, land beneath much of Moss Vale’s business centre was offered for auction at Mack’s Theatre Royal. The offering included the freeholds beneath the Royal Hotel, shire council chambers, Bank of New South Wales and numerous shops and homes. Existing Throsby leases still had between eight and 65 years to run: investors were buying the landlord’s interest while those leases continued.^[10]

The sale notice gives a vivid cross-section of the town: Booth’s emporium, Laurel House, Roseville and Rosebank boarding houses, a motor garage, coachworks, brick shops and weatherboard dwellings. Other properties were offered with immediate possession or shorter tenancies. The accompanying plan places these businesses along Argyle Street and shows the separate allotments behind the familiar shopfronts.^[10][4]

The State Library's relevant Moss Vale plan groups include Z/TP/M5/7, 37, 37.1, 39 and 40 for the 1924 business-centre freeholds; M5/21, 84 and 85 for measured properties; and M5/25, 70 and 74 for Throsby Park Estate. Some 1924 freeholds were still subject to Throsby leases with between eight and 65 years left to run.^[4]

Only weeks after the business-centre freehold auction, the Wyburn Estate offered four residential sites near the main street and banks. The poster advertised 55-foot frontages, good depth, well-drained garden soil and electric light availability. Its plan locates the blocks among Mills, Waite and Browley roads and the established Argyle Street centre.^[4]

This was a small offering with a domestic pitch: convenient house and garden sites in a town whose business streets were already established.^[4]

Mack sold the three lots to Bowral estate agent Percy Alfred Westbrook on 11 September 1925 for £2,000, with a condition that protected his nearby Theatre Royal from competition. Westbrook agreed not to build a “theatre public hall picture show or other place of public amusement” on the land, or use its buildings for those purposes. The covenant applied to the whole holding and expressly benefited Mack's Theatre Royal property on part of Lot 6. The owner of that theatre land could release or change the restriction. The Bank of New South Wales joined the sale as mortgagee and received the £2,000 towards Mack's mortgage debt.^[68]

Westbrook was a Bowral estate agent. Later local notices add glimpses of his life: P. A. Westbrook spoke at a Mittagong funeral as a lifelong family friend, and a 1952 engagement notice placed Mr and Mrs P. A. Westbrook at Bowral.^[91]

Blythman had sold Lots 3, 5 and 7 together in 1920. The separation came under Westbrook: on 30 August 1927 he conveyed the neighbouring holding to Alice Evelyn Harris. Its 32½ perches included a right of way, with a frontage of just over 59 feet on Argyle Street. Harris paid £600 for the equity in the land and took on existing mortgages of £1,600 and £500. The small cash price was therefore only part of the bargain.^[168]

The shape of the retained cottage-and-stable parcel was already on paper. H. Sheaffe’s survey of February 1926 followed the cottage gutter, then stepped around the stable wall and gutter before reaching Clarence Street. That stable-shaped dogleg belongs to the early building layout. Later changes to passage rights and the neighbouring boundary would reshape access around it.^[169][69]

After separating the neighbouring holding in 1927, Westbrook sold the cottage-and-stable parcel on 12 September 1928. Moss Vale motor-garage proprietor Cyril Melville Humphries paid £1,600 for all Lot 3 and part Lot 5, a 22-perch holding with a right of way. This smaller parcel substantially corresponds with today’s property. Humphries borrowed £800 from Stamm lenders against it that same day.^[69][168]

Alice Harris sold the adjoining holding to Kate Agnes Goodridge on 4 January 1929 for £3,000, free of encumbrances. Kate was already a familiar figure in the hotel story along this stretch of Argyle Street. The original deed supplies the date and purchase price for this separate property.^[170][90]

In her will of 18 January 1934, Kate left her three Argyle Street shop properties to her niece Alice Freney. Kate died on 16 April 1936; the eventual estate conveyance would come seventeen years later. The buildings passed through a family inheritance before becoming part of the Webb butchers’ holding.^[171]

From the air, Moss Vale's railway platforms, shop roofs and gardens make a busy scene. Near the Argyle Street bridge, a small group of buildings brings 374's earlier life into focus. Edinburgh House stands on the corner, beside the former Masonic Hall and council chambers. Immediately beyond them is the low cottage at 374, with the great stable roof stretching behind it. A Fairfax photograph, catalogued by the National Library as around 1930, preserves all four together.^[190]

The cottage still has its earlier front and covered verandah. The brick frontage associated with the later Rural Bank branch has not yet been added. Behind the house, the long gabled stable roof shows how much of this small holding was devoted to the yard's working life. The 1911 town plan and the 1926 parcel plan describe that arrangement on paper; this photograph lets us see the buildings themselves, before the neighbouring hall disappeared and the street frontage changed.^{[190][53][169]}

The lettering on the great shed’s gable in the Fairfax aerial photograph points to a later tenant: auctioneer and estate agent E. J. Farmer. Read as “Farmer’s Auction Mart”, the sign matches his contemporary newspaper advertisements. Cyril Melville Humphries owned the cottage-and-stable property; Farmer appears to have put the old stable to a different use, as a place to gather goods and sell them to the town.^{[190][69][193]}

His July 1930 advertisement brings those afternoons to life. Every Friday at 2.30 p.m., the mart offered furniture, fresh fruit, vegetables, poultry and sundries. Goods could arrive right up to the morning of the sale. A building made for the livery trade now had room for the ordinary contents of households, gardens and farms, with buyers coming to see what the week had brought.^[193]

Farmer’s business had an earlier chapter. In July 1929, Farmer & White advertised as auctioneers and house, land and estate agents in Argyle Street, holding Friday night mart sales at 7.45 p.m. By February 1930, a property-sale advertisement called E. J. Farmer “late Farmer and White”. Working with Burton of Bowral, he was offering the Moss Vale guest houses Woodbine and Lynton, showing that his work extended beyond the weekly mart. Farmer’s Auction Mart was still advertising its Friday afternoon sales in June 1938.^{[194][195][196]}

Across town, another part of the Throsby estate became the home that Rural Bank families would know as “the bank house”. Patrick Hill Throsby sold a larger parent holding to Harry Frank Marr in 1894. Marr conveyed two corner lots to John Tomley in 1921; on 18 October 1927 Tomley and his mortgagee sold the Valetta and Elizabeth Street corner to Margaret Schofield for £217 18s. 9d. This was a separate property from 374 Argyle Street.^[174][175]

Margaret built Tarrangower at 7 Valetta Street around 1930. Rate books valued the house and its improvements at £3,000 that year, and reports following her death in 1943 said she had built it thirteen years earlier. Its dark brick walls, tiled roofs and trachyte steps would become familiar to generations of bank managers. The surviving accounts suggest several possible builders, without settling who designed and built the house.^[17][45]

The council heritage study describes a dark face-brick Interwar house on a trachyte base, with hipped and gabled terracotta-tile roofs, a return verandah, brick balustrades and a prominent gabled entrance. Its retaining wall, fence and corner steps were made from trachyte quarried at Mount Gibraltar. Long-term owner Jan King said most of the original skirting boards, picture rails, doors and handles survived. Later work added a rear laundry and sunroom, replaced the kitchen ceiling and converted an already enclosed section of verandah into a dressing room and ensuite.^[17]

A council heritage planner told Angus that Tarrangower and 374's brick frontage used Bowral bricks. The local brickworks began production in the early 1920s and dates its foundation to 1922.^[35]

After the war Tarrangower became known as “the bank house” and was reportedly used as a country holiday home for senior executives and later by local managers. Recorded occupants include Hugh Malcolm and Geraldine Edith Robertson in 1953-54, Joseph “Jack” de Boos in 1954-56, and Alan Oswald, Joyce Olive and Wendy Joan Howarth from August 1956. Alan Howarth later moved into the residence above the new bank in 1960. Tarrangower is now Lot 1 DP 798790, a 1,312-square-metre locally significant home. It sold through Ray White on 8 May 2025 for $1.35 million.^[17]

Tarrangower, photographed for its recent sale. The house, garden and trachyte work above Valetta Street. A recent interior view showing the house's surviving period character.

By the interwar years, district maps placed Moss Vale within a much wider network of railway lines, roads, streams and ridges. The 1931–32 survey map and coloured 1933 edition make the surrounding terrain visible in a way that an auction plan cannot. A related geographical-series edition preserves a different presentation of the same district.^[187][50]

The Bong Bong parish sheets preserve older grants beneath later subdivisions. The full 1932 sheet and its town and southern detail views make the names and boundaries easier to follow; some annotations were added later. The 1942 sheet provides another dated view. Yarrawa’s three parish-map versions cover neighbouring country and are useful for comparison with Bong Bong, the parish containing the town.^[187][50]

The Stamm family had helped finance the property before becoming its owners. Their lending appears in deposited-deed schedules and Receipt 16122. On 1 June 1936 the mortgage was discharged and Humphries sold equal shares to Alice Mary Stamm and Cecilia Flora Stamm for £840 15s 6d. The deed described both women as spinsters of Burradoo. A shared Bowral cemetery inscription later recorded Alice, Cecilia and Edith Stamm together.^[70][91]

Alice and Cecilia were sisters, daughters of John and Mary Stamm. Their mother had been born in South Africa and married John in Victoria before the family moved to New South Wales. From 1911 their home was “Riverside” at Burradoo. When Mary died in December 1938, Alice and Cecilia were named among the executrices of her will, alongside Elizabeth Charlotte Stamm.^{[157][158][159]}

The sisters continued to live in the district long after their brief ownership of 374. Alice died at Bowral District Hospital on 28 February 1964. Cecilia died at her Bowral home on 1 September 1970; her funeral service was held there before burial at Bowral cemetery.^[157][160]

Alice and Cecilia held the property for less than four months. On 28 September 1936 they sold it for £1,050 to Bowral bootmaker Ernest John Bunter and his wife May as joint tenants. Bootmaking also appears in the family's earlier records: a 1928 probate notice connects an Ernest John Bunter with retired Mittagong bootmaker John Bunter's estate, and John's widow's obituary in 1947 names Ernest of Bowral as a surviving son. A 1939 advertisement for Bunter's Reliable Shoe Store gives 288 Bong Bong Street, Bowral.^[71][91]

At Welby, neighbouring graves bear the names Ernest John Bunter, who died in 1970, and May Bunter, who died in 1980.^[91]

The two shops between 374 and the courthouse, 366 and 370 Argyle Street, formed the rest of this small commercial block through much of the twentieth century.^[46]

Robert Lane Webb began business in Moss Vale about September 1938. R. L. Webb & Sons advertised in Argyle Street in 1947. A 1992 photograph shows Webb’s Quality Meats at 370, between the tea-and-coffee shop at 366 and Throsby House at 374.^[46]

Carlisles sold groceries and provisions from an Argyle Street branch. It was listed as a Moss Vale small-goods shop in 1940. Mr Lees managed it for several years before Mr Webb succeeded him in December 1941; its 1947 branch list gave telephone Moss Vale 10.^[47]

The other property between 370 and the courthouse is 366 Argyle Street. Noel Watson Furniture was trading in Moss Vale by 1971 and a 1974 advertisement gives Noel Watson's address as 366. The historical society's 1992 streetscape photograph records the building shared by the TAB and a Tea & Coffee Shop.^[46]

The 1937 town map puts these shops and businesses within the established street network and railway approaches. It provides a town-wide companion to the photographs of the individual premises.^[4]

The Bunters sold the property to the Rural Bank of New South Wales on 27 October 1938 for £1,350, ending just over two years of ownership.^[72]

When Ernest John and May Bunter sold 374 to the Rural Bank on 27 October 1938, the property entered a new period of ownership. Opening a branch took longer. In its 1939 annual report, the bank listed Moss Vale among places where it had secured a site for future premises, but not among its branches. It would retain the property until 5 March 1960.^[72][94]

On 11 October 1945 Thomas Edwin Pearson sold Lot A of the opposite parent holding to the Country Women’s Association for £147 15s. The CWA later exchanged that land with council, receiving other council land and a £50 payment to equalise the exchange.^[181][182]

This puts the CWA into the ownership history of the land beyond the stable. It leaves a more elusive question about the view itself: what buildings stood there, and when they gave way to parking. The association’s ownership alone does not settle the location of its meeting rooms.^[181][182]

After Margaret Schofield’s death, her executors sold Tarrangower to accountant David Sherwood on 18 September 1946 for £2,755. The following January he gave it to his wife Alice Amelia, the deed expressing “natural love and affection”, subject to an existing mortgage.^[176][177]

On 5 July 1949 Alice sold the Valetta Street house to the Rural Bank of New South Wales for £4,000. The original purchase deed gives firm footing to its later name, “the bank house”. Bank families would make their homes here while the Argyle Street branch moved from the old cottage into its new premises.^[178][17]

The bank’s 1950-51 annual report announced a new Moss Vale branch, managed by Hugh Malcolm Robertson, usually named in contemporary reports as H. M. Robertson. The later announcement of its move next door places the earlier branch at 374.^[79][94]

Robertson and Geraldine Johnstone had married at the Presbyterian church in Griffith on Christmas Day 1936. By 1953–54 Hugh and Geraldine Edith Robertson were living at Tarrangower, the bank house in Valetta Street. Their earlier wedding notice and later Moss Vale records trace the couple through two country banking communities.^[161][162]

By February 1959 the bank was preparing to move next door. Its announcement placed the new corner building beside the existing branch. The move to the new premises followed in early 1960.^[14]

At 374, banking rooms faced Argyle Street behind the brick frontage, while the weatherboard house extended towards Clarence Street. The join between those two parts of the building is still visible. A council heritage planner identified the frontage's brickwork as Bowral brick.^[18][35][9]

Later commercial listings described an internal vault from the property's bank years. The heavy Chubb door now at 374 arrived during the solicitors' renovations in the 1970s, when they built a fireproof room for their deeds.^[8][9]

The branch's people took part in the district's agricultural life. In 1953 manager H. M. Robertson attended an Aberdeen-Angus field day and was photographed presenting Sanderson's cattle trophy. In April 1954 J. de Boos transferred to Moss Vale as Robertson began at Narromine. That July, de Boos judged a bank-sponsored Junior Farmers competition at Moss Vale Central School.^[47][94]

The bank’s customers included taxi operators, farmers and other local workers. Dun’s Gazette recorded Vivian Hume, a Moss Vale taxi proprietor, giving a motor car as security in January 1949, with £3,250 owing on an overdraft. In May 1951 it named James S. O. Throsby, a farmer at “Bong Bong”, with a Mitchell subsoiler securing £965 16s. 2d. owing to the Rural Bank, repayable in yearly instalments. These small notices bring the district’s working life into view: cars keeping local transport moving and machinery working the farms.^[95]

Other entries show both new borrowing and debts being cleared. In July 1953 Rex B. Wilson, another Moss Vale taxi proprietor, appeared with a motor car securing bank advances. June notices recorded several satisfied securities for Doris M. Donney, trading as Moss Vale Taxi Service. They also recorded satisfied Rural Bank bills of sale for Kenneth C. Wood, a Moss Vale police constable, and Jeffery M. Bishop, a Moss Vale schoolteacher.^[95]

Robertson’s later successor Alan Oswald Howarth had worked for the Rural Bank at Parkes, where he was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1940. By August 1956 he was Moss Vale’s manager, living at Tarrangower with his wife Joyce Olive and daughter Wendy Joan. The family moved into the upstairs residence of the new bank in 1960, carrying the familiar connection between banking premises and a manager’s home into the purpose-built building next door.^[161][163]

Branch manager Alan Oswald Howarth announced plans for the new bank next door in February 1959. He said the bank's decision reflected a decade of local growth in which dairy cattle numbers had risen 67 per cent, beef cattle 106 per cent and sheep 61 per cent. The new building was designed as a modern two-storey face-brick bank with aluminium-framed glass and the latest banking facilities.^[14]

Moss Vale contractors Adolph Pittolo and Company had construction well advanced by July 1959. It was expected to open in November for the Christmas rush, although later records place the branch's move from 374 in early 1960. The building later traded as the State Bank.^[14]

An August 1959 advertisement gives another glimpse of the builders behind it: A. Pittolo of 186 Argyle Street was seeking a foreman for an A Grade building contractor. The new bank was part of a local construction business working from the same street.^[164]

Neil Cawthorne was another former employee of the Moss Vale Rural Bank. A 1972 cement-works newsletter mentioned his banking background when welcoming him to the works.^[94]

The Argyle frontage has a recessed central entrance, broad windows, an awning and a flat corrugated-metal roof concealed behind the parapet. The older house continues behind it beneath pitched roofs. The site has been described in heritage work as part of the collective character of the Argyle Street commercial precinct rather than as a separately listed State Heritage item. The 2021 land-value record used a Local Centre zoning classification for valuation, consistent with the mixed business and residential pattern seen here for generations.^[15][52]

February 1959: plans for the bank's new building next door. The adjoining purpose-built bank in its later State Bank era. The surviving junction between the brick front and weatherboard home. The stepped brick parapet above the older house.

In the 1950s Mack’s Theatre drew Friday and Saturday night crowds a few doors along at 348-354 Argyle Street. It later traded as King’s Pictures and closed in 1966. The hotels, courthouse, shops and several banks kept this stretch of Argyle Street busy through the day.^[20][24]

In the 1950s, 374 sat in a small entertainment and financial district. A few doors towards the lower numbers, Mack's Theatre at 348-354 Argyle Street drew Friday and Saturday night crowds and later traded as King's Pictures before closing in 1966. Further along stood the substantial 1924 Government Savings Bank at 396-400 Argyle Street.^[20]

The nearby Bank of New South Wales had opened on 6 November 1922 next to the shire council chambers. Its roughly 1890 premises had 33 feet of Argyle Street frontage and 162½ feet to White Street. The bank bought the site on 1 November 1922 and reportedly spent £2,820 on the purchase and renovations. H. H. J. C. Marshall was the first manager and F. H. Brown succeeded him in June 1944.^[24]

Further north on Argyle Street was the Moss Vale Hotel, long known locally as the Pink Pub. Around the same stretch were the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney and the English, Scottish & Australian Bank. Together the railway, courthouse, hotel, cinema, banks, shops and professional offices made this one of the busiest parts of town.^[20]

The full 1950 town map and its centre detail show roads, railway land and public infrastructure around the growing town. Their scale is useful for orientation; the more precise 1926 property plan is the better evidence for Clarence Street immediately behind 374.^[187][169]

The Public Trustee formally conveyed Kate Goodridge’s property to Alice Freney on 12 May 1953, carrying out the gift in her aunt’s will. It was an inheritance, rather than a new purchase from Kate, who had died in 1936. Alice’s ownership connects the Goodridge family’s Argyle Street interests to the butchers who followed.^[171]

Alice Freney sold the neighbouring land for £5,250 to Robert Webb and his three sons, Owen Clive, Phillip John and Edgar Robert. The deed describes all four as Moss Vale master butchers and gives each a share as tenants in common.^[93]

The purchase gave the family a lasting stake beside 374, where Webb’s Quality Meats would become a familiar shopfront. Their trade also made deliveries and rear access important, linking the ownership story to the narrow passage beside the stable.^[93][46][8]

The Rural Bank and the four Webb owners changed the older passage rights in May 1957. The bank released its rights over much of the original nine-foot-six-inch strip, while preserving a narrower route: two feet ten inches wide from Argyle Street for the first 85 feet 4½ inches, then stepping out to nine feet six inches for the final 30 feet beside the stable.^[172]

This explains the variable-width route later drawn in the registered survey’s inset. It was a change to access rights, rather than a sale of the land underneath. The narrow street end also cautions against reading later memories of truck deliveries as a description of this precise 1957 route.^{[172][155][8]}

Vicki Bishop remembers visiting her grandparents Francis Arthur and Philomeana Wallis at this house from 1958. Philomeana was a Cosegrove from Sutton Forest. Francis ran the stock-and-station business, shod and trained horses, and used the present front shop as his office. Children were generally not allowed into that room.^[13]

F. A. Wallis and Sons advertised livestock and auction services in Moss Vale during the 1940s and early 1950s. Its head office was printed as 372 Argyle Street in 1945 and 327 in 1948; later advertisements used Argyle Street without a number.^[25][32]

Vicki's childhood visits began while the Rural Bank owned the property and continued into the years associated with the solicitors. Margaret Mary Sophia Throsby and Naida Edwards bought it in March 1960, and Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards was listed here by June 1961. The house and front business rooms accommodated overlapping parts of the building's life.^[6][73]

Francis and Philomeana had four sons, Roy, Ken, John and Keith, and five daughters. Vicki was John's daughter. John married in 1948, Vicki was born in 1950, and she believed family photographs may show her being babysat in the house as an infant.^[13]

Her memories reach through the whole building. The present kitchen was her grandmother's room, the dining room was another bedroom, an aunt slept in the rear sunroom, the present living room was then the kitchen, and Angus's bedroom served as the family living room. One large shop-side room was used as a bedroom and for storing coats and furs. Vicki thought it may have been her grandparents' room before Philomeana became ill, and did not remember ever seeing her grandmother walk.^[13]

At the rear stood a large clothesline and a substantial shed extending towards today's council car park. Vicki remembered using the side lane, which had no gates, and thought Clarence Street might not yet have provided a practical rear entrance. She remembered the family using the whole property.^[13]

Philomeana died in 1966 and a large family clearance sale followed.^[13]

Council added Lot B of the opposite parent holding on 13 June 1958, paying Susan May Tickner £2,000 for a 32-perch parcel fronting Clarence and White streets. Together with the earlier CWA exchange, this records how the opposite land came into council hands.^[183][182]

The small car park opposite the former stable is now identified as 4 Kirkham Street, Lot 1 DP203073, and council’s land register lists it as an operational car park of 1,511 square metres. The deposited-plan ledger records registration in 1961, but neither that date nor the earlier purchases tells us when parking began. The historic parent lots were larger than the present parcel, so their boundaries still need the original plan to be matched precisely.^[184]

On 5 March 1960, Margaret Mary Sophia Throsby and Naida Edwards bought 374 from the Rural Bank for £5,750. Each owned a half share. The deed was registered on 25 March.^[6][73]

David Cummins remembers Owen Lloyd Edwards calling the building ‘Bluey Wallis's house’. In David's account, Owen associated the purchase from the bank with 1966; the sale deed dates it to 1960.^[8]

Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards moved its Moss Vale legal office into 374. The practice was still listed at Mack’s Theatre Building in January 1961; the Commonwealth Gazette tax-agent register placed it here by 30 June. Margaret Throsby and Naida Edwards owned the building, while the firm occupied it.^[6][73]

The firm's Moss Vale roots began in 1929 when George Frederick Osborne Throsby opened a branch of the Sydney practice Wilkinson & Throsby. Owen Lloyd Edwards became a partner in 1948, creating the name Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards. George died suddenly in 1970 and Owen then ran the office. Garry Barnsley was already with the firm when his law-school friend David Cummins joined in 1973.^[7]

Frederick Bushby Wilkinson, one of the practice's original names, had been a Sydney solicitor and Glebe alderman. Owen Edwards later received an OAM for service to veterans and the community. Garry Barnsley received an OAM for service to the Southern Highlands, and David Cummins received an OAM for service to Wingecarribee Shire, particularly aged welfare.^[21]

The firm’s own history preserves a composite portrait of the three men behind its name: Frederick Bushby Wilkinson, George Frederick Osborne Throsby and Owen Lloyd Edwards.^[7]

Frederick Wilkinson, George Throsby and Owen Edwards.Source: Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards.

The 1968 Bong Bong parish map still carries the framework of the original grants beneath the later roads and subdivisions. By then 374 was a solicitor’s office, but its title history continued to reach back through the Throsby estate. The map helps connect that long ownership history with the much larger country around Moss Vale.^[187][73]

On 12 October 1973, Throsby House Pty Limited bought the property from Margaret Mary Sophia Throsby and Naida Edwards. Each woman sold her half share for $20,000, bringing the price to $40,000. David J. Cummins witnessed Naida's signature. Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards continued working from the building.^[74]

David Cummins recalled how he and Garry Barnsley decided to become the practice’s landlords. The two had been friends since law school, and Garry was already working at Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards when David joined in 1973. When Mrs Throsby wanted to sell her half of the property, local estate agent Tom Friend put the value of the whole building at $40,000. The firm had its own valuation of $26,000. Tom offered to buy Mrs Throsby’s share for $20,000, which would have made him a part-owner of the lawyers’ premises. As David put it, “the last thing we needed was a real estate agent as our landlord.”^[8]

David and Garry went to the bank and arranged the purchase through Throsby House Pty Ltd. David remembered that the company structure also helped reduce Mrs Edwards’s land tax, and that they painted “Throsby House” across the front above the door. He placed these events around 1975; the two surviving purchase deeds date the company’s acquisition to October 1973.^[8][74]

The building was remembered locally as the chambers of Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards, painted pink at one stage and later plain cream. Its front rooms became lawyers' offices, reception and a busy typing pool. Clare Moore was Owen Edwards's secretary and Vonnie Cook was the firm's bookkeeper.^[8]

A historical photograph in council files appears to have been commissioned by the firm when the Throsby House panel was installed. David thought Garry Barnsley's interest in photography and the presentation of the practice may have been behind it. Garry was also remembered as an early advocate for solicitors being allowed to advertise.^[8]

The earliest printed use of the name “Throsby House” at 374 is a Government Gazette estate notice dated 21 January 1983. Further notices repeat “Throsby House, 374 Argyle Street” in June 1984, October 1986 and June 1987, each using the firm's D.X. 4957 Berrima District address. These notices independently confirm David Cummins's recollection that the name was already in use at the property.^[41]

The firm continued to grow while based here. Price Prentice & Co merged with Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards in 1983; Leslie Price and Claud Prentice continued as consultants. Gazette records strongly suggest their full names were John Leslie Price and Claud Kevin Prentice. The firm also took over T. A. F. McCarthy & Son after Thomas Vyner McCarthy retired. Brian Hanrahan and Irene Pickel became partners in 1985, followed by Susan McGowan and Andrew Cameron in 1989.^[7] A 1984 professional register named Garry Barnsley, David Cummins and Owen Edwards at 374 Argyle Street.^[6]

Throsby House at 374 Argyle Street in 1992.

David Cummins recalls Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards building a four-hour fireproof room for storing deeds. Local builder Fred Anthon was renovating the Commonwealth Bank further along Argyle Street when it installed two new safe doors. He offered Owen Edwards a redundant Chubb door. The roughly one-ton door was rolled up Argyle Street, manoeuvred over the front steps and installed at 374.^[8]

This explains a long-standing puzzle in what is now the residential hallway. Most of the hallway is wide with a very high ceiling, then the ceiling suddenly drops to an unusually low section. During Angus's renovations, builders told him that this part was made from fireproof or fire-resistant materials, which seemed very odd for an ordinary hallway. David explained that it had been intended as the original fire safe room. Owen Edwards decided the firm could not afford to pay for the appropriately rated door at the time, so the fire-resistant shell was never completed as a safe and simply remained part of the hallway. David did not know what safe or strongroom the Rural Bank had used.^[8][9]

During the solicitors' years, the rooms towards the rear changed too. The last rooms on the right stayed in their earlier condition until they were relined in the late 1970s. The skillion-roof room held files, and the rooms with windows became offices. A small courtyard separated the women's and men's toilets; the men's could be reached only from the side lane. The present rear foyer behind the glass doors had no floor. The office story was that George Throsby used to nose his car into that space.^[8]

Later work towards Clarence Street filled in the area between the outside men's toilet and the hallway, creating the rear foyer and changing the old courtyard and office layout.^[8]

The sudden ceiling drop still marks the proposed fireproof deeds room.

David Cummins recalls that the northern lane once ran from Argyle Street through to the rear of 374. Jack, Edgar and Tony Webb’s butcher shop next door needed rear access, and he remembers Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards selling part of the strip to provide a one-vehicle route to Clarence Street. Edgar was a longstanding client and earlier discussions had involved George Throsby. Large delivery trucks later used the route behind the butcher shop. The recalled sale may explain a later adjustment to the lane; the original dogleg had already been drawn around the stable in 1926.^[8][169]

After the Webbs sold the butcher shop, David recalls agreeing with butcher Bob Malcolm to put gates at both ends of the lane and keep them locked. People had been leaving bottles and rubbish there.^[8]

David also remembers Clarence Street as little more than a lane before council widened it, added kerbs and guttering and installed the footpath. He estimated that 374 lost two or three metres from its rear. The later survey’s shorter depth is consistent with that recollection, although the acquisition record and its date have yet to emerge.^{[8][169][155]}

Clarence Street already appears behind the cottage and stable on the 1926 parcel plan. The later change was its continuation past the courthouse towards Elizabeth Street, distinct from the lane serving 374. A colour aerial photograph taken on 23 September 1991 shows the onward route in place. Earlier photographs preserve a different layout behind the courthouse, but the exact opening date remains to be established. That extension and the widening David remembers are separate stages of the street’s history.^{[191][169][37]}

During this period the rear was given a low wire fence and brick garden edging. David planted the large tree that remains prominent today, while members of the office staff helped establish parts of the garden.^[8]

Owen Edwards’s secretary, Clare Moore, and the firm’s bookkeeper, Vonnie Cook, later returned to visit Angus. Walking through the rooms brought back memories of the typing pool, and they pointed out things they had planted in the garden.^[8]

Former staff remembered seven women working across reception and the typing pool, sometimes all competing to do the available work. It was overstaffed by modern standards, but wages and office practices were different. It was a sociable workplace, although the old building could be bitterly cold. Train shunting, the traffic lights and semi-trailers grinding to a halt outside made it extremely noisy.^[8]

The awkward box gutter still marks the junction between the old house and the added street-front section. David believed the firm installed the black and white canvas awning above the doorway. Autumn westerlies and the later street trees made the box gutter a regular trap for leaves.^[8]

Robert Webb died on 16 June 1960, leaving his quarter share to his three sons. A conveyance of 24 June 1975 formalised that inherited interest in Owen, Phillip and Edgar, rather than bringing in a new buyer. David Cummins witnessed the instrument, a small documentary link between the neighbours and the solicitor at 374.^[173]

The deed also says that a recent survey more correctly described the neighbouring holding as Lot 7 and part Lot 5, measuring 826.5 square metres. This clarifies the earlier deeds’ inconsistent lot wording. It was a larger holding than today’s 370 Argyle Street parcel, with a history also connected to 366. Its conversion to qualified titles later in 1975 was a change in the title system, rather than another sale.^[173][185]

Surveyor Robert James Anderson completed the survey on 24 September 1979. Registered on 18 August 1982 as DP619860, the plan identifies 374 Argyle Street as Lot 31: 514.2 square metres drawn from parts of Lots 3 and 5, Section 8 of the Throsby Park Estate. Its narrow Argyle frontage measures 9.945 metres, widening through a jog to a 13.54-metre frontage on Clarence Street.^[155]

The sheet records the building outlines and their position against the boundaries. A separate inset traces the variable-width right of way recorded in Book 1532 No. 35, adding a survey record to the shared-lane story. Throsby House Pty Limited executed the plan, and the Bank of New South Wales consented as mortgagee.^[155] On 7 September 1982 the property moved from the old-system land records onto a Torrens title, Volume 14862 Folio 86.^[78]

The older measurements make the changes tangible. The long boundary was 162 feet 3 inches, or about 49.45 metres, in 1926; the 1979 survey gives 47.29 metres, about 2.16 metres less. The short step beside the stable also contracted, from about 5.17 to 3.48 metres. These are changes in different directions: the first fits the remembered loss of depth at Clarence Street, while the second concerns the side boundary. The plans show the changed shape, but do not by themselves identify when or how each piece of land changed hands.^{[169][69][155]}

A cadastral map produced in September 2026 places the same Lot 31 between Argyle and Clarence streets, just north of White Street, among the neighbouring town-centre parcels.^[156]

Volume 14862 Folio 86 links the old land descriptions to the present property. That title and the connected search-book records led back through the earlier deeds used in this history.^[51][78]

Nerida Gwynne Barnsley and Stefani Willow Cummins became the registered owners on 30 October 1984, each holding a half share purchased from Throsby House Pty Limited. A mortgage to Naida Edwards was registered immediately afterwards. The legal practice continued in the building.^[78]

Nerida had married Garry Barnsley at Mittagong in 1974. Her parents were local schoolteachers, and the couple became closely involved in Bundanoon’s Brigadoon gathering. Her homemade shortbread was a feature of the event for 35 years. Beyond the district, she worked to raise funds for the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children and the Children’s Hospital at Westmead. That community service was recognised with the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2002.^[165][166]

After selling the property, Throsby House Pty Ltd wound up its affairs. Members met at 374 on 19 January 1985, resolved to wind up voluntarily and appointed Leslie R. Lowden as liquidator. A later notice called a final meeting of members and creditors for 28 June.^[29]

A further partial release, registered on 9 July 1986, concerned the area marked B–C–D–E on DP638776. Owen Douglas and Beverly June Shields then owned the neighbouring title burdened by the right of way. Their appearance establishes a later owner, while the date of the Webb family’s sale to them remains to be found.^[22][185]

The release was accompanied by consents from the mortgagees, Naida Edwards and Westpac, in Annexure A. That annexure survives; the outstanding drawing is the plan locating B–C–D–E. Until it is recovered, this release cannot be used to pin the later boundary changes to a particular strip of land.^[22][186]

The State Bank, formerly the Rural Bank, sold Tarrangower to artist Stephen Mazonowicz on 31 March 1988 for $84,000. Registration followed in March 1989. After nearly four decades of bank ownership, the house entered another chapter, while its old name and surviving period rooms kept the banking years in local memory.^[179][17]

Nerida Barnsley transferred her half-share in 374 to Stefani Willow Cummins, bringing the property into one ownership. The transfer was signed on 31 December 1993 and registered on 16 March 1994.^[97][106]

David Cummins remembers this as the period when he and Garry Barnsley divided their property interests, with Garry taking the Bowral building and the Cummins side retaining 374.^[8]

The 1993 transfer of Nerida’s half-share to Stefani, registered in 1994. Redacted reading copy.

David dates the firm's departure from 374 to 1998, when Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards consolidated at 52 Wingecarribee Street, Bowral. Those rooms were quieter and more modern, and an accountant's calculation showed that the move would save money. Government notices had listed the practice at both Moss Vale and Bowral during 1989-1991.^[8][80]

Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards continued after leaving 374. David Cummins and Brian Hanrahan became principals in 2009, Christopher Young joined the partnership in 2013, and in 2020 the practice adopted a new corporate structure. The firm's published history identifies Chris Young and Sarah Young as its directors and principals. David retired in December 2022 after more than 50 years with the practice.^[7]

After Wilkinson, Throsby & Edwards moved to Bowral, Hendrik “Henk” den Hertog took over the front rooms for his accounting practice. His first surviving lease began on 1 April 1999, with Stefani Cummins as landlord. Suite 1 came with a strong room, a flued gas heater and two parking spaces in the rear yard. His weathered accountant’s sign still hangs outside.^[8][98]

The lease also set out work to separate the office from the rest of the building: access beside the gas heater through to the kitchen, closure of an archway leading to the rear, reopening a side door and a separate electricity supply. By Angus’s purchase in 2015, the front and rear had been separated and had separate electricity. Angus later reopened a hallway door to reconnect them.^[98][107]

Henk stayed on under a new three-year lease from David Cummins, running from 1 April 2000 to 31 March 2003. David remembers discussing GST invoices with him when the tax began in July 2000. Both leases provided two further three-year options.^[8][100]

Henk den Hertog's weathered accountant sign still hangs outside. Henk’s first surviving lease identifies Suite 1 and the April 1999 start. Redacted excerpt.The 1999 lease sets out the proposed access, doorway and electricity changes. Redacted excerpt.The same accountant and suite, with a new term beginning in April 2000. Redacted excerpt.

Stefani transferred 374 to David James Cummins under an instrument dated 29 June 1999, registered on 15 September. By then the law firm had moved out, and Henk’s accounting practice occupied the front office.^[99][106]

The transfer names David James Cummins as purchaser. Redacted reading copy.

David sold 374 for $275,000 to Pythagoras Australia Pty Limited and Inside Outside No. 1 Pty Limited, each taking an equal share. The government sales record dates the sale to 10 December 2001; the transfer was dated 21 January 2002 and registered on 28 February 2002.^{[30][101][106]}

Chris Lepherd and Jacqui Kelly were the people Angus came to know behind the two companies. They signed later property documents for Pythagoras Australia and Inside Outside respectively. During their ownership, the front office and rear accommodation were let separately.^{[102][105][107]}

The 2002 transfer records the two companies’ equal shares and the $275,000 price. Redacted reading copy.

The rear entrance gave 374 another business address: Suite 3, 44 Clarence Street. Kay & Rose Solicitors was listed there by July 2008. Angus remembers Fiona Patrina Kay occupying the rear for several years and is definite that her practice used only that part of the property.^[34][107]

The Australian Business Register records Fiona Patrina Kay as the sole trader behind Kay & Rose. Her ABN began on 30 April 2005, and the Kay & Rose trading name was recorded from 3 December 2007, shortly before the firm appears in the property’s rear-office records.^[167]

Psychologist Bruce Schubert used the front rooms for his consulting practice, People Skills. His surviving lease began on 1 August 2012, while the residential rooms behind were excluded from it. His own website gave 374 Argyle Street as the practice’s address in April 2013.^[102]

The lease ran to 31 July 2014, with a two-year option. Bruce remained associated with the front office into the sale period; Angus identifies him as the tenant who left on 31 July 2015.^[102][107]

The 2012 lease names Bruce Schubert and separates the consulting rooms from the residence. Excerpt.

While Bruce’s practice occupied the front, Rowane Benson took a residential lease at 44 Clarence Street. Signed on 2 February, it ran from 4 February 2013 to 3 February 2014.^[103]

The rear house’s 2013 tenancy agreement. Personal contact details redacted; excerpt.

The striped awning had its own renewal during the companies’ ownership. Southern Blinds later confirmed that it installed an awning in 2013 for Inside Outside No. 1 Pty Limited.^[108][9]

Three men working for The Outdoor Education Group shared the house behind the office. Their residential lease began on 22 January 2015, and they were still living there when Angus bought the property. Angus met them and remembers their work with the outdoor-education organisation.^[104][107]

The January 2015 lease records three tenants at 44 Clarence Street. Personal contact details and signatures redacted; excerpt.

Bruce left at the end of July. When Sue White wrote to Angus on 5 August about the sale, she confirmed that the front tenant had departed on 31 July and the shop was vacant. The rear house was still occupied.^[107]

By the later sale campaign, 374 was in poor condition. The building was dark, damp and mouldy, rain entered through the roof, and internal ceilings were damaged. A neighbouring antique-shop owner had considered buying the property, demolishing the building and using the land as a car park. Old-system deeds were expected to accompany the property, but none reached Angus.^[8]

An earlier commercial auction campaign was withdrawn in April 2010. The later sale campaign began in August 2014 and continued until Angus bought the property a year later.^[31]

Angus’s purchase is dated 28 August 2015 in the sales record. The transfer followed on 2 October and was registered on 10 October. He made the house his home and began restoring it, replacing the old corrugated-iron roof, damaged ceilings and flooring, and tackling the leaks and damp. During his ownership Angus also replaced the striped shopfront awning, work he recalled in his July 2026 interview.^{[8][9][105][106]}

The purchase also brought Angus back to a town with a strong family connection. Keith Walter Dixon Tuchin and his wife, who was from the Fawcett family, lived in Hoskin Street, Moss Vale. Their son Dudley was born in Moss Vale in 1923. Keith was an uncle by marriage to Angus's grandmother, Elsie Fawcett.^[26]

Keith was working as a railway porter when he enlisted at 19 during the First World War. He served as Private 3941 with the 17th Battalion and embarked from Sydney aboard HMAT Runic in January 1916. He later worked for many years as a signalman at Moss Vale railway station and is remembered on the Goulburn District Railway Employees Great War Honour Roll. In 1932, Keith saved Elsie and Dudley after their boat overturned in the Murrumbidgee River. A newspaper report said a wartime injury to his leg may have hindered him as he struggled in the current. Keith drowned during the rescue.^[26]

The family later spread to Victoria, Western Australia and elsewhere before Angus and his sister independently returned to the Southern Highlands.^[26]

A small balcony now opens from the rear office towards the garden. Orange, lemon and mandarin trees were planted near Clarence Street so passers-by can take fruit. People regularly stop at the back gate to photograph or inspect the white weatherboard house, surrounded by a green garden of trees and hedges in the middle of the concrete buildings around it. David Cummins estimated that about 90 per cent of the original weatherboard structure still survives.^[8]

The two entrances gave the property a useful arrangement in the centre of town. Goods, horses, vehicles and residents could reach the rear without passing through the Argyle Street business rooms. The courthouse, pub, post office, shops, cafes, supermarkets and medical centres are close by.^[9][38]

Different heritage summaries have grouped 374 with 372 Argyle Street and variously called it a neutral or contributory Interwar shop in the Argyle Street North or South conservation area. The labels are inconsistent, but the recurring recommendation is to retain the building's scale, parapet, recessed entrance, materials and alignment as part of the older main-street streetscape.^[15]

The tired shopfront before Angus began restoring the property. The restored Argyle Street frontage in 2026. The weatherboard home still reaches back towards Clarence Street. Road and footpath widening near Clarence Street, around 2016. The transfer from the two companies to the McKinnons, dated 2 October 2015. Redacted reading copy.

From mid-2016 to mid-2019, Angus ran Highlands Handmade in the front shop while living in the house behind it. Local makers rented shelf space to sell arts and crafts made in the area.^[9]

Highlands Handmade brought locally made goods to the front rooms.

The front rooms returned to professional use from 2020. Angus remained the owner and lived in the weatherboard house behind, continuing the building’s long combination of business premises and a home.^[9]