HARPERS COTTAGE

The first known occupants of this cottage were Enrolled Pensioner Guard (PG) James Griffin and his wife Bridget Teresa Connell and their children. The Griffins arrived on the convict ship Clara in 1857. By 1856,13 Pensioner Guard Cottages had been erected on allotments marked out at the second site of the Convict Hiring Depot upstream of the original Toodyay townsite. The Griffins had moved to Toodyay by 1857, as their subsequent children were either christened or buried there. James Griffin was applying for land in the district. In October 1860 this new location became the town of Newcastle. In October 1864, James Griffin was allocated Pensioner Guard Lot S1 of 4 acres in Newcastle. It could be assumed the cottage already existed on Nottingham Road and Griffin and his family had been living there before he became the official owner in October 1866. Later that year this four-acre allotment was sold to
Joseph Hardey and his wife Anne, who lived on Peninsular Farm on the Swan River. In August 1869 they sold Lot S1 to Reverend Charles Harper who lived with his family in the Parsonage ‘Braybrook’ on nearby Location 111 on the Avon River. When Harper died in 1872 his wife Julia Gretchen (not their daughter Julia as previously believed) became the owner of Lot S1. In 1885 the cottage was rented out to local doctor Alfred Green who had been living at the Depot. He continued to live in the Nottingham Road cottage until at least 1892.
Following the deaths of the daughter Julia in 1889, and Mrs Harper in 1898, the property was sold to Charles George Ellery, a bootmaker in town, then transferred by endorsement to his son Ernest Edward Ellery. The property remained in the Ellery family until 1969 when Lot S1 was transferred to Eric Edmund
Watkins, the Assistant Shire Clerk, and his wife Therese Estelle Watkins, both of View Way in Nedlands, as joint tenants. Following Mrs Watkins death in January 1993, Eric Watkins became sole proprietor. Their daughter Margaret (Margot) Watkins, a well-known Toodyay artist, inherited the property in May 1998 and continues to live and work there having built a large artist’s studio on the property.
(Ref: Shire of Toodyay Heritage List January 2026)