Balmain's largest privately held estate hoped to smash local record at $11 million

The historic Balmain house long owned by the Cloughessy family is set to smash local price records after it hit the market this week for $11 million.

The waterfront property of 1800 square metres is 10 times the size of the average Balmain house block and is billed the “largest private waterfront holding” on the peninsular by Danny Cobden, of Cobden & Hayson.

Set two doors from the Thames Street Ferry Wharf, it has a vast back lawn that stretches to the Mort Bay waterfront complete with tidal swimming pool and slip way on a sandy beach.

Title records show the Coughessy family are only the third owners of the Campbell Lane house since it was built in the 1880s by Charles Yeend, the son of prominent inn keeper James Yeend.

Yeend paid £30 in 1886 for what was then 19 Trouton Street, and in 1930 it was purchased by Mort’s Dock and Engineering Company, then the largest shipyard and engineering company in Australia and which then shared the Mort Bay waterfront.

Mort’s Dock closed in 1958 and a year later the company went into liquidation, and the house was sold in 1960 for  £3350 to William Cloughessy, whose family had lived at the property for about 90 years.

The only local waterfront estate that comes close to the Cloughessy block is in Birchgrove where the home of Professor Colin Sullivan and his wife Janette, Wyoming, on Wharf Road is set on a waterfront holding of 1729 square metres. Coincidentally, it was owned by Charles’s brother James John Yeend from 1867 until 1877.

Balmain’s house price record was set at $7.5 million a year ago for the Victorian Italianate mansion Hexham when bought by barrister Evatt Tamine and his lawyer wife Sophie Tod, although the Birchgrove high stands at $14.25 million after property developer John Gobbo bought the home of healthcare boss Jayne Shaw last year.

Danny Cobden is taking expressions of interest until October 21.