Enduring love affair with the city's rock of ages

Sandstone houses are the real estate equivalent of the Sydney Harbour Bridge: synonymous with Australia’s biggest city and every bit as beautiful.

Right now, you might bag a bargain if you’re looking for a sandstone house in the softening top end of the market but you are just as likely to get a character-filled cottage if you have a few million less in your pocket.

Sandstone is not just a pretty facade: it’s a building material that outlasts many others, is richly historic, unique and charming. Andrew Bare and his wife, Jane, a recruitment adviser, have just bought their very first sandstone house, a circa-1880 freestanding, two-bedroom, two-storey terrace in View Street, Annandale.

“We are currently in a weatherboard house in Camperdown but we wanted something more solid,” civil engineer Bare says.

“When we saw this place we knew it was the one for us – we just loved it. We love the colour and the look of the sandstone and it’s very Sydney. “I have always loved sandstone so buying this house is a bit like fulfilling a long-term desire.”

Typically Sydney

Heritage architect Clive Lucas, of Clive Lucas, Stapleton and Partners, says Sydney was a golden sandstone city in the 19th century.

“Where the stones were available, they usually gave a city character,” Lucas says.

“In Sydney it [sandstone] was the most valuable building material for walls for certainly much of the 19th century. Every major building in the city was built with sandstone and it was used for all the major houses and early cottages, especially in areas like Balmain and Hunters Hill: suburbs where it was readily available and virtually quarried on site.”

Back then it was not just sandstone’s availability and affordability that made it appealing. “Everybody wanted to have sandstone,” Lucas says.

“As long as man has existed, stone has always been the superior building material.”

Hunters Hill Council heritage adviser Greg Patch says one of the reasons Hunters Hill ended up with a relatively high number of sandstone houses – today 195 out of 4800 properties are sandstone, whereas many suburbs would be lucky to have two or three – was that before the construction of the first Gladesville Bridge in the 1880s, everything had to come to the settlement via the Bedlam Point ferry, so builders tended to quarry sandstone locally.

Other suburbs probably had many more sandstone houses than they do now, he says, but they may have been demolished to make way for redevelopment.

In Hunters Hill it’s not only houses that are built of sandstone: travel through the north-western peninsula suburb and you will see many pretty sandstone walls, too.

“The presence of stone walls, the scale of the buildings and their position on the principal thoroughfares of the peninsula make stone comparatively prominent,” Patch says.

Look and feel

Today, sandstone’s appeal is not predominantly practical. On the contrary, many people are wary of sandstone being prone to problems such as rising or falling damp or drainage problems, a fear Lucas attributes mainly to inappropriate treatment of stone buildings.

“In my work as an architect, usually damp problems have been aggravated by what people have done to the building, such as painting over the stone,” he says.

“As long as you maintain it properly and you like living in a stone house, it has a great deal of appeal. “Sandstone is a romantic material. Advertisements will push the idea that a stone cottage is romantic, historic … the differing colours in the sandstone make it very interesting. Each wall will have its own wonderful character.”

A sound investment

McGrath agent Stephanie Hammond is selling a unique sandstone house in Clareville built from irregular blocks quarried on site.

“The sandstone connects you to the beach; the colours are very beautiful and it’s very rustic,” she says. “Anything handmade like this has a value that’s hard to put a price on.”

Homesearch Solutions buyer’s agent Henry Wilkinson says he would expect to pay a premium for a sandstone house. “I think if you have a comparable place you would be paying more for the sandstone because of the rarity and the historic value,” he says.

Durability

The principal of Hunters Hill agency Ward Partners, David Ward, has been selling stone houses for 20 years and says they were built to last.

“A lot of the appeal of these houses is the strength of the construction,” he says.

“These homes were built when workmanship was paramount.”

Variety

Not all sandstone houses are grand mansions. In the 19th century, many sandstone constructions were humble workers’ cottages made from sandstone rubble – small, irregularly shaped lumps of sandstone. The big, smooth blocks commonly used in larger houses were the more expensive, properly cut and dressed ashlar stones.

“They [sandstone houses] come in all shapes and sizes,” Ward says. “Most of the sandstone houses around the river are what we call marine villas and they are fairly modest places.

“A lot of the cottages in Hunters Hill were workman’s cottages, which are tiny little places – you would fit about five of them into some of the McMansions you see these days.”

Well-priced mansions

With its five bedrooms, three bathrooms, entrance foyer and wraparound verandahs, a circa-1898 sandstone mansion Ward is selling in Viret Street, Enderslea, is a not-so-modest stone house. It is a great example of a top-end stone house selling at a discounted price. With views across Lane Cove River, the house was on the market this time last year, unrenovated, for $5.9 million.

Now, with a freshly renovated property, the owners are seeking an offer above $5 million, Ward says. However, you don’t need to be in the big league to secure your own piece of Sydney sandstone history. Two weeks ago a two-bedroom, two-storey end terrace with a sandstone front sold for $500,000 in Forest Lodge. Agent Duncan Gordon says while it’s liveable, it’s “very unrenovated” and needs a “full-blown reno”. You could always settle for a sandstone wall instead.

Advantages and disadvantages

Pros

Beautiful look and feel.

Full of history.

Built to last.

Unique and full of character.

Sandstone is a good insulator: “In summer it’s deliciously cool inside and in winter it keeps the heat in,” Renee Patterson says.

Cons

Prone to damp and drainage problems when not properly maintained or pointed with the wrong mortar.

Roofs and gutters need to be in good order to avoid damp problems.

To renovate sympathetically you need a good stonemason. Out of the city, they could be difficult to find.

The workman’s cottages are small.

Many are heritage-listed.

Historical living for old times’ sake

Renee Patterson and her family are no strangers to living in homes with a bit of history. But their four-bedroom circa-1902 sandstone home, “Woodlands”, in Lane Cove, takes the cake.

“Prior to this house we lived in a 100-plus-year-old workers’ cottage in Abbotsford,” Patterson says.

“But this house has another level of history. We have lived here for seven years and it’s so full of character and Australian history — it’s very Sydney.”

While living at Woodlands, the Pattersons — Renee, her husband, Angus, and their four daughters, Bronte, 12, Charlotte, 10, Amelia, 6, and Olivia, 5 — have extended the sandstone terrace, done an attic conversion and installed an outdoor swim-spa.

In spite of a commonly held belief that renovating sandstone houses can be a mission fraught with obstacles, Patterson says they encountered no problems: “It was all very straightforward,” she says.

Because two of the girls go to school in Gordon (and eventually all four will), the family have just sold through McGrath — for considerably more than their initial expectations of more than $2 million — to reduce the length of their car trips. But it is not without a touch of melancholy. “There’s a certain charm to old homes like this. We have been really privileged.”