Killila is a heritage-listed detached house at 100 Stoneleigh Street, Lutwyche, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built . It is also known as Killila Cottage. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 1 October 2003.
History
Killila is a timber house, erected as a working class cottage , with extensive early 20th century alterations to convert it into a substantial middle-class home.
The allotment on which this residence is situated was first alienated in 1858 as Portion 155, parish of Enoggera, county of Stanley (), by James Baker, a compositor of Brisbane, at a cost of . Five years later, the title was transferred to Robert Cribb, a Brisbane broker. Cribb immediately set about subdividing the land and in November 1880 title to subdivisions 11-22 and 51-56 of portion 155, comprising just over , was registered in the name of John Lloyd Bale.
Bale was an accountant, agent and broker, and at the time of purchasing these Albion subdivisions was serving as Chairman of the Ithaca Divisional Board. He was elected a Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1883 and remained in that position until his death in 1885. He resided in an 1860s house at the corner of Albion and Bowen Bridge (Lutwyche) Roads named Stoneleigh, which gave its name to Stoneleigh Street. Most of Bale's land in the Albion/Windsor area remained unimproved, and between 1882 and 1884 he re-subdivided the property as the Stoneleigh Estate.
In May 1883, title to re-subdivisions 56 and 57 of subdivision 56, comprising an area of (the site of Killila Cottage) was transferred to Elizabeth Parsons, the wife of George Alfred Parsons, brickmaker. Parsons was based at Lutwyche at this period, and it is unlikely that he lived in Stoneleigh Street, Albion. However, the Post Office Directories record Robert Parsons, brickmaker, as resident in Albion in the period 1885 to 1887, and it is possible that a cottage had been erected at 100 Stoneleigh Street by 1885, perhaps occupied by Robert Parsons. Certainly the cottage was constructed before the property was sold early in 1888 to the next owner, Mrs Margaret Duhig, widow and mother of James Duhig (1871-1965), the prominent Roman Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane between 1917 and 1965.
Margaret Duhig emigrated from Ireland to Brisbane, following a sojourn in England, with James and two of her other children on 8 April 1885, aboard the Mackara. Two other children followed later. For 3 years the Duhigs were unable to afford to purchase their own house in Brisbane and resided in rental properties in Paddington, Spring Hill and Petrie Terrace before purchasing the cottage at 100 Stoneleigh Street. When James Duhig joined the work force in 1885, aged nearly 14, his weekly wage was one of the solid bases of the family economy and his support contributed to the deposit paid on the Stoneleigh Street cottage.
Although title to the Stoneleigh Street property was not registered in the name of Margaret Duhig until February 1889, and the Post Office Directories first record her as resident in Albion in that year, personal letters in the Brisbane Catholic Archdiocesan Archives indicate that the Duhigs were residing at Albion by early 1888. On 26 April of that year, James Duhig wrote to his brother, Martin, announcing the family's purchase of the property for and expressing a hope that it "could double our money at any time". Three months later, Margaret Duhig wrote to Martin explaining that she was paying 8% interest and that extensions were carried out to the house for a sum of . For the Duhigs, it was a modest family house, affectionately named Killila Cottage after their home in County Limerick, Ireland.
By the mid-1880s Windsor shire was an ideal suburban location, being within a stone's throw of the city yet enjoying all the attributes of the country. The Duhigs' neighbours in Stoneleigh Street, who in 1892 included a prominent draper, 2 accountants, an auctioneer, an engineer, several clerical workers, and numerous tradesmen and semi-skilled workers, reflected the growing eclectic social milieu of the Albion/Windsor area in the late 19th century, with more affluent residents building substantial homes on the higher ground and the working class in the valleys in between.