YOU can choose your view at an historic brick terrace only a short stroll from the cafes of Keppel Street.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
And you'll get a courtyard with a microclimate thrown in for free.
Graham and Louise Ranshaw are leaving 26 Bant Street - a landmark building standing proudly on a corner in the city's Milltown district - after almost 30 years and they are doing so with heavy hearts.
"It's a really nice neighbourhood," Mrs Ranshaw said. "All the people here are really nice, genuine people - salt-of-the-earth people."
In particular, Mrs Ranshaw said she will miss the views from the top floor of the home: of Crago Mill, Gormans Hill and the sunrise from the balcony off the main bedroom and of the spread of residential lights and Stannies on the hill from the spacious verandah at the front of the building.
"It's nice waking up with that view [the sunrise] straight ahead of you," she said.
The property, which was built in about 1885 and was at one time Moulsdale's General Store, has been their home since 1990 and was a gallery and gift shop for Mrs Ranshaw's Bant Street Pottery from 1993 to 2002.
Recent property features:
Spread over a ground floor, intermediate floor and top floor, it features three bedrooms and a fourth bedroom/study, a renovated bathroom (and downstairs toilet) and main shed with mezzanine.
The ground floor can be hot or cold as required by the time of year, Mrs Ranshaw said.
The living room, which faces Bant Street, is an "absolute delight" when the sunlight streams in, she said, and it also features access to the building's cellar and its original steps.
The adjacent dining room is comfortable when Bathurst is baking in December and January, she said.
"The walls are solid brick and it keeps the place quite cool," Mrs Ranshaw said.
The ground floor also features the kitchen, with a generous pantry, and access to the property's cosy courtyard.
"It has two north-facing brick walls, so it's like it has a microclimate," Mrs Ranshaw said. "I have a curry plant that would not normally live in Bathurst, but it lives in there all year round.
"I still have impatiens living in there."
The rambling backyard has chooks, plenty of sheds awaiting an owner with a passion and a tortured willow.
A 2.2-kilowatt solar system, meanwhile, keeps the property's electricity bills down.
The fourth bedroom/study is on the building's intermediate floor and is large enough to accommodate an ensuite as well as a double bed if the new owner wanted to make it self-contained.
The main bedroom - which could also accommodate an ensuite - other two bedrooms and renovated bathroom are all on the top floor, as well as the balcony and generous verandah.
The top floor also has an open space where the Ranshaws have a lounge.
"It's a nice, quiet little place to sit and read a book," Mrs Ranshaw said.
After decades at 26 Bant Street, all the property's rooms, nooks, crannies and spaces hold a memory for the Ranshaws.
Mrs Ranshaw remembers she and her husband billeting young musicians many years ago who took their instruments out on the verandah and put on an impromptu performance that drew a crowd of curious, impressed neighbours below.
They say the property is ready to create similar happy memories for its next owners.
The buyer's guide for 26 Bant Street is $580,000 to $620,000.
| Contact Kevin Keogh at Bathurst Real Estate: 0417 221 280.
... and Lee looks back
Lee Steele wrote about the history of 26 Bant Street in her National Trust column for the Western Advocate in 2007.
SOUTH Bathurst's Milltown community, which sprang up in the late 19th century, boasted its own hotels, stores, police station, schools and churches.
The area developed an identify and character that was formed by the mill and railway workers and their families.
It extended from the Railway Station area south to the Ben and Elizabeth Chifley home in Busby Street, and west to Seymour Street. The eastern boundary was the Railway Line, the other side of which was an area known as Charlotte Town.
The Great Western Railway was opened as far as Bathurst in April 1876 by the Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, and together with Tremains Flour Mill, part of which still stands behind the Victoria Hotel in Havannah Street, provided the basis of Milltown.
The Railway Institute provided an education for Ben Chifley, who later became Prime Minister of Australia.
Pye Street was gazetted as a road between Bant Street (originally called Bent Street) and the Great Western Railway on December 23, 1875. It is now known as Railway Parade.
Thomas Pye was granted a five acre triangular piece of land bounded by Bant Street, Pye Street and the Railway, and at that time adjoined land owned by the Presbyterian Church.
The two storey shop and residence was built about 1885 and in the late 1800s was known as The Milltown Stores.
It stands adjacent to the old Milltown public school.
Pye subsequently subdivided the land and sold part of it to John Busby, manager of the Commercial Bank, who later sold it to William Moulsdale, Elizabeth Moulsdale his wife and William Pascoe, an auctioneer who was used as a trustee to hold the land for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was to receive rents from the buildings thereon for the term of her natural life and then to her heirs.
Following the death of her husband, Elizabeth, by then living in Dulwich Hill, sold the land to Henry Moore a storekeeper, for 450 pounds, in August 1910. Moore also purchased adjoining land from Orton Park grazier Walter John McPhillamy.
Moore subsequently sold the property to Said Sabat Malouf in October 1920, however he did not sign the conveyance and so following his death in 1925, Mary Moore, his widow and son Joseph Barrington Moore, a fruiterer from Sydney, as executors, transferred the land to Sabat Malouf.
In 1947 Malouf, who had returned to Lebanon, sold the property to Edward John Casey, railway employee, and Alice Maria Casey his wife, for 525 pounds.
The property had several later owners, including Mr R J Hannon; Mr M J Moore, a saw doctor; Mr & Mrs P O'Rourke, milk vendors and C A Sindall and J M Dixon, lecturers.
Owners since 1990, Graham and Louise Ranshaw, for some years returned the property to its original use as a shop, known as Bant Street Pottery, with their residence above.
The property is now used solely as a residence.