Adelaide. Rostrevor House. Built in 1858 as single storey bluestone house. Eastern two storey wing added 1877. Colannades added 1887.Northern two storey wing added 1901. Christian Brothers College since 1923.
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Rostrevor House.
Ross Thompson Reid arrived in SA in 1839 with his parents who took up land and settled at Gawler. The family arrived from Ireland and his father was one of the participants in the Gawler Special Survey. As an adult he took up a station on the River Darling with his brothers named Tolarno which he eventually acquired in his own name. It has a 30 mile frontage to the River Darling near Menindie and covered 150 square miles. At abutted Kinchega station. It was a very successful property and ran 250,000 sheep in its best years. For many years he was a judge of sheep at the Strathalbyn Show and he was an active member of the Gawler Oddfellows. Ross Reid became so wealthy that in the early 1880s when he took his family and servants on a tour of Europe it cost him over £30,000. He had married one of the daughters of John Reynell of Reynella and he named two of his sons after the Reynell family. In 1873 he bought Woodford House in the eastern foothills and renamed the property Rostrevor after a beach resort in Ireland. The name as eventually adopted for the area that is now the suburb of Rostrevor. Apart from pastoralism Ross Reid tried his hand at investing in gold mining and spent five years living in South Africa. As early as the 1870s he was investing in gold mines. He had a great interest and success as a breeder of race horses too. He allowed the Adelaide Hunt Club to meet at his Rostrevor House and grounds for many years and he was involved with the Morphettville race course. He was a skilled archer and won archery competitions and was a member of the Hamley Gun Club. He spent the last years of his life living at Glenelg. He died there in 1915 at the age of 82 years.
When Ross Reid bought Woodford house in 1873 and its 600 acre property from Joseph Skelton it contained a simple single storey residence erected by James Skelton in 1858. It was not a grand house. Ross Reid commissioned architects Edmund Wright and Woods in 1877 to add a southern two storey wing to the original house with a classical style arched entrance portico. The original house and these additions completed in 1877 were in bluestone with cement quoins and cast iron veranda posts. By 1882 Ross Thompson Reid was selling off small acreages of his Rostrevor property and some of his thorough bred race horses as he struck financial difficulties during the big droughts of the early 1880s. In April 1886 he dissolved his Ross Reid and Co company and his partnership with family members and paid off all debts. In August 1887 Ross Reid sold off 108 acres at Rostrevor and numerous other land holdings across the city, suburbs and about 500 acres in country areas. Rostrevor house and 114 acres was offered for sale in November 1887.
In 1887 the house was purchased by another person James Smith Reid as Ross Reid had been declared insolvent. James Smith Reid was not a relative. He had arrived in Queensland in 1863 from Ireland. He began work on the Bowen newspaper and moved to others in Queensland before setting up the Wilcannia newspaper in NSW in 1880. He next estabsliehd the newspaper in Silverton near Broken Hill. He printed the original prospectus for Broken Hill Proprietary and became a director of BHP in 1888 and presumably an investor. In 1886 he was instrumental in established the Silverton Tramways Company and was a major investor in it. He was a wealthy man by the late 1880s when he purchased Rostrevor House. Once he had purchased the house he commissioned architects English and Soward to design the Italianate colonnade along the northern and western sides. In 1901 more additions were made to the house with an upper storey for the western half of the house. J.S. Reid also had a mansion at Mount Macedon in Victoria as his wife came from Bendigo. James Smith Reid sold Rostrevor House in 1913 with the last 37 acres of the once extensive property and retired to a property at Mt Macedon Victoria. His other lands in the hills around Morialta, including the Magill quarries were offered to the government for a reserve or park. But this offer was not quickly accepted so he donated about 300 acres and sold other lands to the government. He then retired to Mount Macedon. In 1922 the Christian Brothers purchased the house and converted it to a Catholic Boys College in 1923. The chapel in the grounds was built in 1939 but the college had used a weatherboard chapel until then.
