Hughesville, Eight Mile Plains
Hughesville is a heritage-listed detached house at 2497 Logan Road, Eight Mile Plains, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by George Thornhill Campbell-Wilson and built from 1892 to 1893. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. History Hughesville, a substantial, single-storeyed timber residence, was erected in 1892-93 for Richard Alfred Hughes, a local horse-dealer, to a design by architect George Thornhill Campbell-Wilson. Reputedly, the house was a wedding gift from Alfred (Fred) Hughes to his son Richard, who married Elizabeth Magee in 1891. Fred Hughes was a horse-dealer and livery stables keeper, resident in Brisbane from at least 1871, when he purchased land in Charlotte Street. He had established a livery stables on this site by 1874. In the mid-1880s, Hughes and his family moved to Upper Mt Gravatt, where they owned a property at the corner of Kessels and Logan Roads. He sold the Charlotte Street property in 1889, but maintained a livery stables in Adelaide Street during the first half of the 1890s. At his Upper Mount Gravatt stables, Fred Hughes bred blood stock, including Arabs. In January 1892, his son Richard, aged 19 years, acquired title to over of land at Eight Mile Plains, just south of Upper Mt Gravatt along Logan Road. On this property Hughesville was erected, at the junction of Logan and Padstow Roads. The architect was George Thornhill Campbell-Wilson, who practised in Brisbane from 1889 to . George Campbell-Wilson was born in Brisbane, the eldest son of architect George William Campbell Wilson and Ada Weedon. He trained under his father and practised as an architect in Queen Street, Brisbane, from 1889 until his retirement in . Hughesville was arguably the finest house in the district, a farming community approximately eight miles south of the One-mile Swamp (Woolloongabba). The Eight Mile Plains had been combed by timbergetters prior to its opening as an agricultural reserve in the early 1860s. Over in the nearby Coopers Plains area had been proclaimed the Brisbane Agricultural Reserve in June 1861. In October 1864, this was extended by a further , and the whole - encompassing what are now the suburbs of Sunnybank, Sunnybank Hills, Runcorn, Kuraby, Eight Mile Plains, and parts of Coopers Plains, Algester and Stretton - were proclaimed the Eight Mile Plains Agricultural Reserve. Fruit and some vegetable growing were the principal activities. By 1869, the area was sufficiently populated to necessitate the opening of a school at Eight Mile Plains, but the real impetus for the expansion of small farming in the district came with the opening of the extension railway from Yeerongpilly to Loganlea, in April 1885. By the time Hughesville was erected in the 1890s, Eight Mile Plains had emerged as a solid farming community. Richard Hughes followed his father's occupation, and ran horses on the Logan Road property until 1912–13. The house remained in the Hughes family until 1994. The house was unoccupied for some years and became increasingly derelict. Subsequently, it was restored and