Grand View Hotel, Dalhousie

History

The core of this complex of buildings was erected in the early 1850s for the Hon. Francis Edward Bigge, Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, who purchased the site in August 1851.In the 1840s and 1850s squatters from the Darling Downs and Ipswich interests urged for recognition of Cleveland Point, which had served as the port for Dunwich during the convict period, as the port for Moreton Bay. Francis Bigge, a grazier from Mount Brisbane Station, was one of the leading lobbyists. In the early 1850s he invested heavily in industry and housing at Cleveland.The earliest section of the hotel, built as a prominent demonstration of confidence in Cleveland's future development, appears to have been erected by 1852, but appears to have remained unoccupied for several years. Known colloquially as Bigge's Folly, and formally as Cleveland House, it contained two sitting rooms and five bedrooms with a kitchen and servants' rooms connected via a covered passageway. The core was surrounded by a 3-metre (9.8 ft) wide verandah.From 1855 to 1860 John Vincent Cassim, a Kangaroo Point boarding house keeper, leased Cleveland House as a boarding establishment. Stabling, a coach-house, store and tap were erected in mid-1860. By 1862 the building had been leased by publican William Rae as the Brighton Hotel, with its own bathing-house and jetty, and 10-metric-ton (9.8-long-ton; 11-short-ton) pleasure cutter.The building also served as a venue for Anglican services prior to the construction of St Pauls Anglican Church nearby in 1874.In 1878 the property was acquired by publicans Andrew and Mary Goodall, and the hotel appears to have been extended to the southeast. Major alterations that give the building its present two-storeyed form are likely to have been carried out in the late 1880s or mid-1890s, when the Cleveland railway line was opened to Cleveland Central and later extended to Cleveland Point. It became known as the Grand View Hotel c. 1910, and remained in the Goodall-Singh family until 1936.Other outbuildings have been added since the 1940s. Five miniature, representational murals on the wall behind the public bar probably were painted in the 1950s, and the complex was renovated in 1982 and again in 1992.The Grand View continues to operate as a hotel, and is one of the oldest hotels in Queensland in continuous use.