Corrimal’s Bramble Hall, as seen in a 2018 real estate photo. Photo: MMJ Real Estate North.
Bramble Hall is a heritage-listed residence with mature gardens located on the corner of Underwood and Railway street at Corrimal.
Despite there being plenty of vegetation in the well-tended garden, I’ve yet to spot a single bramble or to work out whether the somewhat grandiose name was chosen in seriousness or in jest.
The man for whom the house was built, Lancelot Armstrong Riddle, not only possessed a somewhat pretentious name himself but had a house built that at least for its time and place was a dwelling that back then indicated its owner had some pretensions to being a man of substance.
But, actually, the riddle of why the house was named Bramble Hall might have had little to do with pretension at all. For a bramble is a prickly, thorny shrub or vine – most commonly referring to plants in the Rubus genus, such as blackberries and raspberries – and in the early 1900s large sections of northern Illawarra were covered in blackberry bushes that had run wild, sometimes making streets impassable.
The real riddle about Lancelot Armstrong Riddle is how, in 1900, he had managed to come up with the funds to be able to not only to eventually have Bramble Hall built but to also finance and have built the pub still standing in the centre of Corrimal on the corner of Railway Street and the Princes Highway.
And the riddle exists because just four years earlier in 1895, the publican Riddle was bankrupt – “attributing his insolvency to bad times and high rent”.
Since 1891 (and during the severest depression year of 1893) Riddle had held a licence for the South Bulli and Bellambi Hotel.
The South Bulli and Bellambi Hotel in the 1920s. Photo: Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University.
But Riddle did not own the Bellambi pub and his hapless creditors soon knew there was little riddle about how unlikely his debts to them would ever be repaid in full.
So in March 1896 his secured creditors were forced to accept only six shillings and one penny farthing in the pound (20 shillings) and found themselves very much out of pocket. The unsecured creditors got nothing.
And yet, despite all this, Lancelot Riddle was later able to have Bramble Hall built.
Even more surprising is that as early as 1899, Riddle was found to be sufficiently cashed-up to speculate some £1200 for the purposes of acquiring a licence and building a brand new large hotel in Corrimal.
In applying for the licence, Riddle contended that when he had previously held a licence for the Bellambi Hotel “there had been no complaints against the manner in which he had conducted the premises”.
Moreover, he argued his “plans produced provided for 26 rooms, exclusive of bath-rooms; allowing for six rooms for the family, there would be 20 available for the public”.
The licensing bench, however refused the application as, in its view, “the plans did not provide the necessary accommodation”.
Riddle went ahead with completing the premises regardless.
Corrimal Hotel in its early days. From the collections of Wollongong City Libraries and the Illawarra Historical Society – P13722.
By October 1900 Riddle was still finding it necessary to apply for what he termed a Conditional Licence for his Corrimal Hotel. Yet the licensing inspector, Senior Sergeant Banks, tried to play hardball and reported that the premises had not been erected in accordance with the plans lodged in court.
Riddle’s response was that the said “alterations had been made on the suggestion of the architect, who considered that they were improvements to the premises”.
Surprisingly, this argument seems to have been accepted and so Riddle got his licence and immediately commenced trading.
Riddle had been born in Scotland in 1859. Both he and his wife Helen Thomasina Stavert (whom he married in Queensland in 1887) were from Hawick, the largest town in Roxburghshire.
As a Corrimal publican, Lancelot Armstrong Riddle only survived until 1906. His widow Helen was then “given authority to carry on business at the Corrimal Hotel for a period not exceeding three months”.
After disposing of the hotel business, Helen Riddle went to live at Bramble Hall in Underwood Street Corrimal and resided there with her brother, Thomas Stavert, up until the time of her death in 1936. Thomas Stavert died the following year.
One riddle however still niggles away at me: What is full of holes but somehow still holds water? Possibly Lancelot Armstrong Riddle’s declarations on official bankruptcy documents and also his application for a hotel licence at Corrimal.
