A couple waited half a lifetime to commit to the Old Parsonage. Restoring it was a matter of faith.
Words Jacqui Taffel
Photography Abbie Melle
BECKY and Henry Reid first stepped inside the Old Parsonage nearly 30 years ago. They were already self-renovating a lovely old house in Bowral, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, having moved south from Sydney in 1993. But Becky had spotted the old sandstone cottage in the local real estate pages and was intrigued.
The Reids also had two small sons, Hamish and Harry. So although they were drawn by the character, charm and idyllic location of the 1876 former Anglican parsonage in a nearby village, they clocked the alarmingly steep central staircase, the absence of an indoor bathroom and the enormous, unruly garden with two ponds, and placed it firmly in the too-hard basket.
