A highly recognisable Thirroul property has changed hands for the first time in more than 30 years.
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‘The Gables’, home to a series of eye-catching murals throughout the years, is located at 342-344 Lawrence Hargrave Drive, Thirroul.
Owner Lesley Reynolds and her late husband Greg Tillman relocated from Sydney to the Illawarra in 1984, and eventually purchased the home in 1987.
It recently sold to an Illawarra investor for $1,220,000 after a few weeks on the market. The selling agent was Adam McMahon, director of Dignam Real Estate.
The allotment is zoned R3, offering multiple possibilities to develop (subject to council approval).
Mr McMahon said the new owner plans to hold it as a long-term investment for the long-term capital gain.
The new owner has rented the property to a tenant for $720 per week.
The home was built in 1953.
Ms Reynolds recently told the Mercury that she “just fell in love with it – even though it was pretty shabby at first”.
“Where the units are now, beside the house, that was three blocks with a smaller house on it,” Ms Reynolds said earlier this year.
“That was owned by the Davis family, who used to have a bus company and quite a few businesses at that time.
“They sold the block of land to an Englishman who had been asked to come out to manage Bulli Spinners, and he had the house built.
“When we looked at it, it was only on the market for about a week and I fell in love with it because I love little English cottages.
“It was just one level at the time. Fairly soon after that we bought it from the young couple that were in there.
“About a year after that we did an in-roof conversion, which doubled the size of the house.”
Sprawled across two floors, ‘The Gables’ boasts four bedrooms and two bathrooms.
The home is set behind its recognisable garage door.
It has typically boasted colourful murals, many of them devoted to promoting events by Yours & Owls, co-run by Ms Reynolds’ son Ben Tillman.
“The idea of the garage door was a funny one,” Ms Reynolds said.
“Being in between two pubs and a club, you used to get a lot of people coming along late at night with their spraycans. It was just a basic heritage green garage door originally, and I just got fed up with the graffiti.
“So my two daughters and some of their friends, I gave them a whole lot of spraycans.
“They did their first design on there, which was the ‘Yellow Submarine’ and they wrote ‘thank God for The Beatles’.”
Following the sale, the mural has been modified to say ‘goodbye’.
Renowned northern suburbs artist Christopher Zanko was among those who helped restore the mural to the Beatles theme.
Ms Reynolds said she was staying in Thirroul.
”I’ve been looking to downsize for a while,” she said.
“I said if I could find something I liked as much I would downsize, and I have.”