A humble worker’s cottage on Stuart Street, Manly — one of the last surviving homes built for employees of the Manly Gas Company more than a century ago — is heading to auction on 22 August with a $6 million price guide, and agent Laura Pritchard says it’s generated more enquiry than almost anything she’s listed in the past year.
The three-bedroom weatherboard cottage at 27 Stuart Street was originally constructed in the late 19th or early 20th century, part of a small cluster of worker’s cottages built along Wood Street and Stuart Street to house Gas Company employees. The gas works itself closed in 1964 and was demolished in 1971, but the modest homes it left behind have sat increasingly surrounded by some of Manly’s most expensive real estate.
The property last changed hands in 1968 for $12,000. In the 1970s, the original weatherboard facade was covered with brick veneer — a popular modernisation of the era. It has been vacant for three years.
Inside, the home is largely unchanged from decades past. The kitchen is basic, the bathroom doubles as a laundry, and the walls show their age. There’s no garage. But what the cottage lacks in polish it makes up for in position: the 366-square-metre near-level block sits just 140 metres from Little Manly Beach, with a deep northeast-facing rear garden.
Philip Speer, 70, grew up in the house and recalls his father’s decision to add the brick cladding. His mother Margaret, who died last September, had been devoted to the home and to Manly — so much so that when his father won a land ballot for a free block in Allambie (on the condition a home was built within two years), she refused to leave. His father Joe died years before her.
Their three sons are now selling the property.
The surrounding street tells the story of how dramatically the area has changed. Number 35 Stuart Street sold for $15.25 million in 2019, and number 69 sold for $9 million as recently as June this year. Pritchard of Bergelin Property says the current listing is attracting interest from families, developers and investors alike.
The auction is scheduled for Saturday, 22 August.
Published 6-August-2026
