St John's Wood House, Ashgrove

St John's Wood is a heritage-listed villa at 31 Piddington Street, Ashgrove, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1864 to. It is also known as Granite House. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 23 June 2000. The present day locality of St Johns Wood takes its name from this early house.HistorySt John's Wood, a single storey residence, primarily built of local granite, was constructed in the mid-1860s for Daniel Rowntree Somerset in the Brisbane locality of St John's Wood, Ashgrove.Free settlement occurred in Brisbane, traditional country of the Yuggera and Turrbal people, from 1842. Land available for private ownership was progressively surveyed and offered for sale by the New South Wales government. Land was categorized as either "town", within gazetted towns and villages, "suburban", within 5 miles of town boundaries or "country", beyond this radius. Early settlement was largely focussed on town land on opposite sides of the river at North Brisbane and South Brisbane, while suburban areas developed more slowly.The area that is now the suburb of Ashgrove was known as "Kallindarbin" by the Turrbal people. From at least the 1850s, the land was on which St John's Wood is located was contained within a large pastoral lease holding. The Gap pastoral station, watered by Enoggera Creek and extending west towards the Taylor Range, was taken up by Darby McGrath in 1851 to run sheep. At the second freehold sale of portions of this land in 1858, prominent pastoralist (later inaugural Member of the Queensland Legislative Council) John Frederick McDougall purchased Portion 164 and 165, an area of 12 hectares and 21 hectares. By the following year McDougall was the major landholder along Enoggera Creek and remained owner of Portions 164 and 165 until they passed to auctioneer Arthur Martin in 1863.