View of Thames Street cottages

Birch Cottage was built in 1846 and was one of the first of six cottages built by the South Australian Mining Association to house miners when Burra first began as a copper mining town.

It can be presumed that the first cottage was on the corner of Thames and Commercial Streets where there is now an empty shop. The grey painted cottages next door were the next and have had a room added on both sides of the original building.  The four remaining cottages in this row then complete the six and have retained their original shapes.

The cottages are said to have had slate flag stone floors and shingle roofs. (I found some of the original shingles in the shed when I moved in and have placed one on a shelf in the back porch so you can see what an original shingle looked like).

The cottage was named in honour of the big birch tree in the front garden, but my research has yet to uncover when the name was first applied.

Birch Cottage has been used as a private residence since it was built, with the exception of a period of time in the 1880s, where it was also used as a "board and lodgings', as indicated in an advertisement in the Burra Record (V, 338, 16 May 1884, page 2):  "Comfortable Board and Lodgings for one or two Respectable Persons may be had at Mrs Torrington’s opposite the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Thames St, Kooringa." 

We also know that a Mr James Ah Hong Wah, Chinese Herbalist, resided here in the late 1890s, but whether he used the cottage for consultations or not has been lost to history.

It is interesting to note that the cottages actually housed two families and so originally did not have any adjoining internal doors. Peep over the fence and you will see that the cottage next door still has a back door which would have been the front door of the original cottage. The house was simply two rooms, the front room for a sleeping and living area and the back room a kitchen.
 

The fire places and chimney in the centre of the house are interestingly constructed. Perhaps one day I will be able to restore all the fire places in Birch Cottage but the original would certainly not have been like the fancy one in the sitting room.

The lean-to would have been added to the house many years after 1846. It is interesting to take a stroll down the back lane and compare the changes that have been made to the outside of the six cottages.

My family's connection to the district of Burra can be traced to about 1867 when my great grandparents James and Emma McWaters became pioneer farmers in the district of Leighton a few miles north west of Burra. 

In 1875 Thomas and Maria Fairchild also moved to the district with their young family and in 1879 my grandfather Robert Fairchild was born. 

In 1908 he married Sarah McWaters (eighth child of James and Emma). Robert and Sarah raised six children, one of whom was my mother Mavis, who was born in Burra in 1913. 

In 1926 the big move to the township of Burra was made.  As years past, family members left the district and by 1960, my immediate family circumstances had changed and the decision was made for us to move also and so ended an era. 

Forty years passed when no member of the family owned property or lived in Burra but our family always retained a great interest in the town and district and also the sense of going home whenever we visited. My brother and I were children when we left but, we still have an affection for the place like no other. 

In October 2000 I was finally able to realise my dream of buying a cottage in Burra and making a home just like the one I experienced in my childhood. 

Birch Cottage is much smaller than my grandparents' house was in Burra North but the important elements are there. The safe and comfortable nest away from the cares of the world is here for me and I hope you feel this too.

I love the history of Burra and am committed to the continued preservation and recording of much of the story as yet untold.

I have decorated the house with things that have been part of my life since my childhood.

The big cupboard in the laundry was made by my grandfather Robert Fairchild.  I remember that it stood in my grandparents' kitchen in Sancreed Street, Burra North and was where the crockery was kept.  It makes a nice friendly clicking sound when the doors are closed.

My cleaning things are now kept there and I have restored it so that its lovely surface is not covered with paint.

The cupboard my grandfather made
 

The photo of the handsome gentleman in the sitting room is of Robert John Fairchild, my grandfather. My grandmother's photo is on the mantle piece. Most of the other pictures on the wall came from my Aunt Sheila's house.

The big picture in the second bedroom was my mother's, she told me that she purchased it in Burra a long, long time ago. It was the cottage she would have liked to have had. 

My mother had a wonderful singing voice and when we lived in the town she was often called on to sing at functions, especially at the Redruth Methodist Church and Sunday School at Burra North.

I hope you find comfort and peace here and that you feel at home in this little nest away from the flurry that is so often part of our world these days. I think it's nice that you can step back into an era of a slower pace and enjoy the comforts that have evolved over the past 150 years since Birch Cottage was built.  How wonderful that you can still imagine what it might have been like for the first dwellers here and how very different life was for them.

Meredith