Sir Thomas Elder had his main house Birksgate at Urrbrae. From his summer house at Mount Lofty Summit he could overlook Piccadilly Valley and use his telescope to look at his ships at Port Adelaide. He was the main owner and director of the Adelaide Steamship Company in addition to his finance, banking and pastoral interests.

Mount Lofty Summit. Captain Collet Barker came exploring here and along the Sturt River in 1831. A few weeks later he was killed near Lake Alexandrina. Earlier the summit had been sighted and named by Captain Matthew Flinders when he sailed up the Gulf in 1802. A cairn of stones was erected on the summit in 1865 with a table and chairs for picnickers and a wooden flagstaff. In 1885 the wooden flagstaff was replaced with a stone tower and trig station. 1901 for the centenary of the summit’s naming by Capt. Matthew Flinders the current obelisk was built to honour Flinders. It was unveiled by the Governor Lord Tennyson in March 1902. At 727 metres high the summit is the highest point near Adelaide but there are quite a many peaks higher than this in SA. The summit was purchased by the government in 1945 and added to Cleland Conservation Park. The old 1958 built tearooms at the summit were replaced with the new summit restaurant in 1997.

Mount Lofty House. Arthur Hardy an early pastoralist and vigneron reached SA in 1836. He was a successful colonist and built his first home called Birksgate at Glen Osmond in 1851. This was later sold and was named Claremont. During the 1850s he amassed 1,000 acres near Mt Lofty summit. In 1856 he built a grand summer house near the Summit which he named Mount Lofty House. By 1859 he had planted acres of vines and walnut trees near Mt Lofty House. In 1863 Arthur Hardy moved into Mt Lofty House as his permanent residence. As his fortunes changed he sold Mt Lofty House. It had various owners - Alfred Watts, Frank Stokes, Arthur Waterhouse and J.W Richardson before being almost totally destroyed by the Ash Wednesday Bushfires on 16 February 1983. The ruins were purchased and restored and re-opened in 1986. More accommodation was added in a sympathetic style and it became the Mercure Grand Hotel and restaurant.

Arthur’s seat later the Stawell School. George Tinline, a wealthy pastoralist, investor and manager of the Bank of South Australia from 1839 and brother-in-law of Alexander Borthwick Murray built a cottage on this plot in 1858 before he returned to England in 1863. The unfinished Tinline Court House was sold in 1871 and bought by Gavin Young who employed architects to complete the house in 1875. He named it Arthur’s Seat as the land was originally owned by Arthur Hardy. Later owners included Henry Teesdale Smith before it was purchased in 1926 by Patience Hawker and Mabel Hardy as premises for Stawell School. The school accepted both day and boarding students and the girls were taught to “develop their individuality” through art, literature and music. Traditional subjects of French, Latin, science, history and geography completed the curriculum. The list of girls included some from most of the great pastoral families of SA- Gebhardt, Hawker, Cudmore, Dutton, Bowman, Davenport, Kidman, Melrose, Murray, Robertson etc. In 1927 the school started with 23 pupils but this increased to 40 in the next year. For many the school was both a finishing school and traditional school but with petrol rationing numbers dwindled in 1939 and the school moved from Arthurs Seat to a property in Mills Terrace North Adelaide. The school company ceased operations in 1940. Patience Howard (née Hawker) went on to be the first woman to stand for parliament in SA in 1948 as a Labor Party candidate for the Upper House but she was not successful. When the Stawell School closed in 1940 the property was used as a convalescent home for the Australian Women’s Army Service before it was sold in 1943. It was destroyed in the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires but has public access as it is now owned by the SA government.

Eurilla House. Another of the grand Summit houses was built in 1875 for Sir William Milne a local MP and owner of wineries and distilleries. His businesses began at Nairne around 1840 and in 1846 he took over Patrick Auld’s winery at Burnside, now Auldana. In politics he held several ministries including Commissioner of Crown Lands. He helped establish the Torrens land titles system for us. He was also a Director of the Moonta Mining Company. His main home was Sunnyside at Glen Osmond off Portrush Road. In 1917 after his death Eurilla was purchased by Sir Lavington Bonython in 1939. It was destroyed in the 1983 bushfires and has now been rebuilt on a smaller scale.

Korralla House later St Michael’s Monastery. This house became St. Michael’s Monastery in 1946. It was a refuge for the spiritually ill and troubled. Korralla House was bequeathed to the Anglican Church by Audine O’Leary, nee Bakewell upon her death in 1945. Her ancestor John Warren Bakewell bought a cottage when the Hills railway was constructed. He then employed architects Grainger and Naish in 1885 to design an 8 roomed house plus gate house and stables and coach house. In 1901 a ballroom as added. The Bakewell mansion had the finest views of all houses along Summit Road. Korralla means “seen from afar”. John Bakewell, 1845-1922, was a lawyer, businessman, research chemist and author. He had a chemical laboratory built into Korralla House which was used by Sir William Bragg who got a Nobel Prize for physics (work on X-rays) in 1915. In 1946 the Anglican Church offered it to the English Brothers Society of the Sacred Mission which had been founded in England 1894. During World War 2 Korralla House housed American officers on recreation leave with all comforts laid on including visits by professional women! St. Michael’s Monastery, along with its priceless library of 40,000 theology books was destroyed in 1983 on Ash Wednesday.