Ormiston House: Wellington St

Ormiston House was built by the Honourable Captain Louis Hope in the early 1860s. 

Captain Hope established a large sugar plantation and mill complex at Ormiston, and Ormiston House was his residence.

One of the first buildings on the site was a slab hut built about 1859, which became the kitchen of Ormiston House and is still there today. Captain Hope also planted an extensive park-like garden. Some trees still remain.

Ormiston House is very similar to the homestead Captain Hope built at Kilcoy Station, including the bricks hand-made on the site, the layout of the house and the hand-turned cedar pillars on the verandah.

In 1864 Captain Hope’s sugar plantation was described as the “most extensive sugar plantation in this colony”. Two years later Captain Hope sold his first sugar. While he is still remembered as one of the founding fathers of Queensland’s sugar industry, he was not financially successful and he left his Ormiston plantation in the mid-1870s.

Ormiston House remained in the Hope family until 1912. In 1935 the International Society of Sugar Technologists erected a cairn in the front grounds of Ormiston House to commemorate Captain Hope’s pioneering work in the Queensland sugar industry.

In 1959 the Carmelite Nuns bought the house and 11 acres. Ormiston House has functioned as a house museum since the mid-1960s.