Darcy Lever Terrace: 33-39 Hurtle Square, Adelaide. South Australia

This row of four double storey houses fronts Hurtle Square but also presents an end terrace to Halifax Street is named “Darcy Lever Terrace” is typical of the Adelaide style but a great individual example. Constructed in local basalt with mostly timber verandahs they were built in 1878 by Simon Harvey.

The roof is hipped with plain rendered chimneys and double wooden eaves brackets. The terraces have rendered mouldings with keystoned window surrounds, the keystones featuring vermiculation and string course moulding to visually separate the floors at the end terrace. The side facades have a brick pattern while the front facade.

The verandah is projected out with a hip roof and features wooden dentils, support posts and capitals connecting brackets of cast iron. The balusters are of turned wood design, unusual for Victorian terraces with delicate carved patterns in the frieze below the balcony rail. A wooden picket fence completes a graceful streetscape.

In 1971 they were restored and sold to mostly wealthy individual owners, leading to a revival of terraces as fashionable housing in Adelaide. One such owner was John Bray, who was a poet and Supreme Court chief justice and he lived in house number 39 from 1971-95.

I have not been able to source exactly sure where the name “Darcy Lever” came from.

The houses were added to the SA Heritage Register (10791) on 24 July 1980 giving them state level heritage protection.