This weatherboard and galvanised iron cottage was built between 1908-1915.The Wallarah Coal-mining Company built this cottage to house its mineworkers.
The Hale family was the first tenants. Their daughter Elsie married Mr Trowbridge and had three sons. Mr Trowbridge was killed in World War 1. Elsie then married Phil Anderson and the family moved to Cessnock. After his mother remarried Bill Trowbridge lived with his grandparents in the house, as he did not want to go to Cessnock with his mother and her new family. Bill married Dorrie Henderson from Slack Alley in 1933.They had one daughter, Joan. Dorrie was born 29-11-1911 and was enrolled at the Catherine Hill Bay Public School in early 1918 when she was six years and three months of age. The Henderson family moved from Nords Wharf in 1917 to settle in Slack Alley.
In 1964 the Coal Company ‘Coal & Allied’ subdivided some of its land. The Company determined that Mr W Trowbridge would purchase the house and land for 400 pounds.
Dorrie Trowbridge, lived in the house until 2005. At 93 years of age she decided to go and live with her niece Colleen House in Summerland Point. Colleen, who had grown up in the Bay still takes her aunt into the Bay Bowling Club each week to keep up a pattern of many, many years. The house was sold in 2005.
A significant extension was built around 2009.