This is a weatherboard house built around 1889 by the Wallarah Coal-mining Company to house its mineworkers.
Mr and Mrs Jobson were the first remembered tenants. Mr Jobson mended shoes in the town as a sideline. After the Jobsons’ Mr and Mrs Middleton were the next tenants.
Mr and Mrs Middleton, originally from Sydney, came to live in Catherine Hill Bay in 1919 when their eldest child was 4 years old. The family first lived in Mrs Grey’s house in Lindsley Street before moving into No 15 Clarke Street. There were 4 boys: Walter, Clarrie (Dinny), Sidney and Bob, and 4 girls Doris, Lorna, Elvie (Lola) and Marge. Such a large family meant that every room was a bedroom. The room that is now the lounge-room was the parents’ bedroom. The front verandah was also enclosed.
Clarrie, Sid and Mr Middleton worked down the mine while Walter and Bob worked on pit top. Marge, Lola and Lorna married and moved away from the Bay.
In 1970 Gordon Mascord was at the hotel complaining about interference with his lobster pots. Within earshot of the policeman and Dinny Middleton. Gordon Mascord threatened to kill the person responsible. Next day two girls were walking on the beach and noticed an arm in the water. They called on ‘Meggsie’ (Johnny Price), who was lifesaving, to help. Underneath the arm was Dinny Middleton. The first person the policeman spoke to was Gordon Mascord; (jokingly) however ‘suspicion’ shifted when the doctor said that Dinny Middleton had had a heart attack. The subsequent inquest found that drowning was the cause of death.
In 1964 the Coal Company ‘Coal & Allied’ subdivided some of its land and determined that this house and land was to be purchased for 350 pounds by the brothers Walter and Sid Middleton. The block of land measures 58 feet 41/4 inches along the front of the block and 59 feet and 85/8 inches at the rear. The length of the block is 165 feet. When Sid died of cancer the house went to Walter.
Lola, who married at 24, lived in Tamworth with her husband and four sons. She used to come down to the Bay to care for her mother and eventually took her back to Tamworth where she died. Lola moved back into the house around 2000 when Walter went into a Nursing Home.