William Footer arrived in Dunolly in 1863 from Suffolk in England as a 56 year old architect and surveyor. He started off in a house in Tweeddale Street but soon purchased some vacant land in Broadway. This was allotment 7 of section 9 which during the rush had been Ernst Ernstsen’s Criterion Hotel.
The rate book shows that in 1863 he built a brick lean-to and fenced the land increasing its valuation from £10 to £19. In 1864 he added a brick residence and a garden which at that stage was not finished. This must have been a small house as it did not increase the valuation. In April 1865 the Dunolly and Bet Bet Shire Express reported that Footer was building himself a “great house”. This became the imposing Footer’s Mansion which still stands today.
Footer only lived in this house for three years before he died at the age of 61. Some of his local architectural work includes the Weighbridge 1864 (demolished), Hospital Morgue 1864 (demolished), Recreation Reserve 1864, Presbyterian Church 1864 (now RSL hall), Wallis’ Cottage Thompson Street 1864 (rear of Dunolly Books and Collectables) and the Burnt Creek School 1867 (now a private residence).
The wealthy mining manager Walter T Hansford purchased Footer’s Mansion after Footer’s death. He made his money as a major shareholder of the Queens Birthday Mine at nearby Goldsborough. He also purchased the allotments each side and built a substantial two storey brick stable. In the front yard he built a replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Each fortnight when the Queens Birthday Mine cleaned the gold out of their crushing battery he would fly a red flag from his tower for each 100 ounces that had been recovered. The most he ever flew was fourteen flags! During the depression of the 1890s Hansford went on a touring holiday to Europe writing glorious accounts of his trip in the local paper. Hansford died in 1906.
The property was owned for a time by a minister before being purchased by a Miss Wilson about 1920. She renamed the place Somerset House and opened it as a private Catholic maternity hospital.
Since then Footer’s Mansion has changed hands several times being used mostly as a private residence but also as a doctor’s practice for several years.
