By Murray Byfield
Aberglassyn house started be built by George Hobler in c1840 and has been referred to as the “house of broken dreams”.
In 1844, Aberglasslyn House was leased by William Nicholson, who eventually exercised his option to purchase it. The property remained the possession of Nicholson’s descendents until 1962.Hobler a stockman, grazier and landowner came to the Hunter Region in 1836 bought the property, Aberglasslyn situated five kilometres upstream from Maitland.
He became a justice of the peace, and was letting the land to tenant farmers, played the part of the local squire and started to build the Georgian mansion now known as Aberglassyn House.Situated high on a hill overlooking farmland and a picturesque bend in the Hunter River the house has stately charm and an old world feel which was never quite realised.
Hobler became insolvent in 1846 and the mansion was advertised for sale in 1858 stating that Hobler had spent upwards of 20 000 pounds on the house alone.The house included 20 spacious rooms, dining room, drawing room, extensive cellars, out buildings including a detached kitchen but was incomplete due to the bank crash which was known as the “starving forties” that led to Hobler’s bankruptcy.
The house has had several owners over the decades but has stood derelict on various occasions. It is said cows used to wander thru the large empty rooms until the windows were bricked up and doors bolted to deter vandalism. The spacious arched cellars were home only to a colony of bats.The big empty sandstone house on top of the hill had all the qualities of a typical classic haunted house.
*A former maid there in the late 1920s remembered once hearing heavy footsteps within, but a search revealed no one around.
Decades later, in the 1970s, a new owner one night heard “ghastly footsteps and a coughing” but no one was visible on the flagstone veranda under the moonlight. At other times there was the faint sound of something being dragged along.
The mystery was eventually solved with the simple discovery the pattering of feet belonged to a fox using the veranda as a shortcut and who would drag its dead prey, like rabbits, right by the windows.
The estate of Aberglassyn is believed by some to be an aboriginal sacred site and that corroborees took place below the house. Aboriginal ceremonies were often performed in places which were considered to have “spiritual energy” one could speculate that the spirits of the land were not happy with a large white man’s house was built on sacred ground. Could this have led to the cursed history and ghostly manifestations of Aberglassyn house?
