This small, single gable stone structure, dating from mid-1870s-early-1880s, is associated with the prominent Queenstown settlers – John William Mitchell Purdie and William Lovell Davis – and was an outbuilding of the residence associated with their land holding on the terrace overlooking Queenstown. The building has architectural and historical significance.

Land titles indicate that Section 8 was the property of Queenstown contractor Peter Walker in the early 1870s. From photographs, it appears that Walker did not build on the land, before selling the section to John William Mitchell Purdie in 1874. Purdie owned the property until 1885, when he in turn sold it to William Lovell Davis.

This building is associated with a house on a nearby property (now 5 Brisbane Street) (List entry No. 2331). The house section was first owned by Charles Small, who sold it to John William Mitchell Purdie in 1872 (and Purdie, in turn, sold it to William Lovell Davis in 1882). William Davis is reported as building a stone house on the ‘Terrace’ in March 1886. A photograph shows a stone house under construction, next to an existing cottage – meaning the photograph dates probably from 1886. The stone building is already there, sitting just outside the boundary fence around the cottage section. Newspapers indicate that the tenders for the addition to Eichardt’s were advertised in April and the building appears to have been completed by November 1886.

In this photograph, the house appears on the hill, Eichardt’s Hotel’s first masonry portion is built (1871), but the 1886 extension is not yet built. A photograph identified as dating from the 1870s-1880s shows the house with the stable to the right. This photograph shows the extension to Eichardt’s Hotel, completed in 1886. The owners in the 1980s understood the building to have been erected about 1880 and used by the government stock inspector who kept his horses on the nearby land.

In 1908, William Lovell Davis’ estate was offered for sale. His estate included 10 sections in Block XXXVIII, ‘[t]ogether with stone and wooden dwellings thereon’, and described as a ‘very valuable property situated near the Queenstown Park and enclosed by a macrocarpa hedge.’ In 1958, the property was subdivided and the outbuilding separated from the house, and the sections in between were built on. In 1989, the building was redeveloped and converted to provide bed and breakfast accommodation, designed by Queenstown architect Michael Wyatt.

The single gable structure, rectangular in plan, built in stone with a corrugated iron roof, is said to have been a stable, recalling the significance of horses in the nineteenth century. In 2016, it provides boutique accommodation, with a living space, mezzanine bedroom and bathroom, but the form of the building remains recognisable.