Path to Restoration
A three-minute film from behind the scaffold — the replica brickmaking, the carpentry and the trades returning the 1880 water tower at Semaphore to use as The Vantage.
The film follows the rebuild at 40 Blackler Street: Architect Michael Sheidow and the Black Rabbit team, builder and project delivery partner Claridge Construction, Littlehampton Bricks using traditional techniques to maintain heritage standards, and the trades putting an 1880 water tower back into use. A feature documentary by 57 Films, covering the whole restoration, is currently in production.
What it shows
The rebuild began in October 2024 and was delivered by Claridge Construction to heritage standard under a conservation management plan. More than 12,000 replica bricks by Littlehampton Bricks, made to 1880s methods in ten-plus shapes. No structural steel — the brick carries the tower, as it has since 1880, laid 2.1 metres thick at the base in double Flemish bond. The original cast-iron balustrade was not thrown away; it is the fence at the street. Almost the entire trade roster is South Australian.
The tower it is putting back
The tower was built to fix an engineering fault. The Jervois Bridge, opened in 1878, cut water to the Lefevre Peninsula 165 times a year every time its swing span opened; the answer was a water tower at 40 Blackler Street, designed by Oswald Brown, Australia's first government hydraulics engineer, and completed in 1880 at a cost of £5,000.
It held five hours' supply against a fifteen-minute bridge opening, did the job for thirty-one years, then spent decades being saved — from demolition in 1936 by a dentist who bought it for £210, through service as an Army lookout in the Second World War, to its first conversion to a residence in 1972. It has been a State Heritage Place since 1981, among the first places on the register.
The full story of the restoration, and the seven residences the estate opens with, is on the estate page.
