By ANNA USHER

Mosman Collective can reveal the forgotten strip of land behind 225 Raglan Street belonged to a Redfern fireman whose name has sat on the title for 130 years.

He was Walter William Wallace Walker, who bought the Balmoral parcel in 1896 from Richard Hayes Harnett junior, one of the two men who opened up Mosman as a place to live.

Old title records show Walker purchased Volume 1201 Folio 197, on 12 September 1896.

He died in 1940, and the land was never transferred. But the cottage in front of it, and the family who lived there, carry a far louder story.

Two Walkers, two blocks

A year after Walter bought the land, his wife Mary bought the block beside it, in 1897. Each held a Raglan Street parcel in their own names.

In 1919 Walter sold part of his, and the leftover became Lot 3, stamped “no further dealings to be registered”.

It never moved again.

Mary’s block became the cottage at number 225.

Walter’s strip sat behind it, completely forgotten.

A son who never left

Their son Ernest followed his father into plastering, and he never left Raglan Street. From about 1930 he lived in the cottage with his widowed mother, Mary.

When Mary died in August 1945, she left a will from 1936 that split everything equally between her three children.

Ernest produced a later one, dated 1944, that left the entire estate to him.

The family goes to war

For nearly three years, William and Mary’s children fought in the Supreme Court.

Ernest’s sisters, Gladys Woolridge and Doris Penketh, lodged a caveat and alleged the 1944 will was never properly signed, that their mother did not understand it, and that their brother had used “undue influence” on her.

Gladys swore Mary had told her repeatedly that Ernest wanted the will changed in his favour, “but she always said that she would never do this”.

Ernest hit back, claiming his sisters had taken their mother’s cash and were clinging to an old will.

It never reached a verdict. In December 1948 the family settled, and by consent the court admitted Ernest’s 1944 will to probate.

He got the lot.

The cottage passed to Ernest in 1950, and he lived there until he died in 1976, a retired plasterer in the same house.

Only then did it leave the family, passing to the Public Trustee in 1977 – and on to new owners by 1986.

Walter’s small strip behind it was never touched.

The clock runs out in August

Now the people who own the cottage want the forgotten land. Three Mosman women, Mary Elizabeth French, Janet Muriel Bagnall and Emma Janet Lonsdale, have applied to take it under squatter’s rights.

The Registrar-General is set to sign it over about 2 August, unless someone objects first.

That leaves only days for a rival claim to surface. The land has carried Walter Walker’s name since Queen Victoria was on the throne.

If you knew the Walkers, get in touch with Mosman Collective before the window shuts, at anna@mosmancollective.com.