Meet the heritage home with the lot – including a pool room
At a time when tradies are thin on the ground, this 19th century villa is move-in ready
2 min
Sydney’s inner west is generally characterised by workers’ cottages and terrace houses with postage stamp-sized courtyards barely large enough to take a swing on the Hills Hoist.
While there are still some substantial homes in Burwood, where this six-bedroom Victorian Italianate mansion is located, they have become increasingly rare as the developer’s wrecking ball threatens larger heritage homes that have seen better days.
Which makes this property at 24 Ethel Street even more special. Built c1888, this home in Sydney’s second smallest LGA is set over two levels, with multiple living areas and multipurpose bedrooms that can be used for hosting guests or as individual home office spaces. Entry is via a spacious portico and wraparound veranda with tessellated tiled floors in keeping with the age and style of the home. Stepping through threshold with stained glass front door and Marseille parquetry floors, there are enclosed living areas on either side of the hallway, including a pool room fitted out like a gentlemen’s club, complete with Timothy Oulton furnishings. At the rear, a Degabriele entertainer’s kitchen features Calcatta Vagli marble and Miele appliances.
Marble has also been carried through to the fireplace surrounds while contemporary chandeliers create a sense of drama to the open plan kitchen and living area.
There is also a basement area providing parking and storage. As is appropriate to a house this size, the 1098sqm property is set into spacious, well-maintained formal gardens with additional room for parking at the rear.
Perhaps the best thing about this home at a time when finding tradespeople is a struggle is that it is move-in ready. Period details such as ornate, coffered ceilings internally and iron lacework externally have been maintained and restored while modern conveniences including zoned heating and cooling, heated flooring and CCTV have been included.
With room for everyone, it’s a period home designed for modern zoning, creating spaces for multiple generations to come together and spend time apart.
With primary and high schools located within easy walking distance and the hustle and bustle of Burwood’s lively restaurant and entertainment scene just around the corner, this home is perfect for 21st century living.
Last sold in 2014 for $1.9m, it has a price guide of $8m.
Address: 24 Ethel Street, Burwood
Price guide: $8 million
Next open for inspection: Saturday July 8, 2.30pm-3pm
Agent: Michael Murphy, principal McGrath Strathfield 0486 123 888
Paine Schwartz joins BERO as a new investor as the year-old company seeks to triple sales.
The sports-car maker delivered 279,449 cars last year, down from 310,718 in 2024.
In a series of social-media posts, the eldest child of David and Victoria Beckham threw stones at the image of a ‘perfect family’.
3 min
David Beckham was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday with Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan to promote their new partnership. But all anyone wanted to talk about was his son.
After the obligatory questions about business and the World Cup, a host on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” lobbed Beckham an out-of-left-field query about how young people can preserve their mental health in the age of social media.
“Children are allowed to make mistakes,” Beckham, 50, said. “That’s how they learn. So, that’s what I try to teach my kids, but you have to sometimes let them make those mistakes as well.”
Just a day earlier, his 26-year-old son Brooklyn Beckham had posted a series of accusations about his soccer-famous father and pop-star-turned-fashion-designer mother, Victoria Beckham.
He said that his parents had controlled him for years, lied about him to the press and sought to damage his relationship with his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham. Their goal, he said, was to affect the image of a “perfect family.”
“My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else,” he wrote on Instagram. “Brand Beckham comes first.”
That brand has been burnished over decades of professional triumphs, tabloid scandals and slick dealmaking.
Recently, both David and Victoria Beckham put their legacies on-screen in docuseries that cast them as hardworking entrepreneurs and devoted parents. Their image appeared stronger than ever. Now their firstborn child is throwing stones.
Representatives for David Beckham, Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for Nicola Peltz Beckham declined to comment.
In the U.K., the Beckhams are as close as you can get to royalty without sharing Windsor DNA. David is perhaps the most famous English player in soccer history, while Victoria parlayed her Spice Girls fame into a career as a respected fashion designer.
Their partnership was forged in the cauldron of 1990s celebrity gossip, with their every move—in their careers, their bumpy personal lives and their adventurous senses of personal style—subject to tabloid scrutiny.
“They were Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce before Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce,” said Elaine Lui, founder of the website Lainey Gossip.
Over time, the couple became savvy managers of their own brand, a sprawling modern empire including a professional soccer team, fashion and beauty lines, investment deals and commercial partnerships.
In recent years they each released a Netflix docuseries—“Beckham” in 2023, “Victoria Beckham” in 2025—featuring scenes from their private family life. (Brooklyn and Nicola appeared in David’s series, but not Victoria’s.)
“The way they’ve performed their celebrity has been togetherness,” Lui said: Appearing and engaging with the world as a happily married couple, in both relative calm and amid scandal. And as their family grew, their four children became smiling ambassadors for Brand Beckham, too.
Until Monday night. In a series of Instagram Story posts, Brooklyn accused his parents of “trying endlessly to ruin” his marriage to Nicola, an actress and model, and the daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz . Brooklyn declared, “I do not want to reconcile with my family.”
Where Victoria and David seemed to see press scrutiny as part of the job, Brooklyn and Nicola are operating in a manner more typical of their own generation. Brooklyn’s posts call to mind the “no contact” boundaries some children have enforced with their parents in recent years to much pop-psych chatter.
Andrew Friedman, managing director of crisis communications at Orchestra, said he’d advised many clients through family drama. “Going public,” he said, should be a “last resort.”
He’s also warned clients that using social media to air grievances opens a can of worms. “Nuance is not welcome in social-media feeding frenzies,” Friedman said. “Sensational and unusual details will overshadow the central issue.”
Brooklyn, the eldest of the Beckhams’ four children, has built a following in his parents’ image, though without the benefit (or burden) of a steady career.
He’s worked as a model, photographer, cooking-show host and most recently founded a hot-sauce brand. Brooklyn and Nicola went public with their relationship in 2020 and married in a lavish 2022 ceremony at her family estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
Rumors of a family feud flared almost immediately after the wedding, including whispers about the fact that Nicola didn’t wear a dress made by her fashion-designer mother-in-law.
Brooklyn on Monday recounted further grievances related to a mother-son dance and the seating chart. In the months and years that followed, celebrity journalists and fans closely tracked both generations of the family, looking for cracks in the relationship.
But official dispatches from Beckham World suggested that things were just fine. In a scene from the final episode of David’s Netflix series, the Beckham family, including Brooklyn and Nicola, joke around on a visit to their country home. It’s a picture of familial bliss.
“We’ve tried to give our children the most normal upbringing as possible. But you’ve got a dad that was England captain and a mom that was Posh Spice,” David says in voice-over.
“And they could be little s—s. And they’re not. And that’s why I say I’m so proud of my children, and I’m so in awe of my children, the way they’ve turned out.”
A cluster of century-old warehouses beneath the Harbour Bridge has been transformed into a modern workplace hub, now home to more than 100 businesses.
Paine Schwartz joins BERO as a new investor as the year-old company seeks to triple sales.
