Ayers House Summer Sitting Room with Keith Conlon in the Adelaide City region of South Australia

Ayers House is still looking robust and colonial. It's rare too because you won't find another park-like frontage to a mansion like it on North Terrace.

We ventured inside to meet House manager, Hannah Phillip who escorted us downstairs into the big basement. She led us passed the kitchen, wine cellars and meat hooks and into the newly opened Summer Sitting Room.

Deep within the basement, it would be just the place to be on one of Adelaide's forty degree summer days. Richly decorated with hand-painted stencils and friezes on the walls and ceilings, it's the latest room to be restored and opened to the public. And Hannah is clearly very relieved because it was a big job.

"The walls were covered with contemporary paint so we had to take scrapings to reveal what was underneath," said Hannah. "The patterns we found underneath enabled us to create stencils to replicate the rest of the work around the room."

The expert folk from Artlab were brought in to do the painstaking restoration work on the ceiling and frieze. While other modern master craftsmen spent months carefully scraping away the layers of paint and recreating the original designs

"Ayers House is full of perhaps the best the Empire could offer. They were world-renowned decorators," explained Hannah.

The job had its challenges though. Several floods from the bar upstairs had left their mark, particularly on the ornate ceiling. The room is set up as an office these day's but when it was built by Henry Ayers around the 1860s it was much less formal.

"It would certainly have been used for relaxation and lounging around," said Hannah. "Sir Henry probably would have brought his business colleagues down here after supper to perhaps indulge in a cigar and port."

Henry Ayers was only nineteen when he arrived in South Australia with his wife, Anne in 1840. With only a few years schooling in England, he worked as a legal clerk in Adelaide but his fortunes changed dramatically five years later with the massive copper find at Burra. As Secretary and major shareholder of the South Australian Mining Association, the Monster Mine owner, he acquired fabulous wealth.

"Without Burra there'd be no Ayers House," explained Hannah. "All the money that he derived from the mine allowed him to build on such a grand scale."

The home expanded to mirror Sir Henry's elevation in social status and his political power. He was Premier no less than seven times and President of the Legislative Council for thirteen years. That explains the massive State Dining Room.

"Dinners in the State Dining Room would have been very grand occasions," said Hannah. And what does such a grand room tell us about Sir Henry? "Well, as the final stage of Ayers House it shows how he's arrived in every way."

It's called the State Dining Room because once a year Sir Henry would invite the entire Legislative Council to dinner beneath his personally chosen family crest of three doves which is painted on the chimney breast.

"Henry had his crest, complete with doves, painted onto the chimneybreast and his motto is 'they flourish in the joyful air', which is a play on his name, Ayers." explained Hannah.

The room is incredibly grand - ornate ceiling coves six metres high, priceless chandeliers and exquisite paintwork. The mirror over the Belgian slate mantle was a gift from Government House. There's plenty for the National Trust guides to talk about and they've heard a tale or two from visitors who remember hanging their stockings over the light fittings in the years when Ayers House was a Royal Adelaide Hospital nurses dormitory.

These days it's booked for wedding ceremonies and is open for us all to visit and take in the staggering wealth on show in the house that Burra built.

That includes the Summer Sitting Room downstairs, which is also now on the tour. Purpose built subterranean rooms like this are rare - in fact, it's only one of four known to exist in South Australia's grand mansions. And it's the only one open to us.

Built underneath its own light well, it's a great model of how European settlers dealt with the ravages of Adelaide's long, hot and dry summers. On the way in you pass Sir Henry's personal vault. Well used we might imagine, given it's said he was more generous with his time than his money.

As a final flourish to your tour you can enjoy morning or afternoon tea - complete with sticky buns in the state dining room. All you need is a group of ten and book ahead. And right now there are a couple of other good reasons too - the 150th anniversary of the Ayers family moving in and the fiftieth birthday of the National Trust in South Australia.

Ayers House takes pride of place on North Terrace opposite the RAH. It's open daily except Mondays If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au

Ayers House
Open Tues - Fri 10am - 4pm Weekends 1pm - 4pm
Admission fees apply
Phone 8223 1234