A National Trust (NSW) property, Miss Porter’s House was built in 1909 for Florence and Herbert Porter. They had 2 children, Ella and Hazel, and were the only family to live in this home.

Mothers Day at Miss Porter’s House is more than tea pots and doilies. Enjoy special displays of memorabilia which reveal early European settlers, businesspeople, employees and active community members, as well as wives and mothers. Use the QR codes to hear much more of their stories including survival following the earthquake.

See a studio portrait of Florence Porter’s mother, Ann Jolley, a formidable woman who, with husband Henry and two infant children, made the long journey from the UK to Singleton. Ann spent the last years of her life in her daughter Florence’s Newcastle home.

Ella and Hazel’s paternal grandmother Eliza is no less remarkable. A daughter of the Lintott family, dairy farming settlers from Ash Island in the Hunter River, Eliza married James Porter. Together they built a grocery and carrier business eventually owning the shop in Hunter Street behind Miss Porter’s House.

Ella and Hazel Porter never married; they were the family breadwinners supporting their widowed mother at a time when few pensions existed.