The first time Michael Scarpantoni stood
inside Daringa House, he was just a
child. His best friend was the nephew of
Ken Maxwell, who owned the house at
the time. Then, it was cold and damp.
Concrete had been rendered part way
up the wall in an attempt to stabilise the
brickwork, while the floor went up and
down creating different levels where there
shouldn’t be any.
Decades later, this personal connection, alongside the home’s historic
significance as the first dwelling in McLaren Vale, would sustain
Michael and brother Filippo (Fil) through the three-year project to
rebuild Daringa House, quite literally, brick by brick.
Daringa’s story began in 1840, when Charles Hewett and William
Colton arrived in the southern vales from the English county of
Devonshire. The two farmers established Oxenberry Farm and Lower
Oxenberry Farm respectively, the properties covering much of what’s
now McLaren Vale.
That same year, Colton built Daringa House. Hewett’s house no
longer exists, most likely destroyed by flood. But in an early settler
example of waste-not-want-not, the recovered stone may then have
been used to build a smaller adjacent building in around 1890. This is
the building now known as Colton Cottage. The two buildings were
then continuously inhabited until 1999, first by the Coltons, followed
by the Semmens family and finally the Maxwell family.
The Scarpantoni’s part in Daringa’s story begins, indirectly, in 1958.
In that year, Domenico Scarpantoni — Michael and Fil’s father —
bought a 14-acre block of land in McLaren Vale. This block was part
of the original Oxenberry Farm, explains Michael, although the large
landholding had been broken up by then. The property was young
Michael and Fil’s home until they moved to McLaren Flat in 1979.
‘We knew this land as kids,’ Michael says. ‘We roamed every inch
of it pretty intimately.’ And so, as Domenico planted his first vines on
Oxenberry land, he also cultivated a deep connection to the area in
his young sons.It’s not surprising then, that when the remaining parcel of land known
as Oxenberry Farm came up for sale about twenty years ago, the
Scarpantoni brothers bought it. A year later, they also bought the
adjacent land that included Daringa House and Colton Cottage. This
modern-day Oxenberry Farm is home to the Scarpantoni’s Oxenberry
Wines label, a café and a range of accommodation options, which
now include the renovated historic buildings. ‘It was a good spot,’
says Michael. ‘It had a lot of history for us. Ultimately, we always
wanted to restore the houses, I just needed to think about it for
twenty years first.’Those twenty years weren’t kind to the buildings. They were largely
uninhabited after the Maxwells moved out in 1999 and when the
reconstruction work began in earnest in 2015, Daringa House in
particular was badly dilapidated. Architect David Bennett of Bennett
Design, who advised on the project, offers a blunt appraisal: ‘It
would’ve been much easier to bulldoze them, you quite literally could
put your finger through the wall,’ he tells me. ‘Now, they’ll go on for a
long time because they’ve been given a new purpose.’ >Page left: Daringa House and Colton Cottage again stand strongly side-by-side after undergoing extensive renovations and restoration by current owners, the Scarpantoni
family. Above: Landscape designer Lesli Hewett (a descendant of the original Hewett family) took great care in designing the gardens around the two buildings.