History
The land of which Houghton was part (Swan Location II) was originally assigned by Governor James Stirling to Rivett Henry Bland in 1829. In 1836, a syndicate of three British Army Officers, Houghton, Lowie and Yule (who had been serving together in India) purchased the northern half of Swan location II. The syndicate named the property Houghton after the senior ranking officer of their group, Lieutenant Colonel Richmond Houghton.
Houghton himself did not come to Western Australia and for the next 23 years the property was managed and developed by one of the members of the syndicate, Thomas Newte Yule.
In 1859, Dr John Ferguson purchased the Houghton property for the sum of 350 pounds and in that same year produced the first commercial vintage of wine from the vineyard a total of 25 imperial gallons (110 l).
Moondyne Joe, Western Australia's most famous bushranger was captured on the Houghton property in the act of stealing wine from the cellars on the 25th February 1869. By chance, the owner, Charles William Ferguson had been helping with a police search, and afterwards invited a group of police back to the vineyard for refreshments. When Ferguson entered the cellar, Joe assumed that he was discovered, and made a dash for the door into the arms of the police.
The Emu Wine Company purchased the Houghton property in 1950 from the Ferguson family. In April 1976, the South Australian winemaking Hardy family acquired the stock of the London based Emu Wine Company and with that purchase, became owners of Houghton.
Read more about this topic: Houghton Winery
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“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)