Purulia is a heritage-listed residence at 16 Fox Valley Road in the Sydney suburb of Wahroonga in the Ku-ring-gai Council local government area of New South Wales, Australia.

[1] The group of thinking-architects responsible for ushering in the 20th century were William Hardy Wilson, Robin Dods, Harold Desbrowe-Annear and Walter Burley Griffin.

The same depth of thought and changes which they brought to homes did not begin to percolate into other types of building, which merely acquired from them the vices of individualism to compound their blatant stylism, for another 40 years.

His search for architectural truth, a deep love and appreciation of beauty, an interest in history and an abiding faith in the concept of the artist-architect led him to strive for the pre-Victorian virtues.

[1] In 1908 Wilson and Stacy Neave (another architect from Sydney) commenced their grand tour of Europe and North America, where they found the work of McKim, Mead & White and the American Colonial Revival style particularly impressive.

When Neave served in World War I, Wilson closed the practice and concentrated on writing and completing his drawings of old colonial architecture in NSW and Tasmania and building his own house, Purulia.

[1][2]: 768 In 1912 he built, after years of thought, his own home, Purulia, at Wahroonga, a suburb to the north of the Sydney central business district.

Designed for servantless living, the house was a simple rectangle in plan with plain plastered walls painted white, a low-pitched roof covered in multi-coloured shingle tiles and with boxed eaves.

[3] At a time when Queen Anne (revival) was riding high and in an area with pretensions to being the elite suburb of Sydney, its barrenness brought a deputation from outraged neighbours who claimed the values of their properties would be undermined.

[4][1] Anticipating the changing domestic situation, he planned Purulia as a "maidless flat" and made the kitchen a pleasant family room.

As the walls arose square, bleak and factory like, consternation filled the souls of neighbours dwelling in multi-angular villas.

For nearly 50 years his was the only voice stressing its importance and his descriptions - as vivid and full blown as the late summer gardens he visited - are still the most evocative.

[1] Of large forest trees he admired only the picturesque angophora (A.floribunda or A.subvelutina), the "apple oak" of the colonists; and, presumably the turpentines (Syncarpia glomulifera) which he planted along the rear boundaries of Purulia.

Beside the stone flagged path bordered with box (Buxus sempervirens), that leads from gate to door, there are fragrant shrubs, diosma (Coleonema pulchrum), lemon verbena (Lippia citriodora), lavenders (Lavandula spp.).

This geometry ... reached its extreme in his own house, Purulia, where the rectangular bungalow is centred in a circle of citrus trees, a conceit which can only be appreciated fully in plan form.

The geometry is complex but not forced and the architectural detailing is deliberately simple - flagged paths and summer houses with columns of whitewashed tree trunks.

[1][2]: 769 In 1920 Wilson & Neave took on John Berry as partner, becoming Wilson, Neave & Berry (1920–27), a firm noted for the Colonial Revival style of architecture for domestic design: fat, low-squatting Georgian boxes with colonnaded verandahs, spider-web fanlights on entrance doors and multi-paned windows with shutters.

[1][2]: 769  After Wilson's visit to China in 1921, the firm incorporated Oriental motifs and details, examples of which are found at Eryldene, Gordon (1914–36) and Peapes Department Store, Sydney (1923).

In 1925 Wilson returned to Sydney, where he became disillusioned with the state of Australian architecture and began writing his view sand ideas in a fictionalised biography "The dawn of a new civilisation" (1929) under a pseudonym of Richard Le Mesurer.

[7][1] Of large forest trees he admired only the picturesque angophora (A.floribunda or A.subvelutina), the "apple oak" of the colonists; and, presumably the turpentines (Syncarpia glomulifera) which he planted along the rear boundaries of Purulia.

Beside the stone flagged path bordered with box (Buxus sempervirens), that leads from gate to door, there are fragrant shrubs, diosma (Coleonema pulchrum), lemon verbena (Lippia citriodora), lavenders (Lavandula spp.).

This geometry ... reached its extreme in his own house, Purulia, where the rectangular bungalow is centred in a circle of citrus trees, a conceit which can only be appreciated fully in plan form.

The geometry is complex but not forced and the architectural detailing is deliberately simple - flagged paths and summer houses with columns of whitewashed tree trunks.

[5][1] Designed for servantless living, the house was a simple rectangle in plan with plain plastered walls painted white, a low-pitched roof covered in multi-coloured shingle tiles and with boxed eaves.

As the walls arose square, bleak and factory like, consternation filled the souls of neighbours dwelling in multi-angular villas.

A good example of the opposition he encountered was a deputation to the local Council when Purulia was being built to have it condemned as an unsightly building.

[9][1] At a time when Queen Anne (revival) was riding high and in an area with pretensions to being the elite suburb of Sydney, its barrenness brought a deputation from outraged neighbours who claimed the values of their properties would be undermined.