Josias' father, Thomas, the elder brother of local builder William Hancock, moved to Queensland in 1864 and eventually established a pit-sawing business at Pine Mountain, later purchasing timber mills at Rosewood and Ipswich.

Tatham had come to Ipswich from Yorkshire and worked at Cribb and Foote until opening his own business on the site of what is now Woolworths.

While new wings designed by architects Fulton, Gilmour, Trotter and Moss have been added, the structure of the house itself remains essentially unchanged.

There is a small foyer area at the front created by a decorative timber partition extending across the hall with an open doorway in the centre.

The central feature of the entrance hall is the high dark-timber vaulted ceiling extending from the front door to the rear.

The hall is unusually large and utilises a lot of the internal space on the upper lever of the house making it likely that it would have been used for entertaining purposes.

[1] On the left-hand wall immediately upon entering the foyer is an original ornate timber mantlepiece with a central mirror.

[1] St Michaels Nursing Home was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992 having satisfied the following criteria.

Constructed in 1874, St Michael's Nursing Home reflects a period of affluent residential development in Ipswich when many of the town's business and industry leaders built substantial, grand residences in keeping with their financial success and the solidification of Ipswich as an important commercial and industrial centre.

It is architecturally significant as a substantial, well constructed home, unusual for its era in its being a two-storey dwelling set into a deeply excavated site.

[1] The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history.