Completed in 1845, historic Bronte House is among the oldest buildings in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. Designed in the picturesque style, it has romantic circular and hexagonal corner turrets, deep bay windows and fanciful pierced wooden tracery on both the eastern and western fronts.
Although lacking the elegance and grandeur of scale of Sydney's great colonial mansions, Bronte House is nevertheless highly significant as a lively and largely intact example of a cottage orneé; in the 'Gothick' taste, a decorative style much favoured in the last quarter of the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries.
The placement of the house in its landscape is particularly felicitous, the formal garden merging easily with the natural landscape of Bronte Gully to make it the embodiment of the romantic villa by the sea.