RE: Burnt History

I'm going to assume you were careful and stuff given fire damage and potentially weakened structures etc etc etc :)

I wonder if they were able to come back and see if anything was salvageable :S

Yep sounds like one of the original farm/houses in the area, one of the things I like doing around various older suburbs around my area is spotting which ones were the original houses in places that used to have larger blocks or were farms and were then subdivided into absurdity. I find it sad when they get knocked down to build a modern house or a bunch of stupid little units.