Former Callan Park Hospital for the Insane, Sydney, Australia

One of the ladies who guided me around Sydney’s architectural heritage when I was off-duty from my commitments to Sydney Decorative & Fine Arts Society was Robin, who after showing me Vaucluse House, made an offer I couldn’t refuse:  would I like to see a fine Victorian lunatic asylum?

Callan Park Hospital for the Insane was designed by the Scots-born Colonial Architect for New South Wales, James Barnet (1827-1904), and the Inspector of the Insane, Dr Frederick Norton Manning (1839-1903), to take the overspill of patients from the Gladesville Hospital of the Insane at Bedlam Point, which had opened as the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum in 1838.

The Callan Park Hospital opened in 1885 in a grand complex of Neo-classical buildings known as the Kirkbride Block, built around an existing residence, Garry Owen House (c1840), which had been built for the Crown Solicitor and Police Magistrate, John Ryan Brenan.

Dr Manning was a leading figure in the development of enlightened care of the mentally ill.  He aimed to provide treatment, rather than operate what he described as a “’cemetery for diseased intellects”.  He encouraged visitors and battled to beat down the nineteenth-century prejudice against what was still called lunacy.

Callan Park was his first opportunity to design an institution from scratch.  Barnet’s design was based on an English model, the Chartham Down Hospital for the Insane, near Canterbury, Kent.  The complex consists of a series of pavilions and courtyards, with plenty of opportunity for fresh air and changes of environment.  The gardens were designed to have a calming influence by the Director of the Sydney Botanic Gardens, Charles Moore (1820-1905).

The hundreds of cast-iron columns which support the verandas channel rain-water into an underground reservoir, the level of which was indicated by the ball that rises and falls above the central clock tower.

Over the years, Callan Park became under-resourced and overcrowded, and eventually became notoriously outdated.

The mental-health facilities, latterly known as the Rozelle Hospital, left the site in 2008: the Kirkbride complex is leased to the Sydney College of the Arts, part of the University of Sydney, and the grounds are used as a public park.

There is a detailed account of the history of Callan Park at http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/callan_park_mental_hospital.

Vaucluse House, Sydney, Australia

William Charles Wentworth (1790-1872) could perhaps be forgiven for having a chip on his shoulder as he made his way in New South Wales society in the early nineteenth century.

His father, D’Arcy Wentworth, was a distant relative of the Wentworths of Wentworth Woodhouse. Irish-born, he trained as a surgeon in London but practised as a highwayman, and so was transported to New South Wales in 1789-90.

On the voyage to Australia D’Arcy Wentworth formed a liaison with Catherine Crowley, who had stolen clothing.  She presented him with a baby son, William, which he accepted even though the birth took place less than nine months after they met.  D’Arcy and Catherine never married.

Nowadays, convict ancestry is a mark of distinction in Australia, but even though D’Arcy Wentworth developed a landed estate in Parramatta, his son was disparaged for his antecedents and his illegitimacy.

William Wentworth studied law in England, then returned to New South Wales where he became a powerful political figure, bitterly opposed to and by the Sydney respectability.

His Sydney residence was Vaucluse House, a neo-Gothic hotchpotch that he purchased in 1827, two years before he got round to marrying his mistress, Sarah, the native-born daughter of convicts.  They had ten children, eight of them in wedlock.

He developed the house piecemeal, using its space and grandeur as a backcloth for popular political celebrations.

After leading the successful campaign for self-determination for New South Wales Wentworth, “the hero of Australia”, retired to England in 1856, where he became a Conservative MP.  On his return to Sydney in 1861 he and his wife found a greater measure of acceptance, and at his death he was accorded a state funeral.  His Australian descendants have continued to take a prominent part in Australian society and politics.

The original estate extended to 515 acres.  Because of the Wentworth connection it was acquired as a public park as early as 1910, and unlike the other prominent harbour-side villas of its period, such as Lindesay House and Elizabeth Bay House, Vaucluse House retains its garden setting and twenty-five acres of planting and natural bush.

For many years the house served as a museum, but since 1981 the New South Wales Historic Houses Trust has followed a plan to return it to its condition during the occupancy of William Charles Wentworth up to 1853.

There is a guide-book to the house, with detailed background on the Wentworth family, at http://www.hht.net.au/discover/highlights/guidebooks/vaucluse_house_guidebook.

Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney, Australia: Saloon

The inlet to the west of Darling Point, where Campbell Drummon Riddell built Lindesay House, is Elizabeth Bay.

Here another Scot, Alexander Macleay (1767-1848), obtained a grant of 54 acres of land from Governor Darling in order to lay out an extensive and magnificent garden in 1826.

He eventually began Elizabeth Bay House in 1835, employing the architect John Verge (1782-1861) to design a grand Palladian villa, very unlike the Gothic gloom of Lindesay House.

Macleay was financially incompetent, preoccupied with his interest in entomology.  Indeed, his appointment as Colonial Secretary of New South Wales was dictated by the need to bring his finances under control.

The strategy failed:  he lost his government post in 1837 (though he was later appointed Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1843), and the house was only rendered habitable when his more astute son, William Sharp Macleay (1792-1865), retired to Sydney in 1839.

Even so, a severe economic downturn in the colony obliged the Macleays to begin subdividing the estate in 1841, and by 1844 Alexander Macleay’s bills were being directed to his son’s account.  Furniture from Elizabeth Bay House was sold to furnish Government House in central Sydney when it was completed in 1845.

In fact, the elegant exterior of Elizabeth Bay House is unfinished.  John Verge intended a single-storey colonnade to extend around three sides of the building.  The existing portico was added in 1893 because Lady Macleay, the mother of a later owner, James William Macarthur Onslow, feared for the safety of her guests in the morning room, where French windows opened on to a sheer drop where the planned colonnade would have stood.

Nevertheless, Elizabeth Bay House is by all accounts one of the most impressive of Australian nineteenth-century domestic interiors.  Its crowning glory is the oval saloon with its cantilevered staircase, possibly based on Henry Holland’s Carlton House Terrace in London (1811) and reminiscent of James Paine’s Stockeld Park, Yorkshire, of 1757-63.

Alexander Macleay’s estate was repeatedly subdivided for housing development, until only three acres remained in 1882.  Eventually, the house itself was bought by a development company in 1926, and the year after the remaining three acres was itself divided into sixteen lots, only five of which found buyers.

The house was divided into flats in the early 1940s, and remained in multiple use until it became a museum in 1977.  It is now administered by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, restored as far as possible to its condition when the Macleays first moved in.

Here too, as at Lindesay House, you can stand at the front door and gaze across Sydney Harbour, ignoring the modern development all around and imagining the stupendous beauty of the place when Sydney itself was barely fifty years old.

The guidebook to Elizabeth Bay House is at http://www.hht.net.au/discover/highlights/guidebooks/elizabeth_bay_house_guidebook.

Lindesay House, Sydney, Australia

The most distinctive feature of Sydney’s vast harbour is its diversity – a seemingly endless succession of bays and promontories, best viewed from the fleet of ferries that departs in all directions from Circular Quay.

In nineteenth century, before the city extended outwards, the outlying areas of the bay were remote retreats where leading figures of the time built exclusive residences, some of which survive – and some of which remain exclusive.

On Darling Point, in 1834, the Scots-born Campbell Drummond Riddell (1796-1858), Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales, built Lindesay House, one of the first examples in the colony of what Australians now call “domestic Gothic” style, naming it after the Acting Governor, Lieutenant Patrick Lindesay.

After the Riddells left Australia in 1838, a subsequent owner divided the estate into eighteen plots for development, and another Scot, Sir Thomas Mitchell (1792-1855), Surveyor General of New South Wales, bought the house and five of the plots in 1841.  On one of these plots he built another Gothic house, Carthona, which became his residence, and he sold Lindesay on to Sir Charles Nicholson (1808-1903), the first Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Council and one of the founders of the University of Sydney.

The house passed through a succession of subsequent ownerships until in 1963 the last private owner, Walter Pye, donated it to the National Trust of Australia.

The Trust opens it to the public one afternoon a month.  At other times it is a “much sought-after venue by brides”, though rationed to only twelve major functions a year.

The very perfunctory Lonely Planet review states, “It’s rarely open but aside from Nicole Kidman inviting you in for tea, this is probably your best chance to look inside an actual Darling Point mansion.”

I was, therefore, very lucky to have a Sydney DFAS contact, Margaret, who was prepared to give me a personal tour of the house, so I could see how, despite the encroachments of later development, you can still stand on the lawn and gaze across one of the most beautiful harbours in the world.

Details of visiting arrangements for Lindesay House are at http://www.nationaltrust.org.au/nsw/Lindesay.