Darlinghurst: Past and Present: Stoneleigh

I've become obsessed recently with browsing through the City of Sydney's online ArchivePix gallery, because I love seeing how Darlinghurst's streets once looked. My tailor friend Russell Wade dreams of having a pair of glasses that allows you to see and walk through Sydney's streets in the 19th Century. I'm happy, for the time being, just looking at the old photos, despite the fact that they only really cover the 1900s. It is quite rare to discover pictures of the area prior to then. 

If you have any old photographs, please send them to me and I can do another post in my brand new series, Past and Present. To begin with, here are some pictures of my dream house, Stoneleigh at 3 Darley Street. The picture above was taken in 1981, when the building was in quite a state of disrepair. It had been like that for some time and had been used as a storehouse for the neighbouring Marist Bros College. The roof was then badly damaged in a Sydney storm and it looks like workers in the Valiant and ute are about to start fixing the place up, for here is Stoneleigh four years later:

And here it is today:

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Links:

Stoneleigh History

City of Sydney ArchivePix

City of Sydney Archives

Darlinghurst: Apartment Buildings: Meriden

I rather fancy maps. Not only are they immensely practical, I find them rather pleasing to the eye too. So while sleuthing around the City of Sydney Archives last week, I was delighted to come across an old book of City Building Surveyor's Detail Sheets. 

It was a large compendium of about a dozen A2-sized Sydney city building maps, exquisitely and precisely illustrated. I took photographs of all the maps related to Darlinghurst and when I returned home and enlarged them on my computer, I was excited (yes, I was excited) to discover that the building at 40 Hardie Street, where I used to live, is called Meriden. It's an appropriate name too, for it was a merry den indeed.

I'm not certain of what period the Surveyor's Detail Sheets were made, but I will take a wild guess and say the early 1960s. If you look closely at the above illustration, you can see that the Alexandra Flats is still listed as a ''School'' and the Marist Brothers College closed in 1968 - so that is how I came to my scientific conclusion. And, well, if you see the maps, they've got that 60s vibe about them.

I also found it interesting to see that Iona is listed as Hughlings Private Hospital and my beautiful Stoneleigh was going through its ''Greencourt'' period.

Anyway, as I said, I was excited to learn that 40 Hardie Street, my old favourite home, was called Meriden, and this inspired me to do some online sleuthing at the National Library of Australia's Australian Newspaper archives. 

I firstly came across this old classifieds advertisement (above) from the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, dated January 4, 1930. I found similar advertisements in the Herald from 1929, which were published on April 18, November 2 and December 1. 

Rental of a ''Modern, self-contained bachelor flat, comprising large bed-sitting room, tiled kitchenette and bathroom,'' at 40 Hardie Street cost a mere 30 shillings, and interested persons could apply to flat 12.

Then I hit upon this advertisement from March 21, 1953, which lists the building for sale.

But by far the most thrilling discovery was from the Sydney Morning Herald edition of September 23, 1949. Hidden amongst the classifieds was a list of prize-winners for the newspaper's Name a Foal Competition and among them was a Barbara Martin of 7/40 Hardie Street - the very same apartment I lived in for five years. 

When I lie in bed staring at the ceilings of my apartments, I often wonder who has lived there before me and what festivities, dramas and banal domesticity the ceiling has witnessed. I never wondered so much while living at number seven, because the moulded ceiling had been recently covered up. But now I know. And now I am wondering who Ms Martin was, what she looked like and what she did for a living. Was she a school teacher, nurse or exotic dancer?

Perhaps I'll never know.

Darlinghurst: Heritage Items: Stoneleigh

Stoneleigh

- Register of the National Estate, NSW Heritage Act

Oh, to live in Stoneleigh,

If only it could be.

Ms Violet Tingle of Stoneleigh,

Sounds so right to me.

I so badly want to live in this mansion at 1A Darley Street, but it hasn't been on the market since 1990 - when it sold for $3.18 million. I wonder how much I would have to pay for the keys 20-years later? It's my dream Darlinghurst pad and I haven't even been inside. I can only imagine what it's like . . . the marble floors, high ceilings and the parties I would host. And how I would have a room each, dedicated to day dresses, evening gowns, high-heeled shoes and feathered head-pieces. And a library, of course. And maybe even a room purely for flower arrangement, with a sink, custom shelves to hold vases and a large bench stocked with scissors and ribbons. And it would be really useful to have a writing room, flooded in sunshine with a desk next to the largest window. I'd also definitely have a little cocktail lounge with big comfortable chairs, an old record player and a well-stocked bar.

But this two-storey Victorian Regency home, with its beautiful colonnades and fine hedge, is not only grand, glamorous and unattainable, it has an interesting history too.

Stoneleigh was built for distinguished solicitor William Barker in 1860 - the same year Abraham Lincoln was elected US President, Anton Chekhov was born and Charles Dickins published the first instalment of Great Expectations.

Mr Barker, a church-going colonist, was born in Ireland in 1815 and came to Australia in 1830, at the wee-age of 15. By the time he was 38, Mr Barker was important enough to be granted 28 parcels of land in Darlinghurst and the surrounding area. Seven years later he built Stoneleigh, on the highest point in the hood.

Mr Barker once ran as the candidate for the seat of East Sydney and lost, not surprisingly in retrospect, to Sir Henry Parkes, the Father of Federation who went on to serve five terms as NSW Premier (and who also had his own mansion, Kenilworth, designed by John Young in distinctive Gothic style on Johnston Street, Annandale, in Sydney's inner west - it sold for a measly $3.35 million in 2007).

Mr Barker was a partner in the firm, Norton, Son and Barker, and was once offered a District Court Judgeship, but declined the position because he preferred private practice. He died suddenly at his home in Bondi in 1879, aged just 64.

I am not certain of when Mr Barker vacated Stoneleigh for Bondi but from 1870, ten years after it was built, the grand home belonged to Richard Jones, founder of the Maitland Mercury newspaper (still published by Fairfax) and a former chairman of the Commonwealth Bank. Jones died inside Stoneleigh on August 25, 1892. Apparently on that day, each year, his ghost appears in the kitchen asking for a cup of tea.

I made that bit up, but it's highly possible.

In 1895 the home moved into the hands of another banking big-wig, Sir J. Russell French, general manager of the Bank of NSW, and he stayed at Stoneleigh for ten years.

From 1907 the building operated as a boarding house and was owned by Henry Tongue. I could find no further details about this boarding house period or the curious Mr Tongue, but in 1912 Stoneleigh was snapped up by the Marist Brothers High School, which occupied the neighbouring building, now known as Alexandra Flats.

When the Marist Brothers sold up in '68, I can only assume that Stoneleigh - which for a brief spell went under the decidedly less romantic name, Greencourt - was resumed as a private residence.

I'm not sure who is living there today - there is often a black Porsche in the driveway - but two rather obscure businesses have their address at Stoneleigh.

The first is called Stoneleigh Gallery and judging by their website, they are a wholesaler of deluxe silk flowers. At one time they were listed with NSW Tourism and appear to have invited travellers in to the property to peruse the gardens and its artfully placed urns - drats that I missed this!

The other business is called Liberon Waxes, which is the name of a cult bees' wax polish for wooden furnishing. Just listen to this guff from a wax website:

''Liberon Beeswax Polish brings back that memory of a time when the pace of life was less hectic and when drying and wood-denaturing aerosol waxes had yet to be invented.''

I guess Stoneleigh evokes the same memories . . . I often sit around, idly day-dreaming about the less hectic pace of life I would have at Stoneleigh, and how I would definitely employ a cleaner, because there was no way I was looking after that big old mansion on my own.