Helenie - Meadowbank

Helenie – Meadowbank

At a glance

• Location: near the end of Bowden Street, beside the Parramatta River, Meadowbank (east of today’s Meadowbank station)
• Built: early 1840s for Isaac and Ann Shepherd on the 95-acre Helenie Estate (originally part of William Kent’s 1799 grant)
• Style: two-storey sandstone house
• Later: 1846 briefly a classical academy run by J. J. Davies; rented in the 1850s by Henry Parkes; from 1890 the estate was bought by Mellor Brothers for the Meadowbank Manufacturing Company, whose first manager, Walter Charles Barton, lived at Helenie
• Fate: described in 1938 as dilapidated and ant-infested; demolished 1939. The site became the TEI (later Siemens Plessey) factory and is now medium-density housing

Sources

• City of Ryde – Demolished Houses of the Parramatta River
• Dictionary of Sydney – Helenie
• Dictionary of Sydney – Meadowbank