Campbell Lodge - Potts Point -

Campbell Lodge – Wylde Street – Potts Point – NSW

Built mid-19th century (by 1850s) · Architect unknown (Gothick villa) · Demolished c.1909–1911

On the harbour side of Potts Point — uphill from Bomera’s foreshore Italianate, downhill from the Grantham “Pepper Pot,” facing Woolloomooloo Bay — stood a multi-gabled Gothick lodge that the scrapbooks simply call Campbell Lodge. Architect John Frederick Hilly lived here while he drew Bomera for the McQuades. Later the Brownes wrote their address as Wylde Street. Schoolgirls remembered Mrs Gilder’s Campbell Lodge classrooms in the same breath as Merioola. By December 1910 the estate was under the auctioneer’s hammer; City demolition photographers caught the stripped gables before the flats ate the curtilage. Welcome to Campbell Lodge — a lost Wylde Street neighbour of Grantham and Bomera, and not to be confused with Campbell’s Fields out at Minto.

At a glance

• Address / site: Wylde Street, Potts Point (historic Darlinghurst / Woolloomooloo Point labels); estate ground between Wylde Street and Woolloomooloo Bay; 1910 sale frontages also Grantham Street and Macleay Street
• Built: standing and occupied by the mid-1850s (Hilly residency while designing Bomera, 1856); exact start year not pinned here
• Architect: unknown — do not credit Verge or Hilly for this house
• Style: multi-gabled Gothick / Gothic Revival villa (steep gables, bargeboards, tall chimneys, oriel — from demolition-era photographs)
• Name: Campbell Lodge — implies a Campbell ownership chapter; founding Campbell not named without title research
• Documented residents: architect John Frederick Hilly (c.1856); Mrs W. C. Browne / Jessie Campbell Browne household (1891–92); ladies’ school chapter (Mrs Gilder among remembered principals)
• Estate context: later mansion estate on the Potts Point / Wylde Street ridge — not one of the SLNSW Villas of Darlinghurst original Darling-grant set
• Heritage status: demolished — no standing villa fabric; neighbours Bomera & Tarana (SHR) and the Grantham / St Neot Avenue flat sites tell the street story
• Fate: photographed in City of Sydney Demolition Books c.1909–1911; Campbell Lodge Estate auctioned 15 December 1910; land absorbed into denser Potts Point residential fabric

Site & setting

Potts Point is Cadigal Country — the ridge and foreshores once labelled Woolloomooloo Hill, Darlinghurst, Paddy’s Point, and finally Potts Point after Joseph Hyde Potts bought into Judge-Advocate John Wylde’s 1822 grant at the tip of the peninsula. Wylde Street remembers the Judge Advocate. The harbour edge below became McQuade marine-villa ground (Bomera, 1856; later Tarana). Uphill and inland, Gothick and “castle” statements such as Grantham (Caleb Wilson’s 1830s pile, later Dangar’s) dominated the skyline that photographers shot from Mrs Macquarie’s Road.

Campbell Lodge sat on that Wylde Street rise — “up hill” from Bomera in the Bomera conservation histories — with grounds later advertised as the Campbell Lodge Estate between Wylde Street and Woolloomooloo Bay, and on the 1910 lithograph with frontages to Grantham Street, Wylde Street and Macleay Street.

It was not one of Governor Darling’s carefully conditioned 1828–31 villa allotments that produced Tusculum, Rockwall, Springfield, Orwell and their kin. The State Library’s Villas of Darlinghurst set does not list it. Treat it as a later nineteenth-century mansion estate on the point — fashionable, photogenic from the Domain side of the harbour, and vulnerable once flat capital arrived.

Do not confuse this house with Campbell’s Fields (also on this blog): that is Dr William Redfern’s early farming estate at Minto, sometimes called Campbellfield — a different Campbell story entirely.

Timeline

• 1822 – Judge-Advocate John Wylde granted ~11 acres at the northern end of the point; Wylde Street later takes his name (SHR Bomera / Potts Point heritage notes).
• 1830s – Neighbouring Grantham / “Caleb’s Castle” rises on remaining Wylde grant land purchased by Felix Caleb Wilson (Villas of Potts Point / DoS Grantham).
• 1849 – Heritage inventories note subdivision of an “A. Campbell’s Estate” with lots in Macleay, Victoria, Brougham and Forbes Streets — possible early Campbell landholding on the ridge; link to the Wylde Street lodge not proven here.
• 1856 – John Frederick Hilly designs Bomera for William McQuade while living “up hill at Campbell Lodge” (NSW SHR / Graham Brooks CMP tradition). Lodge already standing.
• c.1856–1870s – Hilly’s Potts Point working years (Bomera, Tusculum verandah attributions, and other commissions); he dies at Potts Point 3 Sep 1883 (Dictionary of Sydney).
• Later 19th century – Campbell Lodge operates at times as a ladies’ / boarding school; Trove school notices resume “duties” at Campbell Lodge, Potts Point; twentieth-century memory names Mrs Gilder among principals also linked to Merioola (Australian Women’s Weekly, 11 Dec 1948).
• 14 May 1891 – Mrs W. C. Browne, Campbell Lodge, Wylde Street, requests use of Centenary Park (City Archives A-00322036).
• 8–9 Feb 1892 – Same household again — Centennial Park request (City Archives A-00322873).
• c.1909–1911 – House appears in City of Sydney Demolition Books Vol. 5 (print A-00036568) — façade stripped, Gothick gables still readable.
• 15 Dec 1910 – Campbell Lodge Estate auction / subdivision plans (City Archives A-00530262; SLNSW Z/SP/P16/38–39) — Grantham / Wylde / Macleay frontages; area between Wylde Street and Woolloomooloo Bay.
• 1910s–1930s – Broader Potts Point mansion-estate carve-up continues — City heritage reviews list Campbell Lodge 1910 with Tusculum 1901, Orwell 1921 and Grantham 1922; flats replace villas street by street.
• Today – No Campbell Lodge fabric. Walk Wylde Street past Bomera & Tarana (SHR survivors at 1 / 1A Wylde) and read the lost Gothick lodge against Grantham’s flat sites around St Neot Avenue and the Holtermann skyline views from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair.

Architecture & interiors

The scrapbook photograph on the live post — and the City Demolition Books print of the same generation — is the best fabric evidence we have. Campbell Lodge reads as a substantial Gothick villa:

• Multiple steep forward gables with bargeboards
• Tall, moulded chimney stacks
• A projecting upper oriel bay
• Rendered elevations over stone (stone exposed where demolition had already peeled the skin)

That puts it in conversation with the peninsula’s other Gothick statements — Grantham’s turreted “Pepper Pot” nearby, and later pattern-book Gothick such as Larbert Lodge on Macleay Street — rather than with Verge’s severe Regency / Greek Revival temple fronts at Tusculum, Rockwall or Elizabeth Bay House.

No signed architect has been located. Prefer “architect unknown.” Hilly lived here while designing Bomera downhill; that does not make him the lodge’s designer.

The Holtermann-collection harbour view (ON 4/Box 60/no. 367) places Campbell Lodge in the same skyline sentence as Grantham when Sydney looked back at the point from Mrs Macquarie’s Road — exterior massing and neighbour relationships, not interiors.

Architect note: Unknown for Campbell Lodge. Hilly is a resident and the architect of neighbouring Bomera (and of Carrara / Strickland House, Fiona / Ascham, Greycliffe, and other commissions), not a documented designer of this Gothick house.

People & anecdotes

The house and the 1910 estate keep the Campbell name; the founding Campbell still needs a title search before this blog nails a builder biography. Leave that door open — and keep other Campbell houses on this blog in their own lanes.

John Frederick Hilly is the name the heritage literature locks to the address in the 1850s. Warwickshire-born surveyor-architect, arrived 1839, married Ellen Morgan at Christ Church St Laurence in 1842, and became one of mid-century Sydney’s busiest house and church designers. While living at Campbell Lodge he drew McQuade’s sandstone Italianate Bomera on the foreshore below — “up hill” and “down hill” on the same Wylde Street story. He died at Potts Point on 3 September 1883 and was buried at Waverley Cemetery. Dictionary of Sydney lists his major works; Campbell Lodge is his home, not one of those commissions.

Jessie Campbell Browne (née MacTaggart) and grazier-politician William Charles Browne (ex-MLA for Patrick’s Plains) leave a paper trail from Campbell Lodge in 1891–92 — polite municipal letters about Centennial Park use, filed in the City’s Letters Received series. That pins a household on Wylde Street late in the villa’s life; it does not, by itself, prove they held the freehold.

Then the scrapbook changes key from drawing-room to schoolroom. Newspaper notices resume “duties” at Campbell Lodge, Potts Point, among the ladies’-school advertisements. In 1948 the Australian Women’s Weekly still remembered Mrs Gilder’s pupils from Merioola and Campbell Lodge — two lost Potts Point / Darlinghurst mansions turned classrooms, recalled by women who had been girls under her care.

By 1909–11 the City’s condemnation photographers were on the doorstep. The Gothick skin was already coming off. On 15 December 1910 the Campbell Lodge Estate went to auction. What replaced the lodge was the denser Potts Point we know — the same flat-boom generation that finished Grantham, Orwell, Springfield and so many ridge neighbours.

Gallery placeholder note

Do not invent historic photo URLs — keep existing live-post images; captions and sequence guidance below for the merge pass.

Do not invent URLs — search these collections and embed with proper acknowledgement. Keep the historic Gothick exterior already on the 2021 scrapbook post and re-credit.

1. Existing scrapbook exterior (demolition-era Gothick)

Already on the live post; also City of Sydney Archives A-00036568. Caption idea: Campbell Lodge, Wylde Street — gables still standing as the façade peels away, c.1909–1911.

2. City of Sydney Demolition Books print

Search: Archives node 662935 / Demolition Books Vol. 5. Caption idea: Official last rites — Campbell Lodge in the condemnation albums.

3. Campbell Lodge Estate auction plan, 15 Dec 1910

Search: City Archives A-00530262; SLNSW Z/SP/P16/38–39. Caption idea: Watch the lodge become lots — Grantham, Wylde and Macleay frontages.

4. Holtermann / A&A view from Mrs Macquarie’s Road

Search: SLNSW ON 4/Box 60/no. 367 — “Grantham Castle and Campbell Lodge and other mansions on Potts Point.” Caption idea: Skyline partners — Grantham and Campbell Lodge read from the Domain shore.

5. Bomera (Hilly, 1856) — the downhill neighbour that survives

Search: MHNSW / SHR Bomera & Tarana; existing Boomera scrapbook post. Caption idea: What Hilly drew while living uphill at Campbell Lodge.

6. Grantham / St Neot Avenue compare set

Search: DoS Grantham; SLNSW; blog Grantham / demolition albums. Caption idea: Two Gothick statements on the point — one turreted, one multi-gabled; both gone.

7. Wylde Street letters / Browne household (optional document image)

Search: City Archives Letters Received 1891–92. Caption idea: “Campbell Lodge, Wylde Street, Potts Point” — Mrs Browne to the Town Clerk.

8. Compare set: Tusculum, Rockwall, Jenner, Elizabeth Bay House

Search: existing blog posts / MHNSW. Caption idea: Ridge survivors and ridge ghosts — Campbell Lodge belongs with the ghosts.

What stands today

Campbell Lodge does not stand. The house was cleared in the City demolition wave of c.1909–1911, and the 15 December 1910 estate sale finished the carve-up.

• Walk Wylde Street from Macleay Street toward the tip of the point — you are in the former Campbell Lodge Estate geography (Grantham / Wylde / Woolloomooloo Bay).
• Visit the surviving marine villas Bomera and Tarana at 1 / 1A Wylde Street (State Heritage Register) — the downhill neighbours Hilly tied to this story when he lived “up hill” at the lodge.
• Look across to the St Neot Avenue flat sites for the ghost of Grantham, Campbell Lodge’s Gothick skyline partner in the Holtermann views.
• Pair with standing ridge houses on this blog’s beat: Tusculum, Rockwall, Jenner House, Elizabeth Bay House.
• For the school memory, cross-reference Merioola (Edgecliff Road / Woollahra scrapbook territory) — Mrs Gilder’s other remembered classroom mansion.
• Remember the separate post: Campbell’s Fields (Minto) is not this house.

No public house museum, no remnant gable on Wylde Street. The enrichment is the street, the demolition albums, the 1910 plan, and the habit of looking from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair back toward the point.

Sources & further reading

• City of Sydney Archives — Print, Campbell Lodge, Wylde Street, Potts Point, c.1909–1911 [A-00036568]: https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/662935
• City of Sydney Archives — Campbell Lodge Estate plan, 15 Dec 1910 [A-00530262]: https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1069683
• City of Sydney Archives — Letter: Mrs W. C. Browne, Campbell Lodge, 14 May 1891 [A-00322036]: https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1557957
• City of Sydney Archives — Letter: Mrs W. C. Browne, Campbell Lodge, 8–9 Feb 1892 [A-00322873]: https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1558793
• State Library of NSW — Potts Point subdivision plans Z/SP/P16/38–39 (Campbell Lodge Estate, 15 Dec 1910)
• State Library of NSW — Holtermann ON 4/Box 60/no. 367, “Grantham Castle and Campbell Lodge… from Mrs. Macquarie’s Road” (File 60 list): https://content-lists.sl.nsw.gov.au/tabular-list/file-60-views-sydney-and-suburbs
• NSW State Heritage Register — Bomera & Tarana (H01400): Hilly residency note
• Dictionary of Sydney — Hilly, John Frederick: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/hilly_john_frederick
• Dictionary of Sydney — Potts Point: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/place/potts_point
• Dictionary of Sydney — Grantham: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/grantham
• NSW Parliament — Mr William Charles Browne (1842–1916), former member
• Australian Women’s Weekly, 11 Dec 1948, p. 10 — Mrs Gilder / Merioola & Campbell Lodge schools: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47221965
• Trove — school duties notice, Campbell Lodge, Potts Point (nla.news-page1420459)
• State Library of NSW / Potts Point Preservation — Villas of Potts Point (2002): https://pottspointpreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Villas-of-Potts-Point.pdf
• City of Sydney / CSPC heritage reviews — mansion-estate subdivisions including Campbell Lodge 1910
• Existing scrapbook post: https://historicsydneymansionsmanorshouses.blogspot.com/2021/07/campbell-lodge-potts-point.html
• Related (different place): Campbell’s Fields — https://historicsydneymansionsmanorshouses.blogspot.com/2026/07/campbells-fields.html

Related on this blog

• Boomera – Potts Point (Hilly’s downhill Bomera neighbour — scrapbook spelling)
• Larbert Lodge – Macleay Street – Potts Point (another Gothick lodge; different Campbell — C. D. Riddell)
• Tusculum – Potts Point
• Rockwall – Potts Point
• Jenner House – Macleay Street – Potts Point
• Elizabeth Bay House – Elizabeth Bay
• Orwell House – Potts Point
• Springfield House – Potts Point
• Merioola – Edgecliff / Woollahra (Gilder school memory partner)
• Campbell’s Fields (different place — Minto / Redfern)
• Progress Of The Suburbs – Potts Point – SMH 1913
• Potts Point, Darling Point And Neighbourhood – J. Arthur Dowling

Historic live gallery

Images retained from the live Blogger post: