Roslyn Hall – Roslyn Street / Darlinghurst Road – Potts Point – NSW

Roslyn Hall – Roslyn Street / Darlinghurst Road – Potts Point – NSW

Built c.1833–1834 · Architect Ambrose Hallen · Demolished 1937

On the eastern fall of Woolloomooloo Hill — where Darlinghurst Road meets the boomerang of Roslyn Street, where Barker’s windmills once turned above Rushcutters Bay, where St Luke’s and Ward Avenue flats now hold the ground — millwright-made-good Thomas Barker raised a stone villa that contemporaries ranked with Elizabeth Bay House. Conrad Martens caught it white on the slope in 1836. George Edwards Peacock painted the house beside the mills in 1844. By November 1937 Joseph Reidle found floors ripped out and the grey stone going for flats.

At a glance

• Address / site: Woolloomooloo Hill / Darlinghurst–Potts Point–Rushcutters Bay eastern slope; Darlinghurst Road gates opposite Springfield; Roslyn Street / Roslyn Gardens / Ward Avenue / St Luke’s Hospital locality (DoS ~−33.8737, 151.2247)
• Built: c.1833–1834 on Barker’s Nov 1833 grant / purchase (DoS constructed 1834; standing for Martens 1836)
• Architect: Ambrose Hallen (Colonial Architect 1832–35)
• Style: large two-storey stone villa; columned high verandahs; cast-iron spiral stair; sunken bedroom baths; reputed palace-scale drawing-room (period descriptions)
• Original owner: Thomas Barker (1799–1875), engineer, miller, MLA/MLC, University of Sydney benefactor
• Estate extras: Barker’s Hope Mill and second windmill at Darlinghurst Road / Roslyn Street junction (from 1825/1826)
• Famous later chapter: Chauvel occupancy (1880s); Parry Long household into the 1930s (AWW / Reidle)
• Estate context: ridge neighbour of Springfield, Orwell, Barncleuth/Kinneil, Elizabeth Bay House — dress-circle Sydney, eastern harbour fall
• Heritage status: demolished 1937 — no standing villa fabric; street names and estate-lot survivors tell the story
• Fate: cleared for residential flats (Reidle: already ruins 30 Nov 1937); name survives in Roslyn Street / Gardens

Site & setting

Call the ridge Woolloomooloo Hill, Darlinghurst, Potts Point or Kings Cross — Barker’s ground fell east from the spine toward Rushcutters Bay. An iron lattice gate opened on Darlinghurst Road opposite Springfield House; another gate, later the St Canice’s locality, faced toward Bayswater Road; north lay Barncleuth (later Kinneil) and Elizabeth Bay Road (Reidle 1937). SMH suburb history (1913) put 9 acres 1 rood under a grant dated 28 November 1833, with Roslyn Gardens and Roslyn-road on the east. Dictionary of Sydney’s estate entry rounds the same story to 9 acres acquired 1833, villa plus windmills, subdivided 1889.

Disambiguation, twice. First: this is Roslyn Hall, Potts Point / Darlinghurst — the house already scrapbooked on this blog under the URL roslyn-house-potts-point and the title Roslyn Hall. It is not Roslyndale, the surviving Victorian Gothic house at 38 Roslyndale Avenue, Woollahra. Second: ignore the ADB line that plants Roslyn Hall on Darling Point. Barker bought Darling Point allotments in the 1830s auctions, but the Dictionary of Sydney’s Darling Point entry is explicit — Roslyn Hall stood on the other side of Rushcutters Bay, in today’s Darlinghurst. Hallen’s ADB entry has it right: Rushcutters Bay, where Roslyn Street now is.

The windmills were the landmark before the villa. Barker and John Smith raised a large mill in 1826 and another close by (ADB). SLNSW / Villas of Darlinghurst tradition names the first and largest Hope Mill (from 1825), the pair standing at the Roslyn Street / Darlinghurst Road junction north of present Kellett Street, with Roslyn Hall built next door. Peacock’s 1844 oil still shows house and mills together on the ridge. Potts Point Preservation notes that some of the mills’ huge sandstone blocks were later reused in nearby buildings in Kellett Street.

Today the villa is gone. Walk Roslyn Street from the Cross toward Rushcutters Bay — St Luke’s Hospital occupies the former villa locality (PPP), Ward Avenue flats, Barncleuth Lane, the plane trees — and you are inside the old estate’s street plan.

Timeline

• 25 Mar 1799 – Thomas Barker born, Soho, London (ADB).
• Oct 1813 – Arrives Sydney in Earl Spencer with guardian / master engineer John Dickson (ADB).
• 4 Jun 1823 – Marries Joanna Dickson at St Philip’s (ADB).
• 1825–1826 – Hope Mill / Darlinghurst windmills raised on Woolloomooloo Hill (SLNSW Villas tradition; ADB 1826).
• 28 Nov 1833 – Grant / purchase dated for Barker’s Roslyn Hall land (SMH 1913; Reidle).
• c.1833–1834 – Ambrose Hallen designs / builds Roslyn Hall (DoS constructed 1834; PTW ~1833; ADB “more like a palace than a private house”).
• 1836 – Conrad Martens views include Roslyn Hall white on the Rushcutters Bay slope (View from Craigend tradition; live-post sketch).
• 1844 – G. E. Peacock, View of part of Wooloomooloo and Mr Barker’s house and mills with Bradleys Point (SLNSW DG 372).
• 24 Dec 1851 – Joanna Barker dies at Roslyn Hall, Darlinghurst (family notices / Barker bio tradition).
• 1857 – Barker marries Katherine Heath Gray (ADB); later builds Maryland, Bringelly.
• c.1861–1862 – Barker leaves the town house (Uni. Sydney archives ~1861 sale note); Feb 1862 SMH “To Let” — occupied by Walter Lamb, Esq.
• 1875 – Thomas Barker dies at Bringelly, 12 March (ADB).
• 1880s – Charles Chauvel (and later his widow) occupy; City Solicitor / Freehold Society papers 1880–1888 (PTW; City Archives).
• 10 Sep 1889 – Roslyn Hall Estate gardens / Darlinghurst Road frontage auctioned; house retained behind Barncleuth Lane (PTW / NLA subdivision plan).
• By 1898 – Alfred Parry Long (Registrar-General) already associated with Roslyn Hall as his Darlinghurst residence (contemporary press at his death, Sept 1898); PTW notes the later Parry Long holding as Barker family connection by marriage.
• c.1900–1935 – Eliza Amelia Parry Long holds Roslyn Hall after Alfred’s death; she lives there 30+ years (AWW 1936); daughter Eliza Ina dies 1930; Mrs Parry Long dies 1935.
• 30 Nov 1937 – Reidle: Roslyn Hall already a man-made ruin — floors out, fronts down, stone carted for flats; Orwell likewise; Springfield still “awaits.”
• 1937 – Dictionary of Sydney demolition year; flats replace the villa (Clairmont / Ward Avenue tradition in secondary writing).
• Today – No villa fabric. Roslyn Street, Roslyn Gardens, St Luke’s Hospital group and neighbouring flats occupy the former estate geography.

Architecture & interiors

Forget inventing cedar inventories. The period reporters who still knew the house agree on scale and a few stubborn details.

Reidle (1937), walking the wreck: a large, well-built, two-storey stone mansion, high verandahs on two sides carried on massive stone columns; a beautiful spiral staircase to the upper storey; sunken baths level with the floors in most bedrooms — the same Scriptural “go down into the water” baths the SMH suburb series had already praised in 1913, when it also named the stair as cast iron. The 1913 writer called Roslyn Hall one of the most fashionable houses around Sydney, with spacious, elaborately finished rooms and an elaborately finished frontage remembered toward Macleay Street / the ridge.

The Parry Long scrapbook (AWW, 1936) adds the drawing-room folklore: reputed biggest drawing-room in Sydney, ceiling painted pale blue with gold stars to resemble the sky; a unique stone-flagged entrance-hall. ADB preserves the colonial boast that Hallen’s design was “more like a palace than a private house.” Reidle put its grandeur beside Elizabeth Bay House alone.

James Broadbent, surveying Woolloomooloo Hill’s architects, groups Roslyn Hall with Springfield among the Hallen villas whose appearances are known — Ambrose for Barker’s palace; Edward for other ridge work.

People & anecdotes

Thomas Barker is the self-made centre of the story: orphaned apprentice to John Dickson, windmill builder against “overgrown Millers,” steam flour and later tweed at Sussex and Bathurst Streets, magistrate, railway promoter, Commercial Banking Co. chairman, Legislative Councillor then MLA, first major cash benefactor to the University of Sydney’s mathematics scholarship (ADB). Roslyn Hall was the town expression of that fortune — mills on the skyline, villa on the slope, farms at Bringelly and beyond. Joanna died in the house in 1851; by the early 1860s Barker had shifted weight to Maryland, and Walter Lamb was in residence when the Herald advertised the lease.

Then the scrapbook fills with other names. Reidle lists Mrs William Lawson and her daughters, a Mr Chauvel, and the Hon. William Macleay. City of Sydney and PTW place Charles Chauvel (and later his widow) in the 1880s — the same decade the Sydney Permanent Freehold Land and Building Society was carving the Darlinghurst Road frontage for sale (10 September 1889), leaving the old house behind a new lane. AWW remembers “Major Chauvel” and wonderful parties. Keep him distinct from the twentieth-century film-maker of the same surname.

Eliza Amelia Parry Long — widow of Registrar-General Alfred Parry Long — is the last long chapter. Alfred was already living the house as a Darlinghurst address by 1898; PTW’s later heritage assessment notes the Parry Long estate connection to Barker by marriage. The Women’s Weekly of September 1936, already clipped on the live post, wraps Roslyn Hall into her property empire and the thwarted plan to make daughter Eliza Ina “the wealthiest woman in Australia.” Mother and daughter both died before the picks finished the house; Reidle, walking the ruins in November 1937, still heard only the lonely woman’s footsteps in the last quiet quarter-century.

What stands today

Roslyn Hall does not stand. Dictionary of Sydney and Reidle’s November 1937 ruin report agree on a 1937 end. What you visit is the estate geography, the street names, and the neighbours.

• Walk Roslyn Street from Darlinghurst Road toward Rushcutters Bay — the T-intersection is the old windmill corner; St Luke’s Hospital sits on the former villa locality (PPP), with Ward Avenue flat blocks in the former grounds’ story.
• Look for Barncleuth Lane, Roslyn Gardens, and St Canice’s as edge-markers Reidle and the 1913 Herald already used.
• Pair the visit with Springfield Avenue (gate opposite), Elizabeth Bay House (museum), Tusculum, Rockwall, Jenner, and the Orwell / Minerva–Metro site.
• Do not confuse this walk with Roslyndale, Woollahra — different suburb, different century, house still standing.
• Do not look for Barker’s palace on Darling Point — that was allotment speculation, not this villa.

No public house museum, no remnant spiral stair. The enrichment is Martens and Peacock, the mill corner, the street that kept the name, and Reidle’s wrought-iron gate facing the seven-storey future.

Sources & further reading

• Dictionary of Sydney — Roslyn Hall: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/roslyn_hall
• Dictionary of Sydney — Roslyn Hall Estate: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/place/roslyn_hall_estate
• Dictionary of Sydney — Barker, Thomas; Barker’s Windmill; Darling Point (location correction)
• ADB — ‘Barker, Thomas (1799–1875)’: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barker-thomas-1741
• ADB — ‘Hallen, Ambrose (?–1845)’: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hallen-ambrose-2147
• SMH, 1 Nov 1913, ‘Progress of the Suburbs… Potts Point and Darlinghurst’: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15462331
• Joseph Reidle, ‘Ghosts in Crinolines…’, SMH, 30 Nov 1937: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17408467
• Australian Women’s Weekly, 5 Sep 1936 (Parry Long / Roslyn Hall) — clipped on live post
• PTW Architects — Heritage Assessment, 1A Elizabeth Bay Road / 18–32 Darlinghurst Rd / 2 Roslyn Street (City of Sydney, 2018): https://meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/documents/s18763/Attachment%20D%20-%20Heritage%20Assessment.pdf
• James Broadbent, The Australian Colonial House (Potts Point Preservation excerpt): https://pottspointpreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Broadbent_reduced.pdf
• SLNSW — Peacock DG 372; Villas of Darlinghurst / Potts Point exhibition materials: https://pottspointpreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Villas-of-Potts-Point.pdf
• Potts Point Preservation — Roslyn Street local history: https://pottspointpreservation.org/local-history/roslyn-street-potts-point/

Related on this blog

• Springfield House – Potts Point (opposite Darlinghurst Road gate)
• Orwell House – Orwell Street – Potts Point (same 1937 Reidle ruins)
• Elizabeth Bay House – Elizabeth Bay (grandeur compare)
• Grantham – Potts Point (Parry Long estate neighbour)
• Kinneil – Potts Point (Barncleuth neighbour)
• Lulworth House – Roslyn Gardens (Roslyn Gardens / St Luke’s orbit)
• Tusculum – Potts Point
• Rockwall – Potts Point
• Larbert Lodge – Potts Point
• Campbell Lodge – Potts Point
• Maranamah – Macleay Street / Darlinghurst Road – Potts Point
• Roslyndale – 38 Roslyndale Avenue – Woollahra (different house — disambiguation)
• Progress Of The Suburbs – Potts Point – SMH 1913
• Stately Homes Of Old Potts Point – Daily Telegraph 1933
• Original Villas of Darlinghurst

Transcription:

ROSLYN HALL ESTATE / DARLINGHURST R^D. / DARLINGHURST

THE PROPERTY OF THE SYDNEY PERMANENT FREEHOLD LAND & BUILDING SOCIETY J. W. Bibby Sec. 333 Pitt S^t

For Sale by Auction TUESDAY 13^th DECEMBER by WATKIN & WATKIN Auctioneers 313 Pitt S^t

[Plan: Lots 1–11 fronting Darlinghurst R^d; Lots 12–13 on Lane 20 ft wide; Lot 14 containing ROSLYN HALL, Yard, Kitchen & Stables and Garden; Lots 15–19 on Roslyn Avenue and Lane 20 ft wide. Labels: MACLEAY ST., ELIZABETH BAY R^D., Llankelly Terrace, STREET, ROSLYN AVENUE, ROSLYN S^T., E. Sparke Esq., Barncleuth Estate, S. E. Lees]

L. A. CURTIS Licensed Surveyor Victoria Chambers 66 Castlereagh S^t

GIBBS, SHALLARD & C^O. PRINTERS.

[Pencil note, lower left: [illegible]; stamp at right edge: [illegible]]

[Note: the poster gives the sale day as Tuesday 13 December but no year.]

Transcription (Subdivision sale poster, Watkin & Watkin)

ROSLYN HALL ESTATE
DARLINGHURST RD.
DARLINGHURST

THE PROPERTY OF THE
SYDNEY PERMANENT FREEHOLD LAND & BUILDING SOCIETY J. W. Bibby Sec. 333 Pitt St.
For Sale by Auction TUESDAY 13th DECEMBER by
WATKIN & WATKIN
Auctioneers 313 Pitt St.

[Plan: Lots 1–11 fronting Darlinghurst Rd., Lots 12–13 between Lane 20 ft and Lane, Lot 14 with "ROSLYN HALL", "Yard", "Kitchen & Stables" and "Garden", Lots 15–19 fronting Roslyn Avenue, with "LANE 20 ft WIDE" behind Lots 17–19. Surrounding streets: Macleay St, Elizabeth Bay Rd, Darlinghurst Rd, Street (top), Roslyn Avenue, Roslyn St. Also marked: E. Sparke Esq., Barncleuth Estate, S. E. Lees, Llankelly Terrace.]

L. A. CURTIS
Licensed Surveyor
Victoria Chambers 66 Castlereagh St.

GIBBS, SHALLARD & Co. PRINTERS.

Transcription (Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 30 November 1937, pages 13 and 18, Parts 1–6)

GHOSTS IN CRINOLINES
WHEN KING'S CROSS WAS DOTTED WITH STATELY HOMES.
People Then Slept in Four-Posters.

A GREAT effort is required to imagine that King's Cross—the present throbbing centre of Sydney's night life—was once sparsely dotted with stately homes, where demure ladies drove leisurely through private avenues of trees in their carriages.

Those were the days when land was owned by the acre. To-day, despite stout resistance to the demolishers' picks, century-old homes are being knocked down so that the task of converting King's Cross into a swarming, human ant-hill may proceed unimpeded.

ROSLYN HALL and Orwell House are already man-made ruins, and a similar fate awaits Kellett House, Springfield, and Larbert Lodge. But before modern mammoth structures completely annihilate even the memory of their long lives, these last survivors of a bygone age merit at least a brief obituary.

Once the most imposing of them all, Roslyn Hall is now a lamentable spectacle. Its floors have been ripped out and the back and front pulled down.

Stripped of its former majesty, it now confronts, over wrought-iron gates, a huge, nearly completed, ultra-modern seven-storey block of flats across the road.

Destruction and construction have kept pace, so that the final brick of the new edifice, which dwarfs everything else nearby, will be laid at almost the same moment as the last stone from the ancient dwelling is carted away.

Gilded dados and wallpapers of a chaste design are exposed to curiosity, while a few surviving trees and shrubs huddle together in the northern end of the grounds, sighing mournfully for other days.

Governor Darling's Grant.

ROSLYN HALL, or what is left of it, is a relic of the spacious times of King's Cross and Elizabeth Bay when Governor Darling made grants with a lavish hand. That to Thomas Barker, on November 28, 1833, was an area of five acres one rood, and on it he built Roslyn Hall.

An iron lattice gate opened on to Darlinghurst Road, opposite Springfield House. It was the entrance to land which sloped down to the south-east, taking in the present Roslyn Street and Roslyn Gardens.

A similar gate, on the site now occupied by St. Canice's Church, led out to Bayswater Road. On the north, Barncleuth (now Kinneil) and Elizabeth Bay Road marked the boundary of the domain.

Beautiful Spiral Staircase.

A LARGE, well-built, two-storey stone mansion, Roslyn Hall was flanked on two sides by high verandahs supported by massive stone columns. Among the amenities not usual in those days were a beautiful spiral staircase leading to the upper storey, and sunken baths level with the floors in most of the bedrooms.

Houses in the district were few and far apart, and because of its imposing architectural and elevated position, Roslyn Hall had a grandeur equalled only by that of its neighbour, Elizabeth Bay House.

Fashionable Garden Parties.

FOR many years Roslyn Hall was one of the gayest houses in Sydney. Its high halls echoed to the laughter of dancing throngs, and birds in the widespread grounds became accustomed to the light-hearted chatter at fashionable garden parties.

After the original owner, Thomas Barker, the house saw a succession of occupants, including Mrs. Wm. Lawson and her two daughters, a Mr. Chauvel, and the Hon. Wm. Macleay.

For the last quarter of a century, however, Echo had little to answer except the footsteps of a lonely woman, Mrs. Parry Long, who died there a few years ago after her daughter had predeceased her.

Now the grey old stone is being carted away to make room for the foundations of a resplendent block of flats.

Darlinghurst's Origin.

SOLD last month, Kellett House, standing in the street which bears its name, is another historic home in the same locality.

It was built on part of the grant, dated October 19, 1831, to Captain S. A. Perry, Deputy Surveyor-General. He resided there until 1836.

In that year, Richard ("China") Jones sold his house at the corner of Pitt and Hunter Streets for £9000, and moved into Perry's place, which was then called "Bona Vista."

In 1817 Jones had established himself in business as an importer of merchandise from China and India—especially of Bengal rum. His office was also the first in Australia to undertake marine insurance.

Because of her friendship with Lady Darling, Mrs. Jones renamed the house "Darlinghurst," but her husband's financial position was severely shaken by the trade depression of 1843, and the home passed into the possession of Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson, the first Premier under responsible government, who changed the name to Kellett House.

He lived there for some years, and subsequently the property was acquired by W. F. Buchanan. He pulled down part of the house and built the terrace (still there) which used to be known as Bayswater Terrace.

Hidden from Macleay Street by a two-storey terrace, Orwell House, at various times the home of distinguished men, is being demolished to provide the site for a new theatre.

It originally stood on 11 acres 37 perches, granted on October 19, 1831, to Mr. Justice John Stephens, first Pusine [sic] Judge of the colony after the charter of justice. Among subsequent occupants were James Raymond (then Postmaster-General), Colonel H. C. Wilson, Mr. Justice Milford, and in 1848 Sir W. Manning.

Up to a few days ago the original house was still standing, but hemmed in by buildings in Darlinghurst Road and Hughes Street, to both of which the grounds extended, even in comparatively recent times.

(Continued on page 18.)

[Picture captions:]
(Top.) Only the lines of its architecture indicate Kinneil's old age.
(Above.) Larbert, seen across its spacious garden, which will soon be covered with flat buildings like the one in the distance.
(Left.) Ruins of Roslyn Hall and the towering modern edifice opposite.
Orwell House is falling rapidly under the demolishers' picks.
Larbert provides an 1837 background for two 1937 tennis girls (MISSES MONA ZEPPEL and LOIS GREEN).

[Page 18:]
Ghosts in Crinoline.
OLD STABLES ON MACLEAY STREET.

(Continued from page 13.)

ONLY a gunshot away, and also doomed to destruction, is Larbert Lodge, a quaint house which might have been modelled on Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables."

Old stables are almost flush with Macleay Street, and the remains of its grounds extend to Greenknowe Flats. It is enclosed by high walls designed to shield its privacy, but, ironically enough, surrounding flats are so high that probably no dwelling in Sydney is so exposed to the gaze of strangers.

Larbert Lodge was built by the Hon. Campbell Drummond Riddell (Colonial Treasurer from 1831 to 1854, and Acting Colonial Secretary in 1855 and 1856) on one of the first blocks of the Macleay grant made available. It was subsequently acquired by Captain Lamb, who was followed by a succession of private owners.

This property, which has a frontage of 190ft to Macleay Street and 234ft to Greenknowe Avenue, was recently sold and subdivided into eight allotments on which flats will be erected.

Springfield House, another sacrifice to progress, was built on a grant dated October 19, 1831, by Alexander Baxter, second Attorney-General under the charter.

All Were Neighbours.

ALL the homes mentioned were neighbouring properties, but during the course of the years block after block of their land was disposed of and built on to house a rapidly growing population.

Their few remaining contemporaries in the immediate locality are easily enumerated.

On the original Macleay grant, David Jones built Cheverells and Kinneil (formerly Barncleuth). He sold Cheverells to Captain Deloitte, who included it in his marriage settlement.

After several renovations, both houses are in good condition, and are used as guest houses.

It may seem strange that residences like these were built so close to the city, but the district was by no means easily accessible. Vehicular traffic had to take a round-about route along Hyde Park up to the part of Old South Head Road, now called Oxford Street, to the gaol, and from there across to Darlinghurst Hill.

A trip to the city was therefore long enough to be a minor event in a woman's week, and sufficiently slow for prolonged meditation or conversation as the carriage described almost a semi-circle.

Only a track for pedestrians existed on the site of William Street until 1845, when Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General, surveyed the extension which halved the distance to the city.

—Joseph Reidle.