Carthona – 5 Carthona Avenue – Darling Point – NSW
(Live blog title says “Potts Point” — correct to Darling Point; see disambiguation) · Built 1841 · Sir Thomas Mitchell’s Gothic harbourside mansion · Standing — private residence
This is not a Potts Point house. The scrapbook post titled “Carthona – Potts Point” carries a harbour-edge Gothic mansion photograph that matches Carthona, Darling Point — Surveyor-General Sir Thomas Mitchell’s stone house on the promontory at the end of Carthona Avenue. Potts Point has no established Carthona in the sources checked for this draft. Correct the title; keep the image; tell the Darling Point story.
At a glance
- Address: 5 Carthona Avenue, Darling Point (Woollahra LGA) — NOT Potts Point
- Built: 1841 (family moves in 1845 after Mitchell’s time at neighbouring Lindesay)
- Builder / designer tradition: Heritage NSW / Woollahra listing — built by Sir Thomas Mitchell; many door/window keystones believed carved by him. Secondary sources also associate architect George Allen Mansfield
- Style: Mannerist Tudor Gothic / Gothic Revival sandstone mansion — gabled slate roofs, castellated parapets, tall Tudor chimneys, pointed ground-floor windows, shuttered upper windows; cellars
- Original owner: Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (1792–1855), Surveyor-General of NSW
- Heritage: Woollahra LEP (item 82 / earlier LEP 1995 listing); National Trust / Register of the National Estate traditions; SHI database ID 2711048
- Fate / current use: Standing — long Bushell / Oxley family occupation from 1940; private home
Site & setting
Critical disambiguation — the Potts Point mislabel.
Darling Point (Mrs Darling’s Point in early notices) is a separate harbour promontory east of Rushcutters Bay — not the Potts Point / Woolloomooloo Hill ridge. Carthona sits at water level under the point, with Lindesay upslope in the same colonial cluster. The live post’s photograph — picket fence at the seawall, steep cleared hill behind, Gothic chimneys — is that Darling Point topography.
Disambiguation checklist
- Carthona — 5 Carthona Ave, Darling Point — Mitchell, 1841 — this post
- Carthona — 85 Todman Ave, Kensington — Federation house c.1910; SHR
- Carthona — 76 Redmyre Rd, Strathfield — Federation Arts & Crafts c.1908
- (no verified Carthona) — Potts Point — live title appears to be a mislabel
Timeline
- 1841 – Mitchell, back from England and knighthood, buys Lindesay (Lot 1) and additional Darling Point lots; Carthona built on lots 12–15 while the family occupies Lindesay.
- 1845 – Mitchells move into Carthona; Lindesay sold to Sir Charles Nicholson.
- 1845–46 – Fourth expedition; Aboriginal guide Yuranigh stays briefly at Carthona before leaving city life (secondary / SHR Yuranigh associations).
- Feb 1847 – SMH advertisement offers Carthona for sale during Mitchell’s English sojourn — “very splendid family mansion… two acres… Mrs Darling’s Point.”
- 5 Oct 1855 – Mitchell dies at his Sydney home (ADB); Carthona tradition places the death in the house. Will leaves Carthona to daughter Alice.
- 1858–72 – Misses Cooksey conduct a ladies’ boarding school at Carthona (SMH Jan 1858 advertisement).
- 1875 – Alice (then Mrs Dauncey, in England) advertises detailed sale description (stone, cellars, sliding drawing/dining rooms, library, six-stall stables, spring water).
- 1880–85 – Arthur Mansfield Allen / Alice Greer Allen occupancy; both die 1885; house marketed 1886.
- 1887–99 – William Broadfoot Mitchell (Tooths; not related to Sir Thomas) after father James Sutherland Mitchell buys Carthona for him; dies 1899.
- 1900–02 – Holmes Samuel Chipman.
- 1902–04 – Harry Rickards (theatre entrepreneur) buys; then builds Canonbury nearby on Lansdowne ground (later McKell Park).
- 1904–11 – Marcus William Oldham.
- 1911–13 – Ernest Wunderlich purchase for subdivision marketing; house lot survives.
- 1913–39 – Arthur Edward Hughes ownership; short-term tenants include William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp (former NSW Governor).
- 1940 onward – Philip Bushell (Bushell’s Tea) purchases; family continuity through Bushell / Oxley generations; waterfront garden additions from neighbouring Edgewater mid-1950s.
- Today – Still a private Gothic harbourside mansion.
Architecture
Heritage NSW describes an impressive two-storey sandstone mansion with cellars in mannerist Tudor Gothic style: profusion of gabled slate roofs, castellated parapets and balconies, tall Tudor chimneys; pointed Gothic ground-floor windows with fretwork; flat-arched shuttered first-floor windows; later sympathetic additions. The carving tradition — Mitchell’s own hand on keystones — is part of the house’s folklore and listing text.
1875 sale copy adds lived detail: large hall and stair, drawing and dining rooms linked by sliding doors with bay to Double Bay, library, basement cellars “well drained,” Russell cooking stove, coachhouse and stabling for six.
People
Sir Thomas Mitchell — Peninsular War draftsman, Surveyor-General, explorer of Australia Felix, duel with Donaldson, boomerang propeller, Camoens translator — lived the last decade of a combative public life between this Gothic stage and the bush. Blanche Mitchell’s diary grief for “cool Carthona air” after the family’s debt-driven move to Craigend Terrace is the emotional caption.
Cooksey school — English sisters turning a surveyor-general’s mansion into a finishing school: a very Sydney sequel.
Harry Rickards — Tivoli king who paused here before Canonbury.
Bushell / Oxley — tea fortune and, later, contemporary art (Roslyn Oxley) under Gothic chimneys: the long private stewardship that kept Carthona standing when so many harbour Gothic piles did not.
Gallery
Carthona is a large Gothic Revival sandstone Mansion at 5 Carthona Avenue, at the eastern tip of Darling Point
It was built between 1841 - 1845 for Sir Thomas Mitchell, the Surveryor General Of New South Wales, & one of the colony's celebrated explorers.
The name is said to have come from A Gaelic Phrase meaning - The Murmour of the waves, fitting its waterfront position with views across Double Bay towards Point Piper & north toward Manly.
The house has Castelled Parapets, Tall Tudor chimneys, galbled slate roof & pointed Gothic windows. Sir Thomas Mitchell chose the site partly for 2 fresh water streams that ran through the rock. The design closely followed a house on the shores of Englands Lake Windermere. The Architect is attributed to James Hume, though some sources credit George Allen Mansfield
Mitchell first lived at the neighbouring Lindesay while planning & building Carthona. The family moved in in 1845. Soon after settling in Mitchell set out on his fourth expeditoin, searching for an overland route to Port Essington in the present day Northern Territory. His Aboriginal guide Yuranigh lived briefly at Carthona before returning to work as a stockman.
and he sold Lindesay to his friend sir Charles Nickolson
After Sir Thomas Mitchells Died at the house on the 5th October 1855. He left the property to his daughter Alice.
1870's it was leased to Mrs Cooksey as a Girls School.
From the 1860's onwards the propoerty passed through several notable owners, including the Colonial Lawyer Arthur Allens's family, the unrelated Busisnessman James Sutherland Mitchell, & Theatre Entepreneur Harry Rickards.
in 1940 Bushell's Tea bought the property for the tea & coffee merchant Phillip Bushell. The family has held it ever since
The grounds were later subdivided, but the mansion remains one of Darling Points most significant hertiage listed residences.
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What stands today
Carthona stands at 5 Carthona Avenue, Darling Point, as a private residence. It is not open as a museum. View respectfully from the harbour or public foreshores; do not disturb occupants. Pair with Lindesay (National Trust) on the same point.
Publish action: retitle the live post from “Potts Point” to “Darling Point” (or “Darling Point — not Potts Point”) and add a one-line correction note at the top.
Sources & further reading
- Heritage NSW / Woollahra LEP — Carthona (SHI 2711048): https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=2711048
- ADB — Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mitchell-sir-thomas-livingstone-2463
- ADB — Harry Rickards: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rickards-harry-8206
- W.C. Foster, Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell and His World 1792–1855 (Institution of Surveyors NSW, 1985)
- Sydney Morning Herald sale/lettings notices 1847, 1858, 1875 (Trove)
- Existing scrapbook post (correct location on edit): https://historicsydneymansionsmanorshouses.blogspot.com/2021/08/carthona-potts-point.html
Related
- Lindesay – Darling Point
- Greenoaks / Bishopscourt – Darling Point (see blog label search)
- Swifts – Darling Point
- Hereford House – Glebe (adjacent live-post chronology only)
