Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Springfield Lodge - Potts Point - NSW

Springfield House – Springfield Avenue – Potts Point – NSW

Built c.1828–1832 · Architect uncertain (Edward Hallen / possible Greenway) · Demolished mid–late 1930s

On Woolloomooloo Hill — before Kings Cross neon, before Springfield Avenue cut the block, before the Village Centre sold groceries where a villa garden once faced the town — Attorney-General Alexander Macduff Baxter raised one of Governor Darling’s conditioned ridge villas. Charles Rodius painted its new arcade and raw plantings in 1832. Later the house became Lady Murray’s girls’ college. By the 1930s the scrapbooks were writing obituaries. Welcome to Springfield House — also Springfield Lodge — an original Darling-grant neighbour of Tusculum, Rockwall and Orwell, now a memory under Springfield Avenue and Llankelly Place.

At a glance

  • Address / site: Historic Woolloomooloo Hill / Darlinghurst allotment (Baxter’s ~9 acres); later Potts Point / Kings Cross — Springfield Avenue / Llankelly Place / Village Centre block; Macleay Street / Darlinghurst Road frontage in early plans
  • Built: plans Oct 1828 (Darling approved 1 Dec 1828); building by 1830; standing for Rodius’s 1832 watercolour
  • Architect: uncertain — Edward Hallen named when building began (1830); 1828 plans predate his arrival; Broadbent notes possible Francis Greenway affinities; do not credit John Verge
  • Style: distinctive colonial villa with five-bay masonry arcade and balcony to the town front; end gables and central pediment (Rodius / Broadbent)
  • Original grantee: Alexander Macduff Baxter, Attorney-General of NSW
  • Famous later chapter: Springfield College / Lady Murray’s College (1873–c.1888) — pupils include Dagmar Berne
  • Estate context: one of the original Darling 1828 villa-condition grants (SLNSW Villas of Darlinghurst set) — unlike later Macleay-subdivision Gothick lodges
  • Heritage status: demolished — no standing villa fabric; street names and neighbouring survivors tell the story
  • Fate: cleared mid–late 1930s (DoS / Villas tradition 1934; Reidle still listed Springfield among houses awaiting demolition, Nov 1937; secondary site history has villa gone by 1939 after Woongarra Flats/hotel on the grounds); shopping / Village Centre on the villa ground

Site & setting

Call the ridge what you like — Woolloomooloo Hill, Darlinghurst, Potts Point, Kings Cross. In Governor Darling’s late 1820s dress-circle scheme it was cadastral allotments with rules: one villa, £1,000 minimum, governor-approved elevation, set back from the road, facing Sydney.

Springfield sat on allotment No. 6 — just over nine acres promised to Attorney-General Alexander Macduff Baxter in 1828. Barrie Dyster’s title reconstruction places the eastern edge on Macleay Street where it meets Darlinghurst Road (the El Alamein Fountain locality of later Kings Cross) and runs the rectangle back toward the city — ground later pierced by Victoria, Brougham, Dowling and Forbes Streets. Joseph Reidle, writing in 1937, remembered Roslyn Hall’s Darlinghurst Road lattice gate opening opposite Springfield House.

This was not a later carve-up of Alexander Macleay’s Elizabeth Bay acres (that story produced Larbert Lodge and its neighbours). Springfield belongs with Tusculum, Rockwall, Orwell, Craigend, Goderich and the other Darling-conditioned villas of the SLNSW Villas of Darlinghurst exhibition set.

The name Springfield (also Springfield Lodge / Springfield House) is the scrapbook standard. Secondary heritage notes link it to a natural spring / sandstone well remembered in Springfield Gardens off Orwell Street. Dyster’s 1840s title narrative also calls the estate Tivoli — an alternate label in the mortgage years, not a different mansion.

Today the villa is gone. Stand on Springfield Avenue between Darlinghurst Road and Macleay Street — Harris Farm, Llankelly Place shops, ERA on Springfield — and you are on the story.

Timeline

  • 25 Jun 1798 – Alexander Macduff Baxter born, Monzievaird, Perthshire (ADB).
  • Jul 1827 – Baxter arrives Sydney as Attorney-General with Spanish heiress wife Maria del Rosaria Anna Uthair (ADB).
  • 1828 – Promised ~9-acre Woolloomooloo Hill allotment No. 6 under Darling’s villa conditions (Broadbent / Villas of Potts Point).
  • Oct 1828 / 1 Dec 1828 – Plans submitted; Darling approves (Broadbent).
  • Feb 1830 – Ambrose Hallen inspects site with architect “Mr E. Hallen” (Broadbent citing Surveyor-General papers).
  • Dec 1830 – Office of Public Works reports building in conformity with conditions; still unfinished (Broadbent).
  • 24 Jan 1831 – Baxter resigns as Attorney-General; insolvency follows; leaves for Van Diemen’s Land then England (ADB / NSW Parliament).
  • 1832 – Charles Rodius watercolour Wolomoloo [sic] [Springfield House] — house and newly planted garden complete (SLNSW DL Pd 258). Baxter imprisoned for debt in London; dies 1834 (Isle of Man; ADB also gives death by 1836).
  • 1835 – Goodsir sells the mortgaged grant to Joseph Hickey Grose for £3500 (Dyster).
  • 1844–1846 – Grose insolvent; Commercial Bank holds “Tivoli Estate”; 1846 mansion portion sold to Alexander Campbell; bulk acres to Thomas Ware Smart (Dyster).
  • 19 Jul 1873 – Madame & Fraulein Hinrichsen’s College for Young Ladies, Springfield, Macleay Street — duties resumed (SMH / R&W citation).
  • 1873–1877 – Lady Agnes Ann Murray founds and runs Springfield College / Lady Murray’s College at Springfield Lodge (DoS); stepdaughter Leila among staff (Murray family histories).
  • c.1877–late 1880s – Mme de Monsigny (former French teacher) continues the school after Lady Murray; DoS closes the college in the late 1880s (Woodhouse secondary places Monsigny from c.1878–79 and the college open into 1887). 1882 – Dagmar Berne recorded as student (DoS).
  • Late 19th century – House extensively remodelled (Broadbent — photographs after this rebuild).
  • 1923/24–1930 – Llankelly Lane; Springfield Avenue gazetted linking to Darlinghurst Road (secondary site histories).
  • 1931 – Woongarra Flats appear on former Springfield ground (Woodhouse / R&W site history — Richard Stanley Lambton).
  • 1934 – Dictionary of Sydney / Villas of Potts Point demolition tradition for shopping / “New Village Centre.”
  • 1937 – Woongarra becomes a private hotel (same secondary site history); 30 Nov 1937 Joseph Reidle, SMH: Roslyn Hall and Orwell already ruins; “a similar fate awaits Kellett House, Springfield and Larbert Lodge.”
  • By 1939 – Villa cleared (Woodhouse secondary); reconcile DoS 1934 shopping-centre tradition with Reidle’s Nov 1937 “awaits” wording and the by-1939 clearance before asserting a single day.
  • 2007–2009 – Old Kings Cross Village Centre demolished; ERA on Springfield / new Village Centre completed (Harris Farm / Llankelly specialty shops).
  • Today – No villa fabric. Walk Springfield Avenue and read the lost house against Tusculum, Rockwall, Jenner and Elizabeth Bay House still standing nearby.

Architecture & interiors

Forget Verge’s severe Regency stucco for a moment — but do not swing all the way to Gothick either. Springfield was something rarer on the hill: a masonry-arcade villa designed for Sydney’s heat and for the westward view back to town.

James Broadbent, working from Rodius’s 1832 watercolour (the best early evidence before late-Victorian remodelling muddied the photos), reads:

  • A five-bayed ground-floor arcade with a covered balcony above
  • Solid balustrade formed by the upper zone of the arcade
  • Gables at either end and a central pediment on the principal (Sydney-facing) front
  • French doors opening into the arcade and onto the balcony
  • Detached offices with blind arches under gable-pediments — closely akin to Greenway’s St John’s Rectory, Parramatta

Baxter’s own October 1828 letter shows the arcade as an afterthought: upper windows to be “cut down to a balcony… which will run along the front of the House facing Sydney.”

Architect note: Ambrose Hallen named Edward Hallen as architect when building began in 1830 — but Edward had only arrived in 1829, so he cannot have authored the 1828 approved plans. Broadbent leaves open a Francis Greenway hypothesis on stylistic grounds and concludes the designer is unknown. Prefer that honesty. Do not credit John Verge.

Room schedules and measured drawings have not been chased for this enrichment. Broadbent notes a hearthstone inscription reported during 1920s alterations (Dowling / JR AHS tradition) — treat as a reported find, not a pinned foundation date.

People & anecdotes

Alexander Macduff Baxter — “Dandy” Baxter to Governor Darling — is the name the grant remembers, and almost nobody else’s favourite Attorney-General. ADB is frank: inexperienced in court, extravagant, alcoholic, violent toward his Spanish heiress wife when twin daughters arrived, bankrupt as he fled for a Tasmanian judgeship Arthur would not let him take. He barely outlived Marshalsea debtors’ prison. Springfield’s plans were among the first Darling approved on the hill; whether Baxter ever slept under the finished arcade is doubtful — the house was still building when he collapsed into insolvency, and Rodius paints a completed villa only after he had gone.

The land did not wait for romance. Goodsir the mortgagee, Joseph Hickey Grose the overstretched trader, the Commercial Bank, young merchant Alexander Campbell (mansion slice, 1846) and developer-politician Thomas Ware Smart (the rest of the acres) are the title story Barrie Dyster reconstructed from the Sparke Papers. Smart’s quick profit on the Macleay Street frontage is suburbanisation in miniature — the dress circle learning to sell frontage by the foot.

Then the scrapbook changes key from drawing-room to schoolroom. Madame Hinrichsen advertised briefly in 1873. Lady Agnes Ann Murray — widow of Speaker / Legislative Council President Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, mother of Hubert Murray of Papua and classicist Gilbert Murray — opened Lady Murray’s College in the lodge the same year. Deportment, needlework, dancing: the curriculum that Dagmar Berne rejected before private chemistry lessons and a place in Sydney University’s medical school. Dictionary of Sydney keeps the college at Springfield Lodge through Mme de Monsigny into the late 1880s (secondary site writing places her takeover from about 1878–79 after Lady Murray’s years).

By November 1937 Joseph Reidle was writing “Ghosts in Crinolines.” Roslyn Hall and Orwell were already ruins; Springfield was named in the same breath as Kellett House and Larbert Lodge as houses whose fate still “awaits.” Whether the Dictionary of Sydney’s 1934 shopping-centre demolition is a few years early, or Reidle was remembering a house already doomed, the end was the same: arcade gone, Avenue and Village Centre in its place.

What stands today

Springfield House / Lodge does not stand. The villa was cleared in the mid–late 1930s. What you visit is the site, the street names, and the neighbours that survived.

  • Walk Springfield Avenue from Darlinghurst Road toward Macleay Street — Village Centre / Harris Farm / Llankelly Place occupy the former villa commercial ground.
  • Look for the Springfield Gardens well-cap memory off Orwell Street (secondary heritage note — spring / name story).
  • Pair the visit with standing houses on this blog’s beat: Tusculum (AIA NSW, Manning Street), Rockwall (Rockwall Crescent), Jenner House (Macleay Street), Elizabeth Bay House (Onslow Avenue museum).
  • Remember the lost peers in the same 1937 obituaries: Orwell House (Minerva / Metro on its site), Roslyn Hall / Roslyn House, Larbert Lodge, Grantham.
  • Do not confuse this Springfield with other Australian Springfields — this is Baxter’s Woolloomooloo Hill villa.

No public house museum, no remnant arcade. The enrichment is the Rodius watercolour, the school memory, the Avenue that kept the name, and the habit of looking up.

More Photos of Springfield Lodge

Springfield Lodge - Springfield Avenue - Potts Point


"Springfield" Lodge was built on land granted to Alexander Baxter on Woolloomooloo Hill. It was demolished in 1934 for the construction of a shopping centre.
Transcription (Subdivision sale poster, Hardie and Gorman Prop'ty Ltd., 28 April 1923)
Under Instructions from PERPETUAL TRUSTEE Co. Ltd. 33-39 Hunter St. Sydney, and R. F. EVANS Esq. as Attorneys and Trustees.SPRINGFIELD
HOUSE & GROUNDS
DARLINGHURSTComprising a fine Selection of some of the very best available Residential and Flat Sites. in this locality.Auction Sale on the Ground.
SATURDAY, 28th APRIL, 1923
at 3 o'clock.
Auctioneers Hardie and Gorman Prop'ty Ltd. 36 Martin Place.Terms
Lot 1 with the House & Lot 14 with Nos. 7 to 13 Orwell St. One fourth Cash.-Balance in 3 equal yearly instalments, interest 6½% per annum payable quarterly, secured by Mortgage.
For the vacant land: 15% Deposit, balance in 12 equal quarterly instalments. Interest 6½% per annum payable quarterly.
Purchasers to have the right to pay off at any time during the term with interest to date of payment.Title Torrens.
with exception Lot 14 which is FREEHOLD.[Plan: Lots 1–4 (Lot 1 with "Springfield", Lot 2 with a brick building) between Springfield Avenue and Llankelly Lane, Lots 5–6 and 14 fronting Orwell St., Lots 7–13 between Lane 20 Feet Wide, Earl Street and Springfield Avenue. Surrounding streets: Orwell St., Earl Street, Earl Place, Springfield Avenue, Llankelly Lane, Macleay St., Elizabeth Bay Road, Barncleuth Square, Darlinghurst Road, Roslyn St. Also marked: Brick Houses, Shops and Flats, Houses.]Licensed Surveyors under R. P. Act Chapman & Faviell. 33-39 Hunter St. Sydney
Solicitors to the Estate Vindin & Littlejohn. 14 Castlereagh St. Sydney.
All measurements subject to Deposited Plan, etc.
F. Cunninghame & Co. Ltd., Litho, Sydney

Springfield - Charles Rodius - 1834

Sources & further reading

  • James Broadbent, The Australian Colonial House — Woolloomooloo Hill / Springfield chapters (via Potts Point Preservation excerpt): https://pottspointpreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Broadbent_reduced.pdf
  • 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
  • Dictionary of Sydney — Springfield Lodge: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/springfield_lodge
  • Dictionary of Sydney — Springfield College media / Lady Murray pupils 1874: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/media/58658
  • Dictionary of Sydney — Baxter, Alexander; Murray, Agnes Ann
  • ADB — ‘Baxter, Alexander Macduff (1798–1836)’: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/baxter-alexander-macduff-1756
  • NSW Parliament — Mr Alexander Macduff Baxter (former member)
  • Barrie Dyster, ‘Inventing the Suburbs and Making a Fortune’, Leichhardt Historical Journal No. 11 (1982)
  • Charles Rodius — SLNSW DL Pd 258, Wolomoloo [sic] [Springfield House], 1832
  • NLA — Murray family photographs guide (PIC/7714 incl. Springfield College 19 Nov 1874): https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-147036072
  • Joseph Reidle, ‘Ghosts in Crinolines…’, SMH, 30 Nov 1937: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17408467
  • ADB — Murray, Sir Terence Aubrey (context for Lady Agnes Murray’s widowhood / school)
  • Andrew Woodhouse / Richardson & Wrench — Jolly Swagman site history (Springfield College / Woongarra / by-1939 demolition — secondary): https://www.rwebay.com.au/jolly-swagman-backpackers-hostel/
  • Existing scrapbook posts: https://historicsydneymansionsmanorshouses.blogspot.com/2025/05/springfield-house-potts-point-nsw.html ; https://historicsydneymansionsmanorshouses.blogspot.com/2025/05/springfield-house-potts-point-nsw.html

Related on this blog

Historic live gallery

Images retained from the live Blogger post:

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.

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