Merioola – Edgecliff Road – Woollahra – NSW
Victorian mansion · Built 1859 · Demolished 1955 (DoS) — not 1916
On the Edgecliff Road ridge, Merioola was a Victorian house that lived two lives: eighty years of fashionable private occupancy and entertainment, then a postwar boarding house that briefly became the most talked-about artists’ colony in Sydney. The live post ends the story in 1916. The Dictionary of Sydney and Woollahra’s local history put the wreckers in the mid-1950s — after Donald Friend had already diarised its “rooms and passages and west wings and surprising hidden courtyards.”
At a glance
- Address / site: Edgecliff Road, Woollahra — stood on the south side of present Rosemont Avenue (Woollahra Municipal Council fast facts)
- Built: 1859
- Builder / first owner: John Edye Manning
- Later private associations: Adhur (Arthur) Allen, popularly “prince of entertainers” (Woollahra)
- Mid-20th c.: boarding house managed from 1941 by Chica Edgeworth Lowe; home of the Merioola Group (also tagged “Sydney Charm School”)
- Fate: Demolished — Dictionary of Sydney milestone 1955 (prefer over live “1916”; soft secondary art texts c.1951)
Site & setting
Merioola faced Edgecliff Road in Woollahra, on the rise now cut by Rosemont Avenue. The Aboriginal Country is that of the Gadigal / eastern harbour peoples; European Woollahra here was late-Victorian villa country on the road between the city and the eastern beaches.
By the 1940s the house read as a colonial mansion broken into rooms, passages, west wings and courtyards — Friend’s diary phrase, quoted in later Merioola scholarship — with enough space for painters, dancers, designers and writers to share kitchens and ceremonies.
Timeline
- 1859 – House built for John Edye Manning (DoS; Woollahra; live post).
- Later 19th / early 20th c. – Private occupancy and entertainment era; Woollahra notes purchase by Adhur Allen, “prince of entertainers.”
- 1941 – Leased / run as boarding house by Chica Edgeworth Lowe, who actively sought creative tenants (Merioola Group histories).
- 1945–c.1950 – Peak of the Merioola Group; group exhibitions 1947 (Myer Gallery, Melbourne; David Jones, Sydney).
- c.1951–1955 – House demolished — DoS: 1955; some secondary art histories say 1951 — do not invent a day; never use live “1916.”
Architecture & interiors
Victorian mansion fabric as remembered by tenants: multi-wing plan, courtyards, boarding-house subdivisions. No intact standing house to survey. Treat Friend’s 1946 diary and Alec Murray’s group photographs as the best interior/atmosphere evidence; seek Woollahra Libraries Digital Archive for pre-demolition elevations.
People & anecdotes
John Edye Manning — merchant family; also associated later with Willandra, Ryde (Caroline Manning / John Edye Manning of a later generation — disambiguate on that post).
Chica Edgeworth Lowe (Mary Patricia Edgeworth Somers / Boileau / Lowe) — landlady who filled Merioola “from the attic to the cucumber frame” with artists and theatre people.
Merioola Group — among residents and circle: Donald Friend, Justin O’Brien, Loudon Sainthill, Harry Tatlock Miller, Jocelyn Rickards, sculptor Arthur Fleischmann, photographer Alec Murray, and European-trained arrivals including Roland Strasser, Peter Kaiser, Michael Kmit. Robert Hughes later labelled related work the “Charm School.”
Gallery placeholder note
Do not invent historic photo URLs — keep existing live-post images; captions and sequence guidance below for the merge pass.
Keep the live post photograph; add credited archives:
1. Pre-demolition exterior / Edgecliff Road elevation — Woollahra Libraries Digital Archive; SLNSW.
2. Alec Murray, The Merioola Group — National Portrait Gallery (2008.24).
3. Donald Friend / studio interiors — Friend diaries / NLA.
4. 1947 Merioola Group exhibition ephemera — gallery catalogues.
5. Rosemont Avenue site today — street photography for “what replaced it.”
What stands today
Nothing of the mansion stands. The footprint is under later Woollahra fabric south of Rosemont Avenue / Edgecliff Road. The name survives in art history as the Merioola Group.
Sources & further reading
- Dictionary of Sydney — Merioola: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/merioola (constructed 1859; demolished 1955)
- Woollahra Municipal Council — Local history fast facts M (Merioola): https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/Library/Local-history/Local-history-fast-facts/M
- Wikipedia — Merioola Group (boarding house from 1941; Chica Lowe)
- National Portrait Gallery — Alec Murray, The Merioola Group
- Edith M. Ziegler, Merioola: The Story of a Fabled Sydney House (Arcadia / Australian Scholarly, announced 2025) — secondary; cite after checking
- Live blog post: https://historicsydneymansionsmanorshouses.blogspot.com/2025/05/merioola-edgecliff-road-woolahra-nsw.html
Related on this blog
- Willandra – Ryde (Manning family link — different generation / house)
- Other Woollahra / Edgecliff demolished villas (Quambi, Quirang, Eyensbury as published)
- Artist-house stories where tagged
Historic live gallery
Images retained from the live Blogger post:
