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.”
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
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:
Demolition of
old mansion
Workmen have started to demolish one of Sydney's oldest mansions, Merioola, Edgecliff Rd. and Rosemont Av., Edgecliff.
Demolition is expected to take six months.
Merioola was built in 1859 by John Edye Manning, and has 35 rooms, including a ballroom with domed roof. Edward, Prince of Wales, danced in this ballroom when the house was owned by Mr. Arthur Allen.
Mansion to be wrecked
Demolition of one of Sydney's oldest mansions will begin next Monday.
The mansion is Merioola, at the corner of Edgecliff Road and Rosemont Avenue, Edgecliff.
Merioola is 93 years old.
It was sold about a year ago to a firm of demolishers.
A spokesman for the demolishers—Nadin and Bull, Ltd.—said last night that demolition would take three to six months.
Mr. John Edye Manning was the original owner of Merioola, which was built in 1859.
It has 35 rooms, including a ballroom with domed roof.
Most of its cedar fittings were sold at auction this week.
Heavy cedar doors sold for up to £10 each.
The auctioneer, Mr. C. G. Waintwright, of San Souci, said yesterday that the sale was probably Sydney's biggest auction of selected cedar since 1930.
Mr. Wainwright said a carved cedar staircase, built to three floors, was not sold because bidding was short of the reserve.
Bidding for solid cedar columns on the front porch and upstairs balcony was also below the reserve.
Mr. Wainwright said he understood two or three homes and a block of flats would be built on the Merioola site.
