Hellespont – Lavender Bay – NSW
Nineteenth-century Lavender Bay residence · Associated with John Carr / Neepsend estate · Fate after the early twentieth century uncertain from sources consulted
Among the named houses that once looked across Lavender Bay — Cammeraygal Country — Hellespont is easier to find in family notices and correcting letters than on a heritage register. The live stub pointed to a Sydney Morning Herald Lavender Bay feature of Saturday 5 September 1936; two days later a local correspondent wrote in to put the record straight about John Carr, the Neepsend estate, and the house he kept and remodelled as Hellespont.
At a glance
- Name: Hellespont (also rendered Hellespont in period spelling)
- Locality: Lavender Bay, North Sydney — not to be confused with Holtermann’s The Towers, Idlemere, Graythwaite, or other named bay houses
- Documented association: John Carr retained Hellespont after selling most of a ~17-acre Lavender Bay estate formerly linked to the Hopkins / Buckland circle (A. W. Charlton letter, SMH 8 September 1936)
- Earlier address use: Birth notice, March 1883 — wife of John C. Cattell, “Hellespont, Lavender Bay” (SMH / Trove)
- WWI address use: AIF records list “Hellespont, Lavender Bay” for members of the Cox family
- Heritage listing: No State Heritage Register entry located under this name in sources consulted
- Fate: Not firmly established here — treat as a documented historic house name rather than a standing, publicly interpreted mansion
Site & setting
Lavender Bay’s western North Shore shore — opposite the city — filled across the nineteenth century with marine villas, ship-chandler fortunes and later institutional neighbours (Shore School absorbed Holtermann’s Towers). Charlton’s 1936 letter places Carr first at Neepsend, then — after selling most of the estate — at remodelled Hellespont. He warned readers that the newspaper’s published picture was “certainly not the Hellespont in which Mr. John Carr lived,” a reminder that scrapbook images of the bay are easy to mislabel.
HELLESPONT.
Lavender Bay Mansion.
(BY BERTHA PARN.)
In the early years of last century, when Lavender Bay was without the unlovely railway lines that now curve with its shore, and without the bathing-sheds that huddle on the beach, breaking the clear beauty of its line, the place was called Kepera Bay. The origin of the name is lost, but it seems a corruption of "Quibree"—the name of a house reputed to be the oldest in the locality, but without any discoverable legend attached to it, except that it was built by convict labour. It looks as though it had been the residence of some rather important official of long ago. The house is solidly constructed of blocks of chipped stone, on the English model of gables and dormer windows, and having outbuildings of the same solidity. Its situation on the high cliff to which the shore rises, is very fine.
Below, in the sheltered half-circle formed by the cliffs, is a resumed area, made into a public pleasure ground that encloses, as a par[illegible], the remains of a garden, in which may be traced ancient plans and paths. There are left in it some fine trees, not indigenous, and a few twisted fruit trees. In the midst, on a space, may be seen the old raised stone foundations and steps of a house—all that remains of Hellespont, the subject of our illustration.
The earliest history of the bay dates from a time before Hellespont was built, from the days of Governor Macquarie, when Billy Blue was poaching on the shore. Billy had come from America, bringing in himself a touch of Africa. He was interested in the little craft moving busily about on the water, especially when the moon was away. Governor Macquarie had a fondness for Billy, and diplomatically put him on his honour to catch poachers. The appointment is said to have reformed him.
The next record of the locality is that a prison hulk was moored there, and it was then known as Hulk Bay. George Lavender was the boatswain of the hulk, and his pretty name somehow remained there after the hulk was removed. Then the bay became the home of a fleet of schooners, owned by one John Carr, who traded with them to the Pacific Islands.
ISLAND WEALTH.
It was in the "good old days" of trading, before any tiresome restrictions were placed upon the matter of what returns the island natives received for their coconuts, so John Carr grew wealthy, and built Hellespont on the slope that rose from the beach to the wooded cliffs. He brought trees and plants from afar, and his garden was widely famed for its beauty and variety. An old resident tells how, years after the house was demolished, and the garden left to the wild, a slender stem grew out of the surrounding green, far upward, and there threw out into the air a lovely shower of pale starry blooms. John Carr was not living to see them, because his span of life did not equal that of the cactus.
John Carr had no children, and adopted a son, known as Jacky Carr. He, in the course of time, inherited the house and the schooners and all. Jacky played the fountain to the reservoir. He was specially interested in the relative speeds of horses, without having any expert knowledge of the subject. Soon he found himself thrown on his own resources. He drifted to the South Sea Islands, as a free passenger on one of the schooners he had owned and lost. There he fell in with Robert Louis Stevenson, who was kind and hospitable.
One day Jacky was wandering on the beach among some cases of cargo that had been discharged there. Now, those cases contained dynamite, or some other kindred substance. Jacky was a smoker. There was a tremendous explosion, and nothing was ever seen again of the heir of John Carr.
In the sixties, Hellespont was occupied by Mr. W. Spain, the grandfather of the present well-known families of that name. Since he died in 1872 the house has left no records in the neighbourhood of its various tenants. Its closing phase was that of a guest house, an. [sic] then, getting into hopeless disrepair, it was demolished.
That was twenty years ago. The accompanying picture was painted in water-colour by the writer in 1909. It was spring, and a peach tree was blooming at a corner of the house. The tree is still there, but diminished and leaning all awry. Last week it was in bloom again.
[Illustration, image 2:]
HELLESPONT, LAVENDER BAY, AS IT LOOKED IN 1909.
This old mansion was built by John Carr, an Islands trader, and was long distinguished for the beauty and variety of the garden he planted round it.
Timeline
- Mid–late nineteenth century – Carr associated with Hopkins ship-chandler circle; acquires Lavender Bay property; lives at Neepsend; later sells ~17 acres and retains / extensively alters Hellespont (Charlton, 1936, recalling events “over 50 years ago”).
- 28 Mar 1883 – Birth notice: daughter to Mrs John C. Cattell at Hellespont, Lavender Bay.
- 1910s – “Hellespont, Lavender Bay” appears as home address on AIF attestations for Cox family servicemen.
- 5 Sep 1936 – Sydney Morning Herald Lavender Bay reminiscence (p. 13) — the article the live stub cites.
- 8 Sep 1936 – A. W. Charlton’s letter corrects Carr / Hellespont / Quiberee details.
Architecture & interiors
No measured description or architect attribution has been located in the sources used for this scrapbook. Charlton’s phrase “extensive alterations” is the safest architectural note: Hellespont was a remodelled residence on a reduced residual of a larger estate, not a newly built boom mansion of the Holtermann type. Prefer Trove notices and the 1936 exchange over conjectural reconstructions.
People & anecdotes
John Carr — ship-chandler successor to Hopkins; adopted connection to the Buckland family; fortune from estate sale rather than island trading, according to Charlton.
Cattell household — 1883 birth notice anchors the house name in Lavender Bay directories.
Cox family — early twentieth-century military records keep the address in circulation.
Disambiguation — do not merge Hellespont with Holtermann’s The Towers (panorama house, later Shore) or with waterfront survivors such as Idlemere.
What stands today
Whether any fabric of Hellespont survives under a later name has not been confirmed from the sources consulted. Lavender Bay’s present streetscape is dense with later houses and apartments. Use the name carefully in captions; cross-check any historic photograph against Charlton’s warning about misidentification.
Sources & further reading
- Sydney Morning Herald, 5 September 1936, p. 13 — Lavender Bay feature (cited by the live stub)
- A. W. Charlton, “Lavender Bay,” letter to the Editor, SMH, 8 September 1936 (Trove): trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17290419
- SMH family notice, 2 April 1883 — Cattell / Hellespont birth (Trove article 28373652)
- AIF Project / NAA — search “Hellespont” Lavender Bay (Cox attestations)
- North Sydney local history — Lavender Bay villa context (The Towers / Idlemere / Graythwaite for neighbours, not identity)
Related on this blog
- The Towers – Lavender Bay (Holtermann)
- Graythwaite – Lavender Bay
- Other North Sydney / Lavender Bay lost and standing houses
