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, on Cammeraygal Country, Hellespont is easier to find in family notices and letters to the editor than on a heritage register. The Sydney Morning Herald ran a Lavender Bay feature on Saturday 5 September 1936, and three days later a local man, A. W. Charlton, wrote in to put the record straight about John Carr, the Neepsend estate, and the house Carr kept and remodelled as Hellespont.
The House on the Bay
Before the flats and the ferry rush, Lavender Bay’s cliff line wore a necklace of villas looking back at the town. One of them was Hellespont, long gone now.
Bertha Parn, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 September 1936, credits the house to John Carr, a Pacific islands trader whose schooners brought exotic plants as well as cargo. Her 1909 watercolour shows the mansion nestled in that garden. In the 1860s the house was occupied by W. Spain, who died in 1872. After that it slid into guest-house use, fell into hopeless disrepair and was eventually demolished. By Parn’s day only foundations, steps and twisted fruit trees were left in the pleasure ground that replaced it.
Stand on the Lavender Bay foreshore and you are in the same story as Billy Blue’s Blues Point, the old prison-hulk anchorage that gave the bay its early “Hulk Bay” nickname, and George Lavender the boatswain who left his name on the chart. Hellespont belongs to that North Shore villa world, not to Holtermann’s towered mansion higher up on the Shore School ridge. Both pictures here are of the mansion that looked down on the water, not the panorama tower.
Where the Sources Disagree
Bertha Parn wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 September 1936 that John Carr grew rich trading to the Pacific Islands and built Hellespont himself. A. W. Charlton wrote to the same paper on 8 September 1936 that Carr made his money from selling most of his 17-acre Lavender Bay estate, and that he kept Hellespont and remodelled it with “extensive alterations” rather than building it. Charlton also said the Herald’s picture was not the Hellespont Carr lived in, while Parn captioned her 1909 watercolour as Carr’s house.
At a glance
- Name: Hellespont (also rendered Hellespont in period spelling)
- Locality: Lavender Bay, North Sydney. A different house from Holtermann’s The Towers, Idlemere and Graythwaite
- 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: Demolished. Bertha Parn wrote in 1936 that it came down “twenty years ago”, after a spell as a guest house
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.
Transcription (Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 5 September 1936, page 13, Parts 1–2 (article and its illustration))
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 – Bertha Parn’s Lavender Bay feature in the Sydney Morning Herald (p. 13).
- 8 Sep 1936 – A. W. Charlton’s letter corrects Carr / Hellespont / Quiberee details.
Architecture & interiors
I haven’t found an architect or a detailed description of the house. Charlton’s letter speaks of “extensive alterations”, so Hellespont seems to have been an older house remodelled on what was left of a larger estate, rather than a new boom-time mansion like Holtermann’s.
People & anecdotes
John Carr – ship-chandler, successor to Hopkins, with a family connection to the Bucklands. The Cattell household – a birth notice of 1883 places them at Hellespont. The Cox family – Hellespont, Lavender Bay, was their home address in First World War service records.
What stands today
Nothing of Hellespont is known to survive. Bertha Parn saw only the old stone foundations and steps in 1936, and Lavender Bay’s shore is now lined with later houses and apartments. Charlton warned in 1936 that the newspaper’s picture was “certainly not the Hellespont in which Mr. John Carr lived”.
Sources & further reading
- Sydney Morning Herald, 5 September 1936, p. 13 – Bertha Parn, “Hellespont. Lavender Bay Mansion.”
- 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)
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