Bishopscourt, Darling Point

About

Bishopscourt, Darling Point is a heritage-listed residence and former archbishop's residence at 11A Greenoaks Avenue, Darling Point, Sydney, Australia. It was designed by J. F. Hilly (1846), Edmund Blacket (1859) and Leslie Wilkinson (1935) and built from 1846 to 1849 by Thomas Woolley (1841); Thomas Sutcliffe Mort. It is also known as Bishopscourt and Greenoaks. Up until December 2015, the property was owned by the Anglican Diocese of Sydney; and is now privately owned. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.

Originally known by its Aboriginal name Yarranabbee, Darling Point was called Mrs Darling's Point by Ralph Darling (1825–31 Governor ) in honour of his wife. At that time the area was open forest, but after New South Head Road was built in 1831 timber cutters felled most of the trees, and the land was subdivided. Most of the plots, covering 3.6 to 6.1 hectares (9 to 15 acres) in this area, were taken up between 1833 and 1838. The suburb became known as Darling Point.

Several notable people bought land and built homes here, including surveyor-general Sir Thomas Mitchell 's Carthona and one-time home Lindesay. Around the middle of the 1800s residents included the Reverend George Fairfowl Macarthur, one time rector at St Mark's Church, Darling Point, members of the Tooth family, brewers, at Swifts, and Samuel Hordern, retail king.

The land (of what became Percyville/Greenoaks/Bishopscourt) (then allotment 11) was purchased by Elizabeth Pike and Thomas Smith (Elizabeth Pike's "grant" passed to Richard Jones and Joseph Hyde Potts in between June 1835 and July 1836. By 1835–6 a small residence was built by Richard Jones – presumably s three roomed single storey cottage with an entrance porch. c. 1840 the house was extended – presumably made two storeys – its architect is unknown. A window was removed from the west facade space G11 and an oriel window was installed.

By 1841, a portion of Jones & Potts' land and of Smith's grant (making up 4.5 hectares (11 acres)) was purchased by Thomas Woolley, ironmonger, who built a two-storey stone cottage "Percyville" on the site with John Frederick Hilly as architect. Most of the front of the present house is this original Percyville design.

Originally known as Greenoaks, Bishopscourt was designed by Edmund Blacket. A cottage originally occupied the site, and the owner, Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, built the sandstone Gothic Revival mansion around this building, circa 1850–1860. Further extensions were made in 1935 after being designed by Leslie Wilkinson. The exterior features Tudor windows and carved doors and crests. The interior was based on the Palace of Westminster and is considered to be an outstanding example of Blacket's work, with stained-glass windows, tiled floors, an elaborate staircase and panelled library.

Main article: Thomas Sutcliffe Mort In 1845 Thomas Sutcliffe Mort leased the land, purchasing it in 1846 for A£ 2,500, and then in the late 1850s/60s commenced work on a house he called Greenoaks. c. 1853 -55 alterations were made by architect J. F. Hilly and Mr Page was the builder. These included stables, bays to the morning room (G11), the drawing room (G9), a staircase (the position of Hilly's staircase is uncertain – it may have been in rooms G6 and F11). The position of a label mould indicates an early stair in that area but its date and origin are unclear), stained glass windows to the stairhall and old study (G14 and G13), and an extension to the south (G5, G4B). In 1853 Hilly called for tenders for a new stables and coach house for premises at Darling Point. Stained glass for Greenoakes was ordered from Hardman's of Birmingham. A further tender notice by Hill which may relate to Greenoaks (11/7/1854) was for "additions to residence, Darling Point". Tender notice for plasterers of January 1855 may relate to Greenoakes. An estimate for papier mache or carton pierre celining ornament was received (12/1858) from George Jackson & Son of London.

Mort, businessman and horticulturist, was born in Bolton, England and worked as a clerk, seizing the chance to migrate to Sydney in 1838 to bolster the family fortunes. In 1843 he set up as an auctioneer, becoming an innovator in wool sales. His pastoral interests included Franklyn Vale, in the Darling Downs, Queensland and Bodalla at the mouth of the Tuross River, South Coast, NSW. By the end of the 1840s his fortune was made, but he restlessly pursued other projects, some ill-starred. In 1841 he married Therese, daughter of Commissary-General James Laidley. Mort pioneered weekly wool auctions and the refrigeration of food, was involved in moves for the first railway in NSW, and was a founder of the AMP Society. He was instrumental in construction of Mort's Dock at Balmain in 1854, which gave Sydney a dry dock for repairing ships.

His wealth facilitated his considerable horticultural ambitions. Greenoaks, his Darling Point property, set the tone among fashionable villas of this choice Sydney resort. Mort used architect F. J. Hilly who transformed the original cottage Percyville (which stood in more than 2.8 hectares (7 acres) of ground) into a two storied Gothic Revival gentleman's residence. Mort renamed it Greenoaks and also transformed its grounds from 1846.

Mort enjoyed his wealth and it gave rein to a natural flamboyance which, often hidden in his personal dealings, was epitomized in his house where it flowered in Academic Gothic Revival extravagances. In his 1857–59 visit to England he attended a sale at the earl of Shrewsbury's Alton Towers. Among other acquisitions were Elizabethan armour, old English coats of mail, a cabinet that had belonged to Marie Antoinette, antique oak furniture and about 120 pictures. On his return he engaged architect Edmund Blacket to make additions to the house (including a covered carriageway, stables and kitchens) and an art gallery which, with his gardens, were open to the public. 1860 additions and alterations were made by Blacket to the southern wing (possibly incorporating the ground floor kitchen and including construction of a southern basement), a picture gallery (single storey), nursery, second entrance and porte cochere, some applied decoration and embellishment to existing interiors and a new staircase and stair hall.

A keen gardener, Mort won many prizes at the flower shows in the 1840s and 1850s. In 1851 he served on the committee of management of the Australasian Botanical and Horticultural Society and in the 1870s became president of the Horticultural Society of New South Wales. He was also a vice-president of the Agricultural Society in 1861–78. He was a commissioner for the 1873 London International Exhibition and in 1876 for the Philadelphia and Melbourne International Exhibitions.

At meetings of the Australasian Botanic and Horticultural Society in Sydney Mort first met newly arrived Irish-English nurseryman and landscape designer Michael Guilfoyle. Greatly impressed with his knowledge and experience and having heard something of the prowess of the Guilfoyle family in England in such matters, he commissioned him to develop and landscape Greenoaks. The success of this, which occupied Guilfoyle for a period of some 12 months, together with the considerable influence that Mort exerted in the community, ensured that the future of Michael Guilfoyle in the field of landscape design and nursery practice was assured. The garden became famous in its time and was regarded as one of the finest in Sydney.

Mort and Guilfoyle created a celebrated landscape garden from 1849. Guilfoyle used the steep sloping site to provide a wild, romantic setting for the medieval mansion, and a wide variety of plants to provide botanical and visual interest, most likely supplied from his "Exotic Nursery" in Double Bay, which adjoined Greenoaks to the south.

When the Duke of Edinburgh first visited Sydney in 1853, he made a special journey "along New South Head Road to visit Mr Mort's garden, and there tasted a rare date plum (probably a Diospyros lotus, date plum from America), grown only by Mr Guilfoyle."

Michael Guilfoyle ( c. 1809 -1884), nursery proprietor and landscape gardener, received his early training in London and rose to the position of foreman at the Royal Exotic Nursery, King's Road, Chelsea. This nursery, established in 1808 by Joseph Knight (and later owned by the famous Veitch family of nurserymen) specialised in greenhouse and stove plants. Knight had such faith in Guilfoyle's abilities that he sent him to many parts of the Kingdom to lay out or remodel parks and gardens frequently without even inspecting his work. In 1849 Guilfoyle and his family emigrated to Sydney, and established a nursery in Kellick Street, Redfern, which soon failed. He then gained the patronage of T. S. Mort.

Greenoaks grounds became the "leading and model private garden of NSW", described at length in the "Horticultural Magazine" 1865. As noted above, Mort was president of the Horticultural Society of NSW, publisher of the magazine, and Guilfoyle was listed in it as one of the "good and first rate gardeners" formerly employed at Greenoaks.

Mort owned land down the hill from Greenoaks, in Double Bay, where he had his vegetable garden, and offices and Guilfoyle occupied a cottage there (at the corner of South and Ocean Streets). By 1851 Guilfoyle had established a nursery on 1.4 hectares (3.5 acres) of land belonging to Mort. He developed this site until 1875, still leasing it from Mort. In this nursery Guilfoyle stocked flowering and evergreen trees and a wide selection of conifers, "probably one of the most complete in the colony" (journal entry by exteemed visiting English nurseryman John Gould Veitch in 1864). His 1862 catalogue listed 2,500 plants. This nursery was described by esteemed English nurseryman Veitch in 1864, as "if not the largest, one of the best nurseries in the colony." Veitch describes in the same journal entry, Mr Mort's garden of Darling Point as one of "few private gardens in Sydney where gardening is carried on with any spirit. Those of Mr Thomas Mort, of Darling Point, the late Mr William Macleay of Elizabeth Bay and Sir Daniel Cooper of Rose Bay, formerly contained good collections of native and imported plants, but now they are no longer kept up".

Guilfoyle overcame the difficulty in propagating jacarandas (J.mimosifolia) in 1868, enabling the widespread use of this spectacular flowering tree for the first time. He raised new varieties of popular plants such as verbena, camellia, and azalea, and attempted to popularise both in Australia and Britain the plants introduced from the Pacific Islands by Charles Moore, then-Director of the Sydney Botanic Gardens, and his son William Robert Guilfoyle, on a voyage of 1868. He is known to have sought two cases of Norfolk Island pine ( Araucaria heterophylla ) from Charles Moore in 1855, (which may have been the source of the specimen depicted in an 1857 engraving of Greenoaks ).

In 1860 Mort acquired the Bodalla estate on the South Coast of NSW, where his gardener Michael Bell took up farm management, replaced at Greenoaks by George Mortimore. Both gardeners, like Guilfoyle and Mort, were active members of the Horticultural Society of NSW; Mort became its respected president in the 1862 Morris, 2002). He maintained his enthusiasm for horticulture over 30 years, first as an exhibitor and top prize winner in the Horticultural Society's shows, and later as an administrator. He retained the position of President until 1878 and pursued hybridisation of cacti in Sydney's premier garden. An 1857 engraving of Greenoaks shows the generous expanse of the pleasure garden at one of Sydney's most celebrated villa gardens, and indicates prickly pear bushes (Opuntia spp.) in the foreground, dense shrubberies and trees, and an emergent Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla) near the house.

Greenoaks Cottage (now at 3a Greenoaks Avenue) is a substantial Gothic Revival house built in the late 1860s by Mort intending to move into it while leasing Greenoaks.