1840s Macquarie Field House, Glenfield trophy home offering
The colonial five bedroom trophy home, Macquarie Field House in Sydney's south-west has been listed for sale, marketed as a hobby farm.
It sits on 23 hectares, surrounded by lemon scented gums, an elegant single-storey regency brick home with a wide verandah supported by graceful white columns.
It was once written that Macquarie Field House represented the final flowering of the Australian colonial country house style.
Symmetrical in plan, bold in mass and outline, Macquarie Field House was built in 1838 by Samuel Terry, an ex-convict dubbed the Botany Bay Rothschild.
James Meehan, a freed convict who became deputy surveyor-general, had an association as he'd built the first house built on the site, Meehan's Castle, built circa 1810. Meehan chose the site because it was anaturally fortified rampart with panoramic views, a siting showing Meehan's skill in planning the settlement of New South Wales. A statue of Meehan was placed on the former Lands Department Building in 2011.
Meehan, who (1774-1826) had been transported to NSW due to involvement in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, was responsible for the early towns of Sydney, Parramatta, Bathurst, Port Macquarie and Hobart.
As one of the finest Regency dwellings in Australia,it was later home to Terry's son-in-law, John Hosking, the first mayor of Sydney, who was a member of the Liverpool Committee making recommendations on the route for the new southern railway line in the 1850s. The line to Campbelltown was opened in 1858 and in 1869 a railway platform (later Ingleburn Station) was opened on the Macquarie Fields estate.
It was government-owned from the 1940s, but fell into disrepair until a conservator, David Jamieson, started restoring it in 1958 when it sat on 273 hectares.
He sold it for $5 million to the Presbyterian Church in 1992, with unfulfilled hopes of turning the house into a feeder school for The Scots College.
Mindful of its blighted heritage record, the council set about to ensure Macquarie Field House sat on decent cartilage, voting 15-0 against an 1999 application for the site from Winten Property Group, then defeating Winten's appeal in the Land and Environment Court.
Justice Dennis Cowdroy said "the integrity of the house and of its setting is in such a precarious position that any development in close proximity to, or which is inconsistent with its preservation would be likely to destroy its heritage significance".
The church entered an arrangement with developer, Peter Ickow's Monarch Investments, to subdivide land north of the house into 130 residential lots.
The property, known as Lot 1 Campbelltown Road, Glenfield, has views to Sydney CBD, the home was built circa 1840. It has solid sandstone foundations and four course brick construction. It features eight fireplaces, sandstone and solid timber flooring, Australian cedar skirting and door frames and 13 foot ceilings.
"An ideal rural opportunity for hobby farmers/horse lovers," the marketing said.
Offers are due by 28 February through McGrath agents Anna Younan and Luke Mannion. More than $4.5 million is expected.
It last sold in 2007 at $1.8 million to the Hutchinson family.