Atherfield – Landmark Gothic Mansion – Darling Point

Darling Point still has a few houses that look like they wandered out of a Victorian picture book. Atherfield is one of them — a Gothic Revival mansion built in 1870 on Eastbourne Road, looking north-east over Sydney Harbour. Originally an eight-room Victorian residence, it belongs to the generation of picturesque harbourside houses that gave the peninsula its nineteenth-century character: steep gables, decorative bargeboards and stone detailing in domestic Gothic Revival taste.

The house has been altered and conserved repeatedly. Late-twentieth-century heritage architects (notably Design 5’s late-1990s–2001 campaign) reversed poor accretions, reinstated a more coherent room plan and added a verandah in keeping with the Gothic character while opening a clearer axis to the harbour view. Later private works have further enlarged the estate (including amalgamation with an adjoining holding), but the historic core remains the 1870 Gothic Revival house. Early occupancy is associated with the Willis family; subsequent ownership changes are secondary to the architectural story.

Photographs here document Atherfield as a landmark Gothic Revival residence on Darling Point.

Bishopscourt (Greenoaks) – Darling Point

Greenoaks (later Bishopscourt), Darling Point, 1895.

Bishopscourt, tucked on Greenoaks Avenue at Darling Point, didn’t begin as an archbishop’s pile. It started as Percyville — a two-storey sandstone cottage built about 1841 for ironmonger Thomas Woolley. In 1845–46 Thomas Sutcliffe Mort leased then bought the cottage and its roughly 2.8-hectare estate. With architect John Frederick Hilly he stretched it into a gentleman’s residence and renamed it Greenoaks.

The house people still argue about in heritage circles is Edmund Blacket’s work. From 1859 Blacket — Mort’s friend and the colony’s leading Gothic Revival architect — added the academic Gothic fabric: picture gallery, porte-cochère, the whole romantic silhouette. Mort was wool, shipping, Mort’s Dock, refrigeration, AMP — and a church patron who gave land for nearby St Mark’s. From 1849 Michael Guilfoyle shaped the sloping gardens with plants from his Exotic Nursery at Double Bay; by the 1860s the grounds were being called a model private garden for NSW.

After later private ownership and subdivision, the Anglican Diocese of Sydney bought the house in 1910–11 as the Archbishop’s official residence and renamed it Bishopscourt. Leslie Wilkinson remodelled parts in 1935. It’s State Heritage listed. The Diocese sold it in late 2015; since then it’s been in private hands again — Gothic harbour mansion, no longer a working episcopal HQ.

Lindsay House – 12 Carthona Avenue – Darling Point – New South Wales

Lindesay - 1 Carthona Avenue - Darling Point - New South Wales. 

1. LINDESAY Is A National Trust Property. It Has Georgian Interiors With Fine Australian & English Furniture, Which Are Complimented By An Elegant Parterre Garden And Well Tended Grounds With Uninterrupted Harbour Views.

2. It Was Built By The Colonial Treasurer Campbell Drummond Riddell In 1834. He Purchased 17 Acres Reserved For Him By The Acting Colony's Governor, Lieutenant Patrick LINDESAY.
3. It Is Believed That The Favour Of Reserving The Land Led Riddell To Name The House After Best Friend, & Fellow Scot, Patrick LINDESAY. It was The First House  To Be Built In The Suburb, & Attracted Many Distinguished Occupants.







4. The House Had Many Famous Owners. It Was Purchased By Sir Thomas Mitchell In 1841. I'm The 1830's Mitchell Undertook Three Major Expeditions. throughout Australia, Took His Reports Back To England And Was Knighted For His Effort.










5. Sir Charles Nicholson Purchased LINDESAY In 1845, After Moving To Sydney In 1843 & Being Elected Ti The New South Wales Legislative Council. He Later Became Speaker






Sir Charles Nicholson Purchased LINDESAY In 1845, After Moving To Sydney In 1843 & Being Elected Ti The New South Wales Legislative Council. He Later Became Speaker Of The House. He Sold LINDESAY To William Bradley In 1849.
6. City Of Shdney Councillor  John Macintosh Brought The Property In 1868. While He Was At LINDESAY, Mr Macintosh Built Two Other Houses On Darling Point - Braeside And Cintra - For His Children.
7. In 1911 John Macintosh Died At Kindesay A d It Was Sold Two Years Later To Alfred Wunderlich Who Subdivided The Land. In 1914 Dr Edaard Jenkins Blufht The House.
8. In 1926 The Jankins Family Moved To A Smaller House, At 35 New South .  ahead Road, Vaucluse. LINDESAY Was  The. purchased By Charles and Mary spy's, Who Lived The Rest If Their Lives In The House, And After another Had Died Ther So. Charles Handed Over The Property To The National Trust If Australi In 1963.
9. The House Is The First Domestic Example Of Gothic architecture ln Australia. The Interiors, Restored By The National Trust Of Australia Represent The Prominant Fanilies That All lived There.
10. LINDESAY Is Open To The Public On The First Thursday Of Every Month, With Guided Tours At 10am, 11am, & Noon. The Cost Is $10, Or Free For National Trust Members. LINDESAY