Canterbury House was a two-storey Gothic mansion that stood on the rise between Ashfield and the Cooks River, on ground that is now the suburb of Ashbury. Edmund Blacket designed it around 1850 for Arthur Jeffreys, a former naval officer, and his wife Sarah, the youngest daughter of the Sydney merchant Robert Campbell. Conrad Martens painted its drive, lodge and garden about 1860. From the 1870s it was home to the timber merchant and philanthropist John Hay Goodlet, and under the Goodlets it became a busy hub of Presbyterian church life. After Goodlet died in 1914 the estate was cut up into housing blocks, and the old house came down in 1928 or 1929, depending on which source you go by. The photographs on this page were taken in 1927 by Eleanor Georgina Shaw, only a year or two before the end.
When I first put these photos up I only had the room names to go on. So I went back and dug into whose house it was, who lived in it, and what happened to it. It turns out Canterbury House connects a fair bit of early Sydney: the Campbells of Campbell's Wharf, Blacket, Martens, Goodlet and the 1920s land boom that built Ashbury.
The ten photos below come from a set the State Library of New South Wales lists as "'Canterbury House', Canterbury, 1927", in the Royal Australian Historical Society's series Photographs of Sydney, 1916–1935. The library's list for that set reads side, front and back of house, side passage, main entrance, morning room, library, drawing room, first floor corridor, stables and coach house. Those are the same rooms as my captions. Look closely at the bottom corner of some of the negatives and you can see "E G SHAW" scratched in backwards, along with the little negative numbers.
Canterbury House
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Main Entrance
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Drawing Room
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Library
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Morning Room
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Stairs And Side Passage
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Coach House
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Stables
Which Canterbury House This Is
There are Canterbury Houses all over the place. There's one in England, a 1920s one at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and around 1900 there was even a small boys' school of that name at Kent Town in Adelaide. This one is Sydney's. It stood between Alison Street and Leith Street, on the hill above the Cooks River, in what was then called Canterbury or South Ashfield and is now Ashbury. The State Library's photo list, the Royal Australian Historical Society series it sits in and the 1927 date all match my photos, and so does the same set on my Historic Sydney Mansions blog.
From Canterbury Vale to the Campbell Estate
The story of the land goes right back to the First Fleet chaplain, the Reverend Richard Johnson. In 1793 he got the first land grant in the district, 100 acres, and called it Canterbury Vale after Canterbury in England. That's where the suburb's name comes from. According to the Dictionary of Sydney the grant sat around today's Trevenar Street near Allibone Street and Peace Park, which is Ashbury itself. Johnson was a keen farmer. Within a year he was reporting a harvest of "six hundred bushells of Indian Corn", and in 1799 his farm was pushed down to the north bank of the Cooks River.
William Cox, paymaster of the NSW Corps, bought Canterbury Vale in 1800 and built it up to about 600 acres. In 1803 he sold it to Robert Campbell, the Scottish-born merchant whose wharf and stores were on the west side of Sydney Cove. The Dictionary of Sydney says that when Campbell took it over it was carrying 150 sheep, horses and cattle, with a two-acre vineyard and an orchard of oranges, nectarines, peaches and apricots. Campbell kept buying land around it until the estate ran north towards Liverpool Road. He didn't live out there, though. Like most of the early Cooks River landowners he used it for grazing and timber, and his home was at Wharf House in town.
By the 1840s parts of the estate were being sold off. In 1840 the Australian Sugar Company bought about 60 acres of it, and its stone sugar works went up beside the river between 1840 and 1842. The village of Canterbury grew up after Campbell's land was subdivided from 1841.
Robert Campbell died at Duntroon, his property near today's Canberra, on 15 April 1846. According to the Hurlstone Park Heritage Assessment Study prepared for Canterbury-Bankstown Council in 2016, his will split the Canterbury property between his eldest daughter, Sophia Ives Campbell, and his son-in-law Arthur Jeffreys, the husband of his youngest daughter, Sarah. Sophia's share was 673 acres taking in today's Hurlstone Park. Jeffreys got the western part, west of where Holden Street runs now, and that's where Canterbury House was built.
Arthur and Sarah Jeffreys
Arthur Jeffreys was born at Barnes in Surrey on 1 October 1811, the son of the Reverend John Jeffreys. He was a naval officer, and the Dictionary of Sydney has him arriving in Sydney on 20 February 1839. On 17 February 1841 he married Sarah Campbell, who was born in Sydney in 1815. They had four children. One of them, Arthur Frederick Jeffreys, later sat in the British House of Commons.
Arthur did well for himself in the colony. He became a grazier and held land at Acton near Queanbeyan, which is now the middle of Canberra, as well as at Kirribilli and Canterbury. In 1851 he was elected unopposed to the Legislative Council as member for the pastoral district of Maneroo, and he resigned in February 1854. The heritage study gives Sarah's dates as 1815 to 1856, so she only had a few years in the new house.
Blacket's Rustic Gothic House
Around 1850 the Jeffreys brought in Edmund Blacket to design a house on the high ground of their share of the estate. Blacket had come out from England in 1842 and was the Colonial Architect from late 1849 to 1854. He's best known for Gothic Revival churches, St Andrew's Cathedral and the University of Sydney, but he did houses too, from cottages up to mansions.
The Dictionary of Sydney describes Canterbury House as a two-storey rustic Gothic mansion. Lesley Muir's history of the Cooks River estates says it sat on a hill looking over the river and "had all the refinements". There was an orangery, a circular drive and a big flower garden full of camellias and azaleas. A lodge stood at the gate, and a clearing was cut so the house could be seen from the river. A carriage road lined with pine trees ran up to Ashfield railway station.
What the 1927 photos show
Shaw's photos fill in a lot. From outside you can see steep gables with carved bargeboards, a round opening with a cross in it high up in the front gable, tall clustered chimneys, a first-floor balcony and a verandah on slim posts. Most windows have louvred shutters. The garden was still thick with old trees, palms, agaves and shrubs.
Inside, the walls of the hall, stairs and upstairs corridor were ruled up to look like blocks of stone, with round-headed arches between the passages. The main entrance had a stained glass window beside a panelled doorway. The drawing room shot is mostly of a white marble fireplace with a carved arch and scrolls, the morning room has a glass chandelier and a painted floral frieze under the cornice, and the library is lined with tall glazed bookcases with arched tops. Out the back, the stables were a plain sandstone building with louvred windows, half swallowed by ivy. I can't tell you which of those finishes went back to the Jeffreys and which came in under the Goodlets.
Conrad Martens Paints Canterbury
About 1860 the artist Conrad Martens painted a set of small watercolours of the estate: The Lodge, A. Jeffries Esq., Canterbury House, Canterbury House, the drive, Canterbury House, the seat of Mr Arthur Jeffries: garden vista, and St Paul's Canterbury. The titles spell the name "Jeffries". Elizabeth Ellis, in her book on Martens, records that on 30 October 1860 Martens listed "two sketches at Canterbury" for Arthur Jeffreys. In 1862 he did more small drawings of the house for Major Frederick Fanning, a trustee of the Jeffreys estate who leased the house after Arthur's death.
Whose set this is depends on who you ask. The State Library catalogue says the Miss Campbell who commissioned the watercolours was Sophia Ives Campbell, Sarah's sister. The auction houses that sold a set of four with these titles, Christie's in 2006 (it made AUD 45,410) and Sotheby's in 2009, believed theirs were the ones Fanning commissioned and gave his family as the provenance. Either way, the Dictionary of Sydney says Martens painted Canterbury House for the Jeffreys family just before they went to England.
St Paul's, Canterbury
Martens' fourth picture shows the church Sophia Campbell gave the district. St Paul's Anglican Church stands on part of her father's Canterbury estate, on land she donated, and was designed by Blacket in local sandstone. It was built in 1858 and 1859 and consecrated on 12 April 1860. It's still there in Church Street, and it's the closest thing left to a sense of what Blacket was doing on the estate in those years.
After Arthur: Trustees and Tenants
Arthur Jeffreys died of Bright's disease at Hastings in Sussex on 13 September 1861, not yet 50. The house didn't sit empty. As I mentioned, Major Fanning, one of the trustees, leased it. The Dictionary of Sydney lists Arthur's son John Jeffreys as owner of Canterbury House from 1861 to 1876. John had inherited part of his father's estate and later retired to England.
The Goodlets of Canterbury House
The man most people link with Canterbury House is John Hay Goodlet. He was born at Leith in Scotland on 22 March 1835 and landed in Melbourne in June 1852, still only seventeen. In 1855 he came to Sydney with a shipload of American doors, sold them at a good profit, and started importing timber from Jervis Bay and sawing it at his own mill and wharf in Erskine Street. With his partner James Smith that grew into Goodlet & Smith, with more sawmills, brickworks at Granville turning out 200,000 bricks a week, a pottery in Surry Hills making drain pipes, tiles and chimney pots, and later Portland cement. He was a director of the AMP Society from 1866 to 1888, a lieutenant-colonel in the volunteers, and he paid for the Thirlmere home for consumptives out of his own pocket for years.
On 3 May 1860 he married Ann Alison Dickson, née Panton, a widow some years older than him. They lived at Glebe and, according to the Colonial Givers history site, moved to Ashfield in 1872. Ann's entry in the Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography says they were renting a house in Ashfield when they took in the Copeland children, and that may be what pushed them to look for something bigger with more ground.
When did Goodlet buy it?
This one depends on who you read. Ann Goodlet's evangelical dictionary entry says 1876, and the Dictionary of Sydney's ownership dates (John Jeffreys to 1876) fit with that. Wikipedia's Ashbury article says 1878. The Colonial Givers site says 1882. The Inner West Leadlight local history site gives 1876 on its Goodlet Street page and 1886 on its Ashbury page. Lesley Muir just says "in the 1870s". I haven't found the sale notice itself, so I'll leave it as the late 1870s, with 1876 the most likely.
A house full of people
Under the Goodlets, Canterbury House was rarely quiet. Ann's entry says it became "a home for both the Goodlets and the Copelands, as well as a centre of hospitality and ministry". The Copeland children grew up there calling Ann "Auntie". Goodlet's nephews James Hay Clark and David Barclay Mellis Clark lived there while they worked in the business. A young John Walker also boarded with them while he studied. When his health broke down Ann nursed him, and he later named a son Alison Goodlet Dight Walker in her honour. Walker went on to become the Reverend John Walker.
According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Ann was president of the first Australian branch of the Young Women's Christian Association from 1880 until she died on 3 January 1903. The next year, on 3 February 1904, John married Elizabeth Mary Forbes, a keen Presbyterian who had been secretary of the Presbyterian Women's Missionary Association while Ann was its president. Neither marriage had children.
Goodlet was an elder of the Presbyterian Church for over 40 years, the later ones at Ashfield, and ran the Ashfield Sunday school for more than 20 years. In 1913 he opened the new hall, later called the Goodlet Institute, that he had largely paid for. The Herald said his speech at the opening was his last public act.
He died at home on 13 January 1914, aged 78. The Sydney Morning Herald's obituary next day opened with something he'd said at his jubilee picnic in 1905: "I would rather die in harness than rust out of it." It said he got his wish, because "he was in harness to the last". There was a memorial service at Ashfield Presbyterian Church and then the funeral went to Rookwood. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says he left an estate of £92,910, most of it to the Presbyterian Church, with 30 per cent for foreign missions. Memorial windows to him and both his wives are in the Ashfield church.
Goodlet's Bush Becomes Ashbury
After John died, the Inner West Leadlight local history site says, his widow Elizabeth began selling off the Goodlet Estate. By that site's count it went in nine subdivisions between 1919 and 1929. The first was in 1919 around the northern ends of Leopold and Goodlet Streets, and most of the southern part sold between 1922 and 1925. These were the years of the war service homes and the trams, and the bush around the old house filled up with brick Californian bungalows full of leadlight.
On the 1920 plan the big block between Alison, Hay, Leith and Goodlet Streets is just marked "Canterbury House". The house kept its grounds a few more years while the streets around it were sold. Locals knew the area by a few names, including Goodlet's Bush, Canterbury Heights and South Ashfield. Wikipedia says the local primary school opened in 1924 and changed its name from South Ashfield to Ashbury in 1926, and the suburb took the name from it. The Leadlight site puts the school in 1925. "Ashbury" is just Ashfield and Canterbury mashed together. The street names still carry the old owners: Goodlet Street, Hay Street (John's middle name), and Jeffreys Street nearby, while Forbes Street shares Elizabeth's maiden name.
Elizabeth Goodlet died on 26 July 1926 at Goodlet Street, Canterbury, and was buried at Rookwood.
1927: A College That Never Was
The year after Elizabeth died, the Church looked at keeping the old house going. The Sydney Morning Herald of 12 May 1927 reported:
"The Presbyterian General Assembly last night discussed a proposal to purchase Canterbury House, Ashfield, the home of the late Mr John H Goodlet, for the purpose of establishing a college, to be called Canterbury College, to provide residence with domestic supervision and tuition for Home Mission, pre-matriculation, and other students."
The plan was for a residential college for would-be ministers and Home Mission students who hadn't passed their school exams yet, with its head to be called the Warden and links to St Andrew's College at the university. The committee wanted the Assembly to approve buying the property, "approximately 6 acres 2 roods", at a price to be worked out with the corporate trustees, with no more than £25,000 for the purchase, reconstruction and new building. The debate was put off to the next day, when the Assembly carried on at St Stephen's Church in Macquarie Street. I haven't found what the Assembly decided, but Canterbury College never opened there, because within two years the grounds were being auctioned off as building blocks.
It's also the year Eleanor Shaw went out with her camera. I don't know whether the Historical Society people had heard the house might go, but her photos are about the last good look anyone got at the inside of it.
Who was E. G. Shaw?
A 2022 article by Lorraine Sim in the journal Photography and Culture identifies E. G. Shaw as Eleanor Georgina Shaw (1870–1954), an amateur street, urban and architectural photographer working in Sydney from the 1910s to the 1930s. The Historical Society series her Canterbury House photos sit in covers dozens of old houses. For 1927 alone it lists Canterbury House, Campbell's Fields at Minto, Elizabeth Bay House, Greystanes and Oatlands, and there are Sydney streets in there too. The State Library notes that the original nitrate negatives were destroyed after copying in 2013, so the copies are all we have.
The End of Canterbury House
The State Library's Canterbury subdivision plans include a "Canterbury House" Goodlet's Estate sale for Saturday 10 March 1928, covering Hay, Leith, Goodlet and Alison Streets. The last one was "Goodlet's 'Canterbury House' No. 2 Estate", put up by Richardson & Wrench on Saturday 25 May 1929: "42 Elevated Cottage Sites", Torrens title, ten per cent deposit and the rest in twelve quarterly payments at six per cent.
That 1929 plan is the best map I've found of where the house stood. It's drawn across the lots on the east side of Forbes Street, about halfway between Alison and Leith Streets. Leopold Street now runs through what had been the grounds.
When it actually came down depends on the source. Elizabeth Ellis's Martens book, quoted by the State Library and Christie's, says the house was demolished in 1928 by its owners at the time, the Presbyterian Church. The Inner West Leadlight Goodlet Street page also says 1928. The Dictionary of Sydney says 1929. The Leadlight site's Ashbury page says it was pulled down in 1929 when the final subdivision was released, and the 2016 Hurlstone Park study says "about 1929". My own reading is that the house still being drawn on the May 1929 sale plan points to 1929, but auction plans weren't always up to date, so I'll leave it at 1928 or 1929.
What's There Today
There's nothing left of the house. Where it stood is now a quiet stretch of Forbes and Leopold Streets in Ashbury, lined with houses built after the 1929 sale. The Inner West Leadlight site says a plaque in Goodlet Street is the only thing that marks it, and that the council declared its part of Ashbury a heritage conservation area in 2013 because of all those interwar houses and their leadlight windows.
A few things do survive. Blacket's St Paul's is still in Church Street, Canterbury. Martens' watercolours survive, and so do Eleanor Shaw's 1927 photos. Peace Park, at the top of the hill, is roughly where Richard Johnson's first grant was. And Goodlet, Hay and Jeffreys are still on the street signs.
Timeline
- 1793 – Rev. Richard Johnson granted 100 acres and names it Canterbury Vale.
- 1799 – Johnson's farm extended down to the Cooks River.
- 1800 – William Cox buys Canterbury Vale and enlarges it to about 600 acres.
- 1803 – Robert Campbell buys the Canterbury estate.
- 1839 – Arthur Jeffreys arrives in Sydney (20 February).
- 1840–1842 – Australian Sugar Company buys about 60 acres and builds its sugar works on the river.
- 1841 – Arthur Jeffreys marries Sarah Campbell (17 February). Village of Canterbury subdivided from Campbell land.
- 1846 – Robert Campbell dies at Duntroon (15 April). Canterbury property divided between Sophia Ives Campbell and Arthur Jeffreys.
- c.1850 – Edmund Blacket designs Canterbury House for the Jeffreys.
- 1851–1854 – Arthur Jeffreys sits in the Legislative Council for Maneroo.
- 1856 – Sarah Jeffreys dies (date per the 2016 Hurlstone Park study).
- 1858–1860 – St Paul's, Canterbury, built on land given by Sophia Campbell; consecrated 12 April 1860.
- 1860 – Conrad Martens lists "two sketches at Canterbury" for Arthur Jeffreys (30 October).
- 1861 – Arthur Jeffreys dies at Hastings, England (13 September). John Jeffreys becomes owner; Major Frederick Fanning leases the house.
- 1862 – Martens makes more drawings of the house for Fanning.
- 1876 (other sources: 1878, 1882 or 1886) – John Hay Goodlet buys Canterbury House.
- 1903 – Ann Goodlet dies (3 January).
- 1904 – Goodlet marries Elizabeth Mary Forbes (3 February).
- 1913 – Goodlet opens the new hall at Ashfield Presbyterian Church, later the Goodlet Institute.
- 1914 – John Hay Goodlet dies at home (13 January).
- 1919–1929 – Goodlet Estate sold in a series of subdivisions; 2nd subdivision auctioned 15 May 1920.
- 1924–1926 – Local school opens and takes the name Ashbury; the suburb follows.
- 1926 – Elizabeth Goodlet dies (26 July).
- 1927 – Presbyterian General Assembly debates buying the house for a "Canterbury College" (May). E. G. Shaw photographs the house.
- 1928 – "Canterbury House" Goodlet's Estate auction (10 March). Demolition date per Ellis.
- 1929 – Goodlet's "Canterbury House" No. 2 Estate, 42 lots, auctioned (25 May). Demolition date per the Dictionary of Sydney.
- 2013 – Ashbury declared a heritage conservation area (per the Inner West Leadlight site).
Where the Sources Don't Agree
- When Goodlet bought the house: 1876 (Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography; Inner West Leadlight, Goodlet Street page; fits the Dictionary of Sydney's John Jeffreys dates), 1878 (Wikipedia), 1882 (Colonial Givers) or 1886 (Inner West Leadlight, Ashbury page).
- When it was demolished: 1928 (Elizabeth Ellis, quoted by the State Library and Christie's; Inner West Leadlight, Goodlet Street page) or 1929 (Dictionary of Sydney; Inner West Leadlight, Ashbury page; "about 1929" in the 2016 Hurlstone Park study).
- Who commissioned the Martens watercolours: Sophia Ives Campbell (State Library catalogue) or Major Frederick Fanning (Christie's and Sotheby's catalogue notes).
- When the school took the name Ashbury: renamed in 1926 (Wikipedia) or built in 1925 (Inner West Leadlight).
My Earlier Posts
- Robert Campbell – Campbell's Cove – Campbell's Stores – The Rocks – Sydney – NSW
- Campbell's Wharf
- Campbell's Fields
- Greystanes – New South Wales
- Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta – NSW
- Tempe House – Tempe – New South Wales
- Glentworth – Ashfield – New South Wales
- Ambleside (Ashfield Castle) – 160 Queen Street – Ashfield – NSW
- Tresillian – 2–4 Shaw Street Petersham
- Yaralla – Concord – New South Wales
- St Andrews Cathedral – George Street – Sydney
- St Stephens Uniting Church – 197 Macquarie Street – Sydney
- Assorted Demolished Mansions In Sydney & Surrounds
- Demolished Sydney
- Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail – A History of Sydney Transport
Sources
Newspapers (via Trove, National Library of Australia)
- Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 14 January 1914, p.9, "Death of Colonel Goodlet": https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15473172
- Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 12 May 1927, p.12, "Canterbury House. Proposed New College": https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16383411
- Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 13 May 1927, p.12, "General Assembly. Presbyterian Church": https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16374207
State Library of New South Wales
- Royal Australian Historical Society, Photographs of Sydney, 1916–1935, PXA 1642, Item 04, "'Canterbury House', Canterbury, 1927" (13 negatives): https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110368047
- Watercolours of the Canterbury Estate in Ashfield, ca 1860, by Conrad Martens (catalogue note citing Elizabeth Ellis): https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110374918
- Canterbury subdivision plans, including Z/SP/C8/22 and Z/SP/C8/58 ("Canterbury House" Goodlet's Estate, 10 March 1928) and "Goodlet's Canterbury House No 2 Estate" (25 May 1929): https://content-lists.sl.nsw.gov.au/tabular-list/canterbury-subdivision-plans
- Goodlet Estate, Canterbury, Ashfield South, 2nd subdivision, 1920, Richardson & Wrench, Z/SP/A7/9, and Goodlet's "Canterbury House" No. 2 Estate, 1929, Richardson & Wrench, Z/SP/A7/3 (copies on Wikimedia Commons, see picture credits)
Reference works and histories
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Canterbury House": https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/canterbury_house
- Lesley Muir, "Bark huts and country estates", Dictionary of Sydney, 2013: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/bark_huts_and_country_estates
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Jeffreys, Arthur": https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/jeffreys_arthur
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Jeffreys, Sarah": https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/jeffreys_sarah
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Jeffreys, John": https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/jeffreys_john
- Ruth Teale, "Goodlet, John Hay (1835–1914)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 4, 1972: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goodlet-john-hay-3631
- "Goodlet, Ann Alison (c.1824–1903) and Elizabeth Mary (1854–1926)", Australian Dictionary of Biography: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goodlet-ann-alison-12941
- "Ann Alison Goodlet", Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography: https://sites.google.com/view/australian-dictionary-of-evang/g/goodlet-ann-alison-c-1822-1903
- "John Hay Goodlet (1835–1914), Presbyterian Philanthropist, Timber Merchant and Manufacturer", Philanthropists and Philanthropy (Colonial Givers), 2016: https://colonialgivers.com/2016/04/21/john-hay-goodlet-1835-1914-presbyterian-philanthropist-timber-merchant-and-manufacturer/
- Paul Davies Pty Ltd, Hurlstone Park Heritage Assessment Study, Stage 1 Report, for Canterbury-Bankstown Council, September 2016 (sections 2.7 and 2.9; cites Madden and Muir 1993): Canterbury-Bankstown Council (PDF)
- Lorraine Sim, "A Different Lens: Pegg Clarke, E. G. Shaw and the History of Australian Women's Photography", Photography and Culture, vol. 15, no. 4, 2022, pp. 397–419: https://doi.org/10.1080/17514517.2022.2147706
- Elizabeth Ellis, Conrad Martens: Life and Art, State Library of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1994, pp. 180–181 (as quoted by the State Library, Christie's and Sotheby's)
- Christie's, lot essay for Conrad Martens, "Canterbury House, the seat of Mr Arthur Jeffries: Garden Vista" and three others, sale of 11 April 2006: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4697952
- Sotheby's Australia, Important Australian Art, 2009, lot 42, Conrad Martens (four watercolours, provenance Major Frederick Fanning): https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2009/important-australian-art-au0730/lot.42.html
- Inner West Leadlight, "Ashbury": https://www.innerwestleadlight.com/ashbury
- Inner West Leadlight, "Goodlet Street": https://www.innerwestleadlight.com/copy-of-ashbury-fourth-street
- Wikipedia, "Ashbury, New South Wales": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashbury,_New_South_Wales
- Wikipedia, "Canterbury, New South Wales" (Canterbury Vale, the sugar works and St Paul's): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury,_New_South_Wales
- Wikipedia, "Arthur Jeffreys": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jeffreys
- Wikipedia, "Robert Campbell (Australian politician, born 1769)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Campbell_(Australian_politician,_born_1769)
- Wikipedia, "Edmund Blacket": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Blacket
- Wikipedia, "John Goodlet": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goodlet
- My Historic Sydney Mansions blog, "Canterbury House": https://historicsydneymansionsmanorshouses.blogspot.com/2026/07/cantebury-house.html
Picture credits
- The ten 1927 photographs of Canterbury House: E. G. (Eleanor Georgina) Shaw, Royal Australian Historical Society collection, State Library of New South Wales, PXA 1642, Item 04 (out of copyright, created before 1955).
- Portrait of Robert Campbell, oil, 1834, Rodius. State Library of New South Wales, public domain: Wikimedia Commons
- Edmund Blacket, about 1870, unknown photographer. State Library of New South Wales, public domain: Wikimedia Commons
- St Paul's Anglican Church, Canterbury, 2009. Toby Hudson, CC BY-SA 3.0: Wikimedia Commons
- Presbyterian Church, Ashfield, postcard, about 1900–1927. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of New South Wales, public domain: Wikimedia Commons
- Goodlet Estate, Canterbury, Ashfield South, 2nd subdivision, 1920. Richardson & Wrench, State Library of New South Wales Z/SP/A7/9, public domain: Wikimedia Commons
- Goodlet's "Canterbury House" No. 2 Estate, Canterbury, South Ashfield, 1929. Richardson & Wrench, State Library of New South Wales Z/SP/A7/3, public domain: Wikimedia Commons