Strickland House (Carrara) – 52 Vaucluse Road – Vaucluse – NSW
It is well worth the trip to Strickland House in that Vaucluse Area. Almost a day trip. One of those spots that if you didn’t know it existed, youd never know it was there. It includes small bays like Milk Beach, Shark Beach & Vaucluse House Beach further along. As well as a walking trail around the Points. Nielsen Bay National Park holds most of the area. & have a beach with a shark proof net.
Strickland House Comes As a sight to behold really. Unfortunately all the Appointments & Effects from the residence has been removed & we are just left with the shell of a house. Still standing in grandeur at the edge of the harbour with some of the most stunning harbour views in Sydney. You Can See the Harbour bridge & Opera House Together as well as the inner Coastline of Double Bay Darling Point & Rose Bay
The house itself is just a remnant of the past it has had with
Victorian Italianate marine mansion · John Frederick Hilly for John Hosking, c.1855–56 — Standing — NSW Government / public grounds (NPWS Strickland Estate) — SHR #00722
Milk Beach, Hermitage Foreshore Track, and a white Italianate pile that still owns its lawn to the water — Carrara, renamed Strickland House when it became a women’s convalescent home under Governor Sir Gerald Strickland’s name. Seventy-five years of hospital use outlasted the private-residence chapter, then the community fought off boutique-hotel & sell-off schemes so the foreshore stayed public. This is one of the eastern suburbs’ great still there” stories.
At a glance
- Address: 52 Vaucluse Road, Vaucluse NSW 2030 (Woollahra LGA); c.4.8 ha harbourside estate
- Traditional Custodians: Aboriginal Country of the harbour’s southern shore (Cadigal / Eora)
- Original name: Carrara (private villa); renamed Strickland Convalescent Home for Women 1915 (after Sir Gerald Strickland, NSW Governor)
- Built: c.1855–1856 for John Hosking (first elected Mayor of Sydney, 1842–43 — ADB); architect John Frederick Hilly; SMH tender for walls 15 April 1856
- Style: Early Victorian Italianate marine mansion — dressed sandstone (historically painted), colonnaded verandahs, striking two-storey segmental / semicircular bay to the harbour
- Outbuildings: original stables/coach house; 1930s Georgian Revival dormitories and nurses home from hospital phase
- Heritage: NSW SHR #00722 (listed 2 April 1999; curtilage extended to whole estate 2012); former Register of the National Estate (1978)
- Fate / current use: Standing — grounds open sunrise to sunset for passive recreation (NPWS Strickland Estate); house generally closed except guided tours / heritage events; film location use continues
Site & setting
Part of William Charles Wentworth’s larger Vaucluse holdings — excised as a marriage portion for daughter Thomasina and Thomas Fisher (1830s–55); they returned to England without building. The parcel escaped the subdivision that ate most marine villas. Today it sits beside Nielsen Park / Greycliffe, above Milk Beach, on the Hermitage Foreshore walking spine, with borrowed bush backdrop and 180-degree harbour views toward Rose Bay and the city.
SHR significance hangs on that intact house-to-water relationship: carriage loop, terraces, croquet green, mature exotic and native plantings (Moreton Bay figs, hoop pines, stone pines, giant bamboo, Canary Island date palms, etc.).
- 1830s–55 – Wentworth family portion to Thomasina Fisher; no house built.
- Charles Lowe – May have begun building; on-sold (SHR phase list).
- 1855–56 – John Hosking commissions J.F. Hilly; Carrara built; family lives here into the 1870s.
- 1876/79–88 – Henry Moore MLC chapter (occupy from 1879; purchase often dated 1883); open-house society life; marble dogs at the porch in housemaid memoir.
- 11 Dec 1888 – Purchased by Arthur Wigram Allen with brother Boyce Allen; Boyce family residence; Arthur’s photography documents the estate.
- 1899–1902 – Let to Wilfred Inman as boys preparatory school — early home of what became Tudor House, Moss Vale.
- 1902–14 – Allen family / tenants (Sands occupants include Garvan, etc.).
- 1914 – NSW Government purchase via Foreshores Resumption Scheme (“public recreation ground at Rose Bay” / add to Nielsen Park intent).
- 1915–33 – Strickland Convalescent Home for Women opens.
- 1933–60 – Convalescent hospital for men and women (men’s facility amalgamated from Denistone House); 1930s dormitory blocks built.
- 1960–89 – Strickland House Hospital for the Aged / nursing home; closes December 1989.
- 1990s2010s – Urban park declaration pathway (Fahey 1994 public access); repeated community campaigns against lease/hotel/sell-off; conservation works to exterior and stables; June Poland memorial seat 2015.
- 2 April 1999 – SHR listing; whole-estate curtilage gazettal 2012.
- Film note: Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (Government House Darwin double); other screen uses are cited in heritage accounts.
- Today – Public grounds; house used for tours/events/filming under government control.
Architecture & interiors
Carrara is one of Hilly’s best-known surviving domestic works (with nearby Greycliffe). Two-storey dressed sandstone with attic; asymmetrical verandahs; two-storey segmental bay with Doric colonnade on the west — an early and striking feature. Formal rooms around a central hall; cedar French doors to harbour views; Italian marble chimneypieces and high-quality cedar joinery noted in SHR aesthetic assessment; cellar under dining room.
Service wings to the east around a courtyard (later infilled/ramped in hospital years). Stables – L-shaped dressed sandstone with idiosyncratic unfinished-looking detailing (quoins on one corner only, brick gable over stone, projecting blocks) — rare and characterful.
1930s Georgian Revival dormitories (north and south) and nurses’ home mark the Health Department chapter without erasing the 1850s villa.
People & anecdotes
John Hosking (1806–1882) – Merchant; married Martha Terry (Samuel Terry’s daughter); first elected Mayor of Sydney (ADB). Built Carrara as his marine villa after the 1840s crash had already wrecked his public career — a second-act harbour dream.
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Henry Moore (1815–1888) – Wharf owner (Moore’s Wharf, Millers Point), early P&O agent, MLC. Housemaid memoir (published tradition via A Girl at Government House / Poland materials) remembers marble hall, marble dogs, four gardeners, and “open house” daughters.
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Allen brothers — Link to Toxteth Park / Allen’s legal dynasty; Arthur’s camera leaves an Edwardian visual archive of Carrara. Isabella Dundas met Boyce while visiting relative Admiral Fairfax at Admiralty House – neat cross-harbour anecdote grounded in contemporary marriage reportage.
Wilfred & Mary Inman — School founders; Mary a daughter of Sir James Martin; childhood ties to Greycliffe and Woollahra House (Inman’s own later writing quoted in heritage narratives).
Sir Gerald Strickland – Name donor for the 1915 convalescent home (wife Lady Edeline’s name went to Greycliffe’s hospital phase).
June & Peter Poland / WHHS — Late-20th-century save-the-estate campaigners; booklet Carrara/Strickland House, the Finest Site on the Foreshores of Sydney Harbour.
What stands today
The mansion and stables stand. Grounds of Strickland Estate are open sunrise–sunset for walking and picnicking (NPWS rules: no alcohol, no amplified music, no solid-fuel BBQs, no marquees; group bookings for 20+). House interior access is limited to guided tours / special open days — check Nielsen Park office / NPWS listings.
What you can do:
- Walk Hermitage Foreshore Track from Nielsen Park; detour across the lawn; swim at Milk Beach.
- Pair with Greycliffe and Vaucluse House on this blog for the full Vaucluse marine-villa set.
- Read SHR #00722 before asserting zoning or development history.
Sources & further reading
- Heritage NSW / SHR — Strickland House #00722 (history & significance text widely reproduced under CC BY)
- Dictionary of Sydney — Strickland House: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/strickland_house
- NSW National Parks — Strickland Estate: https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/things-to-do/historic-buildings-places/strickland-estate
- ADB — Vivienne Parsons, “Hosking, John (1806–1882)”: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hosking-john-2200
- SMH 15 April 1856 — contractors tender for walls (Trove)
- June Poland / Woollahra History & Heritage Society — Carrara/Strickland House… booklet (+ supplements)
- Tanner Architects et al. — Conservation Management Plan (2003) and later CMP updates cited in SHR apparatus
- MHNSW — Vaucluse House / Greycliffe context
Related on this blog
- Greycliffe – Mona Road – Vaucluse (Hilly neighbour; Lady Edeline hospital twin)
- Vaucluse House – Vaucluse
- Fairwater – Point Piper (eastern harbour wealth; search Fairwater)
- Admiralty House (this batch — Dundas/Fairfax marriage anecdote link)
- Kirribilli House (this batch — Arthur Wigram Allen also last private owner there)
- Boomera / Jenner / Elizabeth Bay House for broader marine-villa comparison