The Cedars – St John’s – Parramatta – NSW
Built 1816 as St John’s Parsonage · Attributed to Francis Greenway · Later Ben Doran / The Cedars · Demolished late 1908–early 1909
On the southern ridge above colonial Parramatta — Burramattagal Country — the Principal Chaplain’s red-brick residence once balanced Old Government House on the opposite hill. Francis Greenway’s 1816 parsonage for the Reverend Samuel Marsden grew into a Victorian private mansion and a ladies’ college before the Edwardian wreckers finished it. For a time it was known as Ben Doran, then as The Cedars. Drivers now cross the site at the O’Connell Street / Great Western Highway intersection, often without knowing a landmark ever stood there.
At a glance
- Names: St John’s Parsonage / Rectory; later Ben Doran (J. Y. Mills, from 1880); then The Cedars (George Pile, from 1888)
- Site: Glebe / Western Road ridge near St John’s Church and Cemetery, Parramatta — roughly the present O’Connell Street and Great Western Highway intersection (St John’s Online reconstruction)
- Built: Foundation stone 1816 (laid by Martha Marsden); Georgian parsonage completed for Rev. Samuel Marsden
- Architect (attributed): Francis Greenway — first major colonial work cited by St John’s Online / Michaela Ann Cameron
- Style: Colonial Georgian brick; later Victorian balconies, wings and “modernising” by Mills (Illustrated Sydney News, 1883)
- Key occupants: Marsden household and successive St John’s clergy; John Yelverton Mills; George Pile; boarding house (Mrs Flora McLeod); Ladies’ College (Miss Ellen Gully; later Bond & Waugh); final private residents the Pearce family
- Fate: Abandoned and unsafe by 1908; demolished late 1908–early 1909 despite public protest
Site & setting
Joseph Lycett’s circa 1819–20 views of Parramatta show a large red-brick building commanding the southern ridge opposite Old Government House — Church and State surveying the town together. The parsonage overlooked St John’s Cemetery and the twin-towered church. Greenway’s walls were reported two feet two inches thick, with a circular solid-stone stair and a roofscape of cross gables and chimneys. Outbuildings and an extensive front garden completed the glebe ensemble. After demolition, late twentieth-century flats and the road intersection erased the footprint.
Timeline
- 1816 – Foundation stone laid by Miss Martha Marsden; Greenway parsonage begun for Rev. Samuel Marsden, Principal Chaplain.
- 1819–20 – Lycett paintings frame the completed residence as a landmark of Macquarie-era Parramatta.
- to 1880 – Continues as St John’s clerical residence (later clergy found the scale awkward).
- 1880 – Estate agent John Yelverton Mills takes the property; renames it Ben Doran; adds balconies, wings and a “modern” front (Illustrated Sydney News, March 1883).
- 15 Feb 1888 – Sold to Mills’s partner George Pile, who renames it The Cedars.
- Jul 1888 – Burglary of silver and jewellery reported at The Cedars, Western Road.
- 1891 – Mortgage foreclosure by Miriam Hayden; house advertised for sale.
- 1894–95 – Boarding house under Mrs Flora McLeod.
- 1896–1902 – Ladies’ College / girls’ school (Miss Gully; then Mrs Annie Bond and Miss Mary Elizabeth Waugh — an early strand in the Tara Anglican School story).
- 1903–05 – Alderman E. P. Pearce and family occupy the house; community events held there.
- Sep 1908 – Jan 1909 – Press reports abandonment and tenders for removal; demolished despite heritage protests (Evening News; St John’s Online Part IV).
Architecture & interiors
Period descriptions of the Georgian core note thick brick walls, lath-and-plaster finishes, a circular stone staircase, a central hall with rooms to each side repeated upstairs, and gabled outbuildings. Mills’s Victorian campaign wrapped balconies around the frontage so that Sydney’s time ball and Town Hall could be seen from the height. Sale notices of the early 1890s emphasise numerous rooms, bathrooms and the celebrated view. School memories later recalled a semi-circular drive, white-tiled verandah, marble mantelpieces, chandeliers and a spiral stair — fabric now known only from photographs, press woodcuts and oral tradition.
People & anecdotes
Samuel Marsden — Principal Chaplain; the “Flogging Parson” of contested memory; the house was his official seat above the parish he buried so many of.
Francis Greenway — emancipist Colonial Architect; St John’s Online treats the parsonage as his first major work in the colony.
J. Y. Mills & George Pile — real-estate partners who successively owned and renamed the mansion during the 1880s boom, then lost it in the 1890s crash.
Norman Wallace Pile — injured as a child on the northern verandah in 1890; killed at Gallipoli (Hill 60, 1915).
Miss Ellen Gully / Bond & Waugh — ladies’-college principals; Waugh’s later teaching career feeds into the Tara school lineage (Hubbard, Tara: A Telling of the Tapestry).
What stands today
Nothing of the house remains. The site is absorbed by the O’Connell Street / Great Western Highway junction and later flats. St John’s Church and Cemetery still mark the old religious precinct. St John’s Online’s multi-part “Lost Landmark” essay is the fullest modern biography of the building.
Sources & further reading
- Michaela Ann Cameron, “Lost Landmark: St John’s Parsonage, Parramatta,” St John’s Online (2020): stjohnsonline.org (Parts I–IV)
- Illustrated Sydney News, 17 March 1883 — “The Old Parsonage Modernised” (before/after)
- Evening News, 26 September 1908 (“The Cedars”); 2 January 1909 (“Historic Parramatta House… Now Being Demolished”)
- Bronwyn Hubbard, Tara: A Telling of the Tapestry (Tara Anglican School, 1997) — ladies’-college chapter
Related on this blog
- Elizabeth Farm – Parramatta
- Old Government House, Parramatta Park (complementary Macquarie-era seat of power)
- Other lost Greenway-era and Parramatta glebe houses
