Tarmons – Rockwall Crescent / Macleay Street – Potts Point – NSW
Built c.1830s · Verge alterations / possible Bibb · Demolished 1966 · Site now St Vincent’s College
On Woolloomooloo Hill — five acres peeled from John Busby’s grant and Hamilton Collins Sempill’s Rockwall estate — Lieutenant-General Sir Maurice O’Connell raised a sandstone house he named Tarmons, Irish for sanctuary, after the family’s home in County Kerry. Lady Mary, Bligh’s daughter, kept colonial society at the table; Godfrey Mundy ate wallaby-tail soup here in 1846. After O’Connell’s death the ballroom became Sir Charles Nicholson’s library; in 1856 the Sisters of Charity bought the mansion for convent, free hospital and school — the seed of St Vincent’s. The villa itself went in 1966. This is Tarmons, Potts Point — not neighbour Rockwall, and not the later Darlinghurst hospital campus alone.
At a glance
- Address / site: historic Macleay Street carriage approach, Potts Point / Woolloomooloo Hill; remembered under St Vincent’s College, Rockwall Crescent / Victoria Street; Sisters of Charity Heritage Centre at 1 Rockwall Crescent (Gadigal Country / Derawun)
- Land: about five acres from the Busby grant via Hamilton Collins Sempill of Rockwall — purchase window 1838–1839 (DoS 1838; Villas of Potts Point 1839)
- Built: Rockwall-estate Verge cottage from 1830 (standing by 1833); Verge 1836–1837 two-storey verandah alterations; later O’Connell-era addition possibly John Bibb after Verge’s 1838 retirement (Villas of Potts Point)
- Style: Sydney sandstone villa; Australian cedar panelling; 48-ft ballroom; elm-and-oak carriageway; harbour prospect (DoS)
- Original owner: Sir Maurice Charles Philip O’Connell (1768–1848) with Lady Mary O’Connell (née Bligh)
- Famous later chapter: Sir Charles Nicholson library; Sisters of Charity purchase 8 Feb 1856 → St Vincent’s convent / hospital / school
- Estate context: Rockwall neighbour; Potts Point dress-circle with Tusculum, Elizabeth Bay House, Springfield, Jenner
- Heritage status: villa demolished 1966; College campus and Heritage Centre carry the institutional story
- Fate: new convent (also named Tarmons) on the cleared site; later boarding use; original sandstone villa gone
Site & setting
Call the ridge Woolloomooloo Hill, Darlinghurst or Potts Point — Tarmons sat on about five acres cut from the Busby grant that also held Rockwall. Sempill sold that slice to O’Connell soon after the general’s December 1838 return as Commander of the Forces. Dictionary of Sydney puts the purchase in 1838; the Villas of Potts Point catalogue says 1839. Either way the house looked north and east across Port Jackson from a long tree-lined drive off Macleay Street.
Disambiguation, thrice. This is Tarmons the O’Connell–Nicholson–Sisters villa — not still-standing Rockwall next door (Verge for Busby / Sempill). It is not the mid-century convent building that reused the name after 1966. And the hospital story splits: the first St Vincent’s Hospital opened in this house in 1857; the familiar Darlinghurst campus begins when the hospital moved in 1870. The school stayed; the College still occupies the old Tarmons land.
Walk Rockwall Crescent today and you are inside that geography — College gates, Heritage Centre at No. 1, Victoria Street frontage where the Ladies’ College building rose in the 1880s. The sandstone mansion is gone; the sanctuary name and the Sisters’ mission are not.
Timeline
- 1768 – Maurice Charles Philip O’Connell born, County Kerry (ADB; DoS Tarmons branch of the clan).
- 8 May 1810 РMarries Mary Putland (n̩e Bligh) at Government House, Sydney; first NSW tour as lieutenant-governor with the 73rd (ADB).
- 1828 – John Busby’s Woolloomooloo Hill grant (Rockwall / later Tarmons land origin) (Villas; Rockwall heritage tradition).
- 1830 – John Verge plans a cottage on the Rockwall estate allotment; cottage up by 1833, not meeting full villa conditions (Villas).
- 1836–1837 – Verge alters the cottage into a two-storeyed verandahed residence (Villas).
- 1838 – Verge retires to Williams River; possible John Bibb role in further addition (Villas). O’Connell returns Sydney December (Fairlie); DoS dates his Potts Point purchase 1838 (cf. Villas 1839).
- c.1838–1840s – House named Tarmons; sandstone mansion known to Sydney society (DoS).
- 1845 – George Edwards Peacock paints Tarmons, Woolloomooloo, residence of Sir Maurice O’Connell (SLNSW ML 148 / a140027).
- 29 Jun 1846 – Godfrey Mundy dines at Tarmons — wallaby-tail soup, schnapper, kangaroo (Mundy / DoS quote). O’Connell administers the colony between Gipps and FitzRoy (ADB).
- 25 May 1848 – O’Connell dies, Darlinghurst, aged 80 (ADB); funeral St James’s; procession from Tarmons (~150 carriages) (SMH / DoS).
- By c.1850 – Sir Charles Nicholson holds Tarmons (ADB); ballroom → library (DoS).
- 26 Nov 1855 – Public meeting to raise funds toward £10,000 purchase for Sisters / free hospital (SMH via SOC); Nicholson markets the house (DoS) and later donates £1,000.
- 8 Feb 1856 – Sisters of Charity purchase from Nicholson (St Vincent’s College history). DoS: Sisters move in March 1856 (Sisters of Charity walking-tour date 6 March 1857 also appears in some accounts).
- Jul–Aug 1857 – Convent and hospital blessed by Archbishop Polding; outpatients open (DoS); first outpatient 25 Aug 1857 (SOC); first in-patient received into the Women’s Ward, November 1857 (SOC walking tour).
- 1 May 1858 – St Vincent’s School / day-school opens on site (College; DoS 1858) — schoolroom at the rear of the hospital wards; weekly fees 1s–1s 6d, free for families who could not pay; fees helped fund hospital and convent repairs (SOC).
- 1863 – New school building (SOC walking tour).
- 1870 – Hospital transfers to Darlinghurst (College; SOC); school expands on Potts Point land.
- 1871 – St Vincent’s High School opens with the first ten girls taught in Tarmons (SOC).
- 1882 / 1884 / 1886 – Ladies’ College title; boarding; Victoria Street school building — thereafter Tarmons convent-only (DoS; SOC).
- 1939 – Foundation stone for replacement convent; war delays works (DoS).
- 1966 – Most of old Tarmons demolished; new convent named Tarmons (DoS; Villas; SOC).
- 1990s – Successor convent fabric repurposed for College boarding (SOC Strong Support).
- 6 Jun 2019 – Sisters of Charity Heritage Centre opens at 1 Rockwall Crescent (SOC).
- Today – No 1830s villa fabric. St Vincent’s College and Heritage Centre occupy the site story.
Architecture & interiors
Dictionary of Sydney and the image record carry what can be said safely.
The house was Sydney sandstone, cedar-panelled inside, with a reception hall, a large wooden stair to the upper floor, and a 48-foot ballroom to the right of the hall — later Nicholson’s library, then the Sisters’ chapel (DoS). A long carriageway of elms and oaks ran from Macleay Street to the front door; the front windows took Port Jackson and the north shore (DoS). Peacock’s 1845 oil shows the harbour-side villa in its O’Connell prime. An unfinished 1840s drawing-room watercolour (SLNSW scrap-album tradition) looks out through French doors to a verandah — crimson carpet, green seats, gilt-framed pictures, figures reading and sewing — complementary to Peacock’s exterior (SL Magazine reading).
Architect. The Villas of Potts Point is the careful account: Verge’s 1830 Rockwall-estate cottage; Verge’s own 1836–1837 enlargement to a two-storey verandahed house; then, because Verge left practice in 1838, a possible John Bibb hand in the addition that completed Tarmons for O’Connell. Some secondary notices simply say “Built by John Verge in 1838,” which compresses three phases into one name. The Verge–Bibb question remains open.
Safe detail rests on Dictionary of Sydney dimensions, Peacock’s view, and the drawing-room sketch rather than later romance.
People & anecdotes
Sir Maurice O’Connell is the founding private resident: Kerry-born soldier, cousin to Daniel O’Connell’s circle, lieutenant-governor under Macquarie, commander of the forces on his second Sydney tour, briefly Administrator in 1846 (ADB; DoS). He named the house for the Tarmons branch of his family — sanctuary in the Irish gloss the Dictionary and the Sisters still use. Lady Mary, Bligh’s daughter and Putland’s widow, brought the old factional heat of 1808 into the drawing-room politics of the 1810s and again after 1838; ADB tracks her Parramatta land fight with Gipps. At Tarmons the couple entertained at colonial full dress. Mundy’s 29 June 1846 dinner — London manners, then wallaby, schnapper and kangaroo — is the best eyewitness page we have (Mundy via DoS). When the general died in May 1848, Sydney turned out in a funeral the Herald said it had never matched; the procession wound from Tarmons to St James’s.
Sir Charles Nicholson bought the house into the colony’s bookish elite. Physician, Speaker of the Legislative Council, driver of the University of Sydney, collector of books and antiquities (ADB), he turned the ballroom into a library — the same room the Sisters would sanctify as a chapel. When he prepared to leave for England he asked £10,000; he still put £1,000 of his own into the Sisters’ appeal (DoS; SOC). Traces of that library story are pointed toward the Mitchell / University Nicholson collections in Sisters’ heritage writing — treat as legacy narrative, not a claim that every volume sat on a Tarmons shelf until 1966.
The Sisters of Charity — Australia’s first religious sisters, arrived 1838, Mary Aikenhead’s congregation — give the house its longest chapter. Multi-faith Sydney raised the purchase money; Protestant, Catholic and Jewish names appear in the 26 November 1855 St Mary’s Seminary appeal (SMH 28 Nov 1855 via SOC) — already “a moiety” of the £10,000 collected across denominations. From 1856–57 Tarmons was convent, hospital for the sick poor, and soon school. Outpatients 25 Aug 1857, first Women’s Ward in-patient Nov 1857, school 1858 (fees funding the works), hospital to Darlinghurst in 1870, High School’s first ten girls in the mansion 1871, Ladies’ College flowering through the 1880s, convent-only use of the old house after 1886 — then structural decline, a stalled 1939 replacement, and the 1966 clearance. The College that still teaches on Rockwall Crescent is the living descendant of the day-school in the rear of the hospital wards.
Images worth seeking
Peacock’s 1845 oil; the drawing-room watercolour; Sisters of Charity archival views; the Heritage Centre key and Nicholson library trail; any rare pre-1966 photographs of the sandstone villa before clearance.
What stands today
Tarmons the sandstone villa does not stand. Dictionary of Sydney, Villas of Potts Point and the Sisters’ own heritage writing agree on a 1966 demolition for a new convent (also called Tarmons). What you visit is the College campus, the Heritage Centre, and the neighbour villas that still explain the hill.
No public house museum of the 1830s rooms. The enrichment is Peacock’s view, Mundy’s menu, Nicholson’s library-ballroom, the Sisters’ multi-faith purchase, and a girls’ school that never left the ground.
- Walk Rockwall Crescent, Potts Point — St Vincent’s College street address; Sisters of Charity Heritage Centre at No. 1 (opened 2019) sits beside the remembered site / chapel locality — SOC notes the original key to Tarmons is preserved and displayed there.
- Trace Victoria Street for the later Ladies’ College building tradition and the hospital’s 1870 move toward the Darlinghurst campus (separate visit).
- Pair the walk with standing Rockwall (same Busby/Sempill grant story), Tusculum (AIA NSW Chapter, Manning Street), Elizabeth Bay House (museum), and Jenner.
- Do not expect original Tarmons fabric inside the College; do not treat No. 3 Rockwall Crescent as surviving Tarmons — SOC offers it only as a look-alike comparison.
- Do not confuse this Potts Point origin story with a claim that the present Darlinghurst hospital towers are Tarmons — they are the moved hospital’s descendants.
Sources & further reading
- Dictionary of Sydney — Tarmons (Samantha Frappell, 2012): https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/tarmons
- Dictionary of Sydney — O’Connell, Maurice: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/oconnell_maurice
- ADB — ‘O’Connell, Sir Maurice Charles (1768–1848)’: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oconnell-sir-maurice-charles-2517
- ADB — ‘Nicholson, Sir Charles (1808–1903)’: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nicholson-sir-charles-2508
- St Vincent’s College — History (deed 8 Feb 1856): https://www.stvincents.nsw.edu.au/why-st-vincents/history/
- Sisters of Charity Australia Heritage Centre — Walking Tour: https://www.socheritagecentre.org.au/walking-tour
- Sisters of Charity — ‘Strong support’: https://www.socheritagecentre.org.au/blog-1/strongsupport
- The Villas of Potts Point (Potts Point Preservation PDF): https://pottspointpreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Villas-of-Potts-Point.pdf
- Godfrey Mundy, Our Antipodes (London, 1852)
- Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May 1848 (funeral); 28 Nov 1855 (fundraising meeting report — via SOC Strong Support)
- SLNSW — Peacock, Tarmons…, 1845 (ML 148 / a140027); Villas of Darlinghurst / Potts Point exhibition materials
- MHNSW Cook & Curator — ‘I dined this day with relish’ (Mundy / Peacock note)
- James A. Dowling, ‘Potts Point, Darling Point and Neighbourhood’, JRAHS vol. 13 (1927) — DoS reference list
- ADB — ‘O’Connell, Sir Maurice Charles (1768–1848)’ death at Darlinghurst, 25 May 1848: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oconnell-sir-maurice-charles-2517
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