User:Maypm/Greycliffe House, Vaucluse, Sydney



Greycliffe House is a large, Gothic-style, sandstone house built in the Australian city of Sydney by architect John Frederick Hilly in 1850-1851. It is listed by the New South Wales Heritage Council as a building of historical significance. It is located at Shark Beach in Nielsen Park, Vaucluse, and is owned and managed by the New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation.

The Wentworth Family
The land on which Greycliffe House was built was originally owned by the prominent New South Wales politician and landed proprietor William Charles Wentworth. He purchased land from Customs Collector John Piper after Piper’s financial collapse in 1827 and was granted a further 370 acres by the Crown, making a total of 515 acres.

In 1847, Wentworth’s daughter Fanny married John Reeve. Reeve was a wealthy land owner and pastoralist. He owned an extensive farming property in Gippsland, Victoria, called Snake Ridge which covered 60,000 acres in area and was located on the La Trobe River.

Reeve bought 14 acres of land from William Charles Wentworth, fronting Shark Bay at what is now the suburb of Vaucluse, in 1850. He commissioned John Frederick Hilly to design Greycliffe House, which was completed in 1851. It appears that the Reeves lived mainly at Snake Ridge over the next few years because, in 1852, John Reeve was appointed territorial magistrate for the Gippsland area. However it is thought the couple lived briefly at Greycliffe in the latter part of 1851 and in late 1853 and early 1854.

In 1854, Fanny and John Reeve accompanied William Charles Wentworth to England. The occasion of Wentworth leaving Sydney for a visit to England received much newspaper coverage. and a drawing was made of Wentworth and the Reeves leaving Sydney in the pouring rain in a rowboat to board the ship Chusan for the voyage to England (see picture on right). Wentworth returned to Australia after a short visit but Fanny and John Reeve never returned and Greycliffe was leased to private tenants for many years after their departure.

Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes & Mrs Elizabeth Gibbes
John George Nathaniel Gibbes was born in 1787 in London, England. His father was John Gibbes, and his ancestors has been sugar planters on the West Indian island of Barbados for many generations. In 1804, young Gibbes joined the British Army as a commissioned officer, having received a classical education at Merchant Taylors' School in London and then privately with a cleric in North Wales. He soon saw action during the Napoleonic Wars, taking part in brutal fighting in South America and the Low Countries and, after nearly dying of fever, serving as a staff officer in various English garrison towns. By the end of the conflict, he had achieved promotion to the rank of major.

In 1814, he married Elizabeth Davis at St Andrew's Church in Holborn, London. Elizabeth had been born circa 1790 and was the daughter of a clergyman who had spent time in India. She and her husband would have a total of eight children, many of whom would subsequntly marry members of Sydney's colonial establishment.

Gibbes joined the British Customs Service in 1819 but he still remained a member of the British Army's reserve list. In 1837, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and finally to that of full colonel shortly before his retirement from the military at the beginning of the 1850s.

During his early Customs career, from 1819 to 1833, Gibbes served as His Majesty's Collector of Customs at the ports of Falmouth, Jamaica, and Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. In 1834, at the age of 47, Gibbes arrived in Sydney to take up the position of Collector of Customs for the Colony of New South Wales. He was also given a seat on the colony's Legislative Council, where he remained until the coming of "responsible government" to New South Wales in 1855. The considerable amounts of government revenue raised by Gibbes from the collection of Customs duties and the seizure of ship-borne contraband helped fund the growth of Sydney from an agrarian-based penal settlement into a flourishing trading centre and incorporated city.

The Colonel and Mrs Gibbes first leased Greycliffe House in 1851, having sold their previous residence—Wotonga House (now part of Admiralty House), on Sydney's Kirribilli Point—in anticipation of the Colonel's possible retirement from the Customs Department. He and Mrs Gibbes and lived initially at Greycliffe for two years. They then moved to another Sydney house, Waterview, prior to renting Greycliffe again in 1857 for a further two years. In 1858, a lavish wedding reception was held at the house to celebrate the marriage of the Colonel and Mrs Gibbes' youngest daughter, Matilda, to Augustus Berney—a senior Customs officer. A copy of a drawing of Greycliffe, done by Matilda Gibbes/Berney, hangs today in the house.

Colonel Gibbes had shelved for a number of years his plans to leave the New South Wales Public Service; but finally, in 1859, at the age of 72, he retired as head of the Customs Department, drawing a half-pay pension of ₤500 per year. (His decision to retire at that juncture had been prompted by the exposure of a smuggling scandal involving his treacherous second son, William John Gibbes.) He and his wife quitted Greycliffe and went to live at Yarralumla— now the official residence of the Governor-General of Australia but in those days a rural property on the Limestone Plains owned by the elderly couple's youngest child, Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes. Colonel Gibbes died at Yarralumla homestead in 1873 and Mrs Gibbes died there a year later. They lie buried at the Anglican Church of St John the Baptist in Canberra.

Augustus Morris
Augustus Morris was born in 1820 in Tasmania. His father was Augustus Morris and his mother was Constantia Hibbins. His family was comparatively wealthy, for his father occupied land near the town of Ross and owned the inn and punt at Cove Point.

In 1842, Morris explored salt-bush country around the New South Wales Riverina district and took up pastoral runs there. He later managed some of the properties around this area for William Charles Wentworth. Over the next decade he acquired large areas of land in both New South Wales and Queensland.

Morris represented the pastoral districts of Liverpool Plains and Gwydir from 1851 to 1856 in the New South Wales Legislative Council. Then, from 1859 to 1864, he represented Balranald in the Legislative Assembly. It was during the gap from about 1856 to 1857 that he was not a Member of Parliament that he rented Greycliffe from Fanny and John Reeve.

Joseph Scaife Willis
Joseph Scaife Willis rented Greycliffe from Fanny and John Reeve for a protracted period between 1859 and 1872

Joseph Willis was born in Scotland in 1808. His parents were Thomas Willis and Nancy Willis (nee Lumley). He married Janet Speir in 1836. Four years later in 1840 he went to Sydney to work for his uncle. He travelled alone as he wished to see if life in Sydney was suitable for a family. He decided to remain and in 1843 his wife Janet followed him to Australia with their son.

Willis became a very prominent businessman in Sydney. He established the firm Willis Merry and Company with his uncle, and when his uncle retired it became Willis Lloyd and Company. He also held several directorships with other companies.

Janet and Joseph had five more children after their arrival in Australia over a wide period. Thomas was born in 1844, Mary in 1845, William in 1850, Annette in 1852 and Edith in 1855. Edith Willis had a special love for Greycliffe. She recalled that the stream which ran through the garden at nearby Vaucluse House went down to the water's edge, and she and the other children loved to paddle their canoes along it. At that time the banks of the stream were thick with arum lilies.

Janet died in 1863 at Greycliffe when the two youngest girls Annette and Edith were aged only 11 and eight respectively. A photo of them in black dresses, mourning for their mother, is shown on the right.

William Bede Dalley
William Bede Dalley rented Greycliffe between 1878 and 1878. Dalley was born in 1831 in Sydney. His parents John Dalley and Catherine Spillane were both convicts but William obtained a good education. In 1856, he became a lawyer and was admitted to the Bar. In the same year he also became a Member of the New South Wales Parliament, becoming a prominent public figure with considerable private assets. He was a compelling orator and wrote numerous articles for newspapers and journals.

In 1872, at the age of 41, he married Eleanor Jane Long. She was the daughter of William Long and sister of Lady Isabella Martin (see below).

Fitzwilliam Wentworth
I am June Dorothy Ollerenshaw. I was born in Margaret Street Granville 18.9.1936. I have recently had my autobiography published 'GRANVILLE A MOTHER'S GRIEF.' My two daughters lost their lives in the Granville Train Disaster. I was born very premature and always believed I spent the first 6 weeks of my life in The Tresillian at Vaucluse House. Since the book was released I have been in touch for the first time ever, with my first cousin David Ollerenshaw the son of my Father's older brother Rupert Ollerenshaw dec. Rupert Ollerenshaw was a Supreme Court judge in   many years ago. David grew up in Rose Bay and through him I realised the Tresillian may not have been at Vaucluse House. It seems it was at Greycliffe House. I remember as a small child being taken to see a photo of myself and my oler broth on the wall of what I was always told to be Vaucluse House. I would like some information on Greycliffeose re being a hospital for premature babies in th 1930. jollerenshaw@ozemail.com.au

In April 1914 Greycliffe House and 2.5 acres (1 ha) were dedicated for a hospital to be known as the Lady Edeline [Strickland] Hospital for Babies.