Babworth House is a heritage-listed former residence and school and now staff accommodation at 103 Darling Point Road, Darling Point, Sydney, Australia. It was designed in various stages by Mortimer Lewis, Edmund Blacket, and Morrow and De Putron and built from 1912 to 1915 by Messrs W. Gawne and Son. It is also known as Mount Adelaide. The property is privately owned. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 13 August 1999.
History
Early colonial history
Originally known by its Aboriginal name Yarranabbee, this suburb on the south side of Sydney Harbour was called Mrs Darling's Point in honour of his wife by Ralph Darling, the Colonial Governor of New South Wales from 1825 to 1831. At that time the area was heavily timbered, but after New South Head Road was built in 1831 timber cutters felled many of the trees, and the land was subdivided. Most of the plots, covering in this area, were taken up between 1833 and 1838. The "Mrs" was lost from the name and the suburb and point became Darling Point.
In 1833 "Villa allotments" were advertised for sale at 'Mrs Darling's Point'. The land was auctioned on 11 October and the largest allotment No. 10, on the eastern side of the point was purchased by William Macdonald, an emancipist who was transported for life for forgery. Macdonald had become a successful businessman and entrepreneur, dealing in general hardware. Macdonald named his purchase Mount Adelaide and spent considerable amounts of money on it, although no residence had been built by the time he put it up for sale in 1837.
In the 1830s (1833–37) Macdonald was responsible for a considerable amount of landscaping including the planting of a vineyard on the Mount Adelaide estate, part of which is the site of what is now Wiston Gardens, including No.s 4 & 6. The vineyard was reputedly designed by Thomas Shepherd, the first nurseryman and landscape designer in the colony. The Mount Adelaide Estate was extensively sub-divided between the time Macdonald departed for England in 1837 and the turn of the century.
Thomas Shepherd
Thomas Shepherd (–1835), a landscape gardener and nursery proprietor, was NSW's first nurseryman, the first early writer and teacher on landscape design in the colony, and one of the main proponents of vine cultivation in this period. His father was Principal Gardener to the Earl of Crawford and Lindesay at his property Struthers, where the young Thomas received his earliest horticultural education. He then trained in all aspects of landscape gardening and worked for the practice of Thomas White before setting himself up as a practising landscape gardener in both Scotland and England. In his English work he came in contact with Humphry Repton, a noted landscape gardener, and in his writing criticised some of Repton's methods. Shepherd eventually established a nursery at Hackney to support his business. Widowed () and then remarried (1823) and faced with an unprofitable landscape and nursery business in the period after 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, he took a position with the New Zealand company. As Principal Superintendent he was charged with establishment of a colony on Stewart Island, New Zealand, with the intention of cultivating flax (Phormium tenax).
With a band of colonists, mainly Scots, he sailed in 1825 with his new wife Jane Sarah (née Henderson) and young family for the South Pacific. Unsuccessful in finding a suitable place for a settlement either in Stewart Island or the rest of New Zealand, they arrived in Sydney in early 1827. With encouragement from Governor Darling, he established the first commercial nursery garden in Australia near Grose Farm (1827) (today's suburb of Chippendale/Darlington, and adjacent to what is now the University of Sydney and Victoria Park). He named his nursery the Darling Nursery in honour of his patron. Progress was difficult because of the unprepared nature of the land allocated and he began with a vegetable garden. This was gradually expanded into the Darling Nursery with help of stock from Sydney Botanic Gardens, as well as from Colonial Secretary Alexander Macleay at Elizabeth Bay House and his son William Macarthur at Camden Park. Little is known of his landscaping work but, having established himself in the colony, Shepherd gave two sets of lectures at Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts during 1834–35, for which (in their published form) he is now chiefly remembered.