Rouse Hill Estate is a heritage-listed homestead and estate off Windsor Road (356 Annangrove Road), Rouse Hill, City of Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia. Rouse Hill House and farm was the family home of Richard Rouse, the Colonial Superintendent of Public Works and Convicts at Parramatta.
The homestead, in the Australian Georgian style, was developed between 1813 and 1819 with further developments in . The homestead is managed by Sydney Living Museums as a museum that is open to the public. Much of the former grounds have been transformed into Rouse Hill Regional Park and subsequent residential and commercial developments. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
History
Rouse family
Richard Rouse (1774-1852) appears to have begun building at Rouse Hill in 1813 although the grant of was not made until October 1816. Sometime between 1818 and 1825, Rouse, his wife Elizabeth (1772-1849) and family moved from Parramatta to the new house. The son of an Oxfordshire cabinet maker and shop-keeper, Rouse came to the colony, free, in 1801. Prospering quickly, by 1805 he was Superintendent of Public Works and Convicts at Parramatta.
In this role he supervised the building of Governor Lachlan Macquarie and his wife's additions to Old Government House, Parramatta, in the mid 1810s. It is possible that these works influenced Rouse to build a bigger house than he first intended, adding larger, longer rooms behind the front range.
He chose the site of his new house while building toll houses for Macquarie's upgraded road to the Hawkesbury River. Rouse sited the new house prominently, possibly with an eye to its possible use as an inn, on a hilltop adjacent to the toll house (also built by him) on the Parramatta to Windsor Turnpike. He acquired other properties, more fertile than the Rouse Hill farm, but Rouse Hill had the advantage of strategic siting. While other early colonial homesteads overlooked their crops or pastures, Rouse Hill has always overlooked the busy Windsor Road. It was from here that Rouse and his descendants oversaw their distant pastoral and agricultural interests, rather than the estate itself being the focus of those interests.
Rouse was not bred to the land, but was shrewd and capable, careful of money and acquisitive of property. He left, on his death in 1852, extensive holdings throughout the colony. The Rouse Hill estate grew to by Rouse's death, by purchase of an adjacent grant. Rouse consolidated his land holdings at North Richmond from around 1806 and increased his pastoral holdings in the north west of New South Wales, using his sons to colonise further west while he continued to acquire land in Parramatta and Western Sydney.
A number of the property's outbuildings finished construction following the completion of the house, including the laundry wing, cottage, barn and woolshed. The garden layout reflects the construction of the house between 1813 and 1818. Some trees remain from the plantings in the mid 19th century. With the exception of outbuildings, Rouse seems to have made no other alterations to the property's buildings. This was left to later generations. Rouse died in 1852 leaving the property to his son Edwin Rouse. The property went to Edwin's son Edwin Stephen Rouse on his death in 1862.
A summerhouse, woolshed and a two-storey service wing was added in the 1860s, the stables built in 1876 and 1877 and the house redecorated and partly furnished in 1885. The service wing made no direct connection with the house. A verandah, weighted sash windows, a modified front door and sidelights and other late 19th century innovations were also installed. These too have been done in such a way as to preserve the integrity of the house.
Rouse Hill Public School opened to the east of Rouse Hill Estate in 1888.
Edwin Stephen Rouse's eldest daughter Nina, who had left the house in 1895 to marry George Terry, returned with her husband to live at Rouse Hill in 1924. This was a result of their bankruptcy. Following the death of Edwin Stephen Rouse in 1931 his estate was administered by Trustees, mainly family members and later a family company, until 1969. In 1932 the studio was converted into a breakfast room. Estate subdivision had begun in 1951 and the property had been reduced to by 1963. Nina Terry died at Rouse Hill House in 1968 and the following year the remaining were subdivided. The homestead block of went to her two sons Gerald and Roderick Terry as tenants in common.