Fairwater is a heritage-listed residence and homestead at 560 New South Head Road, Double Bay, Sydney, Australia. It was designed by John Horbury Hunt (1882) and J. W. Manson () and built from 1882 to 1970. Acquired by members of the Fairfax family in late 1900, following the 2017 death of Lady Mary Fairfax , the house is managed by the executors of her estate. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 27 March 2000.
In the media, the location of Fairwater is often incorrectly reported as the suburb of Point Piper.
History
A Crown grant was part of Captain John Piper's Point Piper Estate officially granted in 1820. This grant was subsequently acquired by Daniel Cooper and Solomon Levy in 1830. The subdivision of this part of Cooper's estate, known as the Point Piper Estate, commenced in the mid-1850s.
The first leasehold title to the allotment, which was to become Fairwater, was made in January 1863 to Edwin Thomas Beilby. Beilby (-1906) was a businessman associated with many of the prominent Sydney financial institutions of the nineteenth century. The leasehold title was for a period of 99 years 9 months, of an area of 2 acres 13 perches, with an annual rental set at A£52 for the duration of the lease. During the mid-1870s Beilby was bankrupted, and in June 1875 Beilby's official assignee, F. T. Humphreys, sold the allotment through the auction house of L. E. Threlkeld.
Joseph family ownership
The purchaser of the leasehold allotment was James White of Cranbrook. White (1828–1890) was a member of the pioneering Hunter Valley family of pastoralists. After a short period as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly between 1864 and 1868, in 1873 White bought Cranbrook (which was built for Robert Tooth in 1859), directly opposite Fairwater. In March 1882, Francis Edward Joseph purchased the leasehold title from James White for the sum of A£500 (plus the annual rental of A£52). Joseph (1858–?) was the only son of Samuel Aaron Joseph (1824–1898), MLA and MLC. Joseph is generally referred to as a stockbroker by profession. Joseph adopted his wife's family name (Carnegy) in 1915 on inheriting the feudal barony of Lour in Angus, Scotland.
Fairwater was constructed for Joseph in 1882 to a design by arguably the most original architect to practice in Australia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century – John Horbury Hunt (1838–1904). Hunt was a Canadian born architect who arrived in Sydney in 1863. Closely affiliated with the Bishop of Armidale and Grafton, and the White family of pastoralists, Hunt's work is particularly evident in New England and the Hunter Valley.
The Josephs resided at the house, which was called Fairwater from , for the period 1883 and 1887. During 1888 to 1889 the property was leased to Thomas Forster Knox (1849–1919), son of Sir Edward Knox, the founder of the Colonial Sugar Refining Co., and later chairman of this company. The Josephs returned to occupy the house in 1890 and continued to reside there for most of that decade up to 1897 when the house was again tenanted, initially in 1897 by Thomas Buckland (the son of the merchant, pastoralist, and banker – Thomas Buckland), and then by the Royal Navy for the years 1899 and 1901.
Fairfax family ownership
The Fairfax family ownership of Fairwater commenced in late 1900 with the assignment of the leasehold of 2 acres and 13 perches to James Oswald Fairfax. The purchase price of the leasehold title was A£5,350. James Oswald Fairfax (1863–1928) was the third son of the proprietor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Sir James Reading Fairfax (1834–1919), and grandson of the founder of that newspaper – John Fairfax (1804–1877). In March 1909 J. O. Fairfax bought out the leasehold title to the 2 acres 13 perches from the Cooper family. Following the acquisition of freehold title Fairfax engaged the Sydney architect John Williamson Manson of Manson and Pickering to further remodel the Hunt house, with alterations being undertaken sometime after 1910. Manson (-1922) was Scottish born and trained in Glasgow in the office of Alexander Thomson (1817–1875). He arrived in Sydney in the mid-1880s. George A. Taylor's (the publisher of Building) obituary of Manson stated that "he was one of the greatest architects of our time".