In 1853, after 12 years in the Colony, Samuel was in secure employment and had risen to be the overseer of the Printing Department at the Herald. By judicious investment he had also acquired a small property portfolio. Now firmly established, he sent to Cornwall for his now widowed mother and his three maiden sisters to join him.
They arrived in June 1854. By this time, he and Eliza had 4 children under the age of 10 and the accommodation in his terrace house in Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo where they were living at the time would have been severely strained by the addition of 4 more adults.
On 9 September 1854 he purchased 2 houses on a large block of land at Newtown, just over an acre and a quarter, from Joshua Frey Josephson, Solicitor and later NSW Judge, who had been Mayor of Sydney in 1848. Samuel paid £500 for the block, which was part of the 240 acre Camperdown Estate, originally granted in 1806 to the incoming Governor William Bligh by his predecessor Governor King. Samuel does not appear to have borrowed to make the purchase, the property was unencumbered when it was used as part security for the purchase of The Empire in 1859 and there is no record of a previous mortgage.
Whether both residences had already been built when Bennett purchased the property is not clear. However, the deed of conveyance mentions “all houses and buildings ‘premises and rent” and the price paid would indicate that there was at least one residence on the land. Josephson had purchased Lot N for only £45/11/7, when it was auctioned as part of the Bligh Estate in 1846. It seems likely that Rosebank was built first, and if Willow Lodge had not already been built at the time of purchase, it was built soon after. (A Heritage Impact Statement for a Development Application for Willow Lodge in 2010, stated that the house was thought to have been built “about 1850”, in which case it would have already been there when Samuel purchased.) On balance, it seems that both residences probably existed at the time of purchase and that Samuel may have made the purchase largely for this reason.
The best description of how the property operated prior to a 1905 sub-division is given in a valuation made by Richardson & Wrench for Estate Duty on the estate of Eliza, who died in 1886:
- Rosebank was described as a “Cottage Villa of brick on stone foundations slate roof, having verandah, hall 8 rooms & out offices” on “Land having 126 feet frontage to a narrow unnamed street….” (subsequently Bennett Street.)
- Willow Lodge is described as being “of brick – (cemented) on stone foundations slate roof, having verandah and 8 apartments in all” with a “66 feet frontage to Wilson Street”.
- The rest of the land is notionally divided into 2 vacant blocks one fronting Wilson Street and the other Queen Street.
Total value at the time was £4,500.
Samuel and Eliza apparently lived at Rosebank. Willow Lodge was probably occupied by his mother and her three daughters. Eliza’s mother, Elizabeth Sellars joined them in October 1856 and Samuel’s brother Christopher also lived with them after he arrived in Australia via USA in the late 1850’s.
The family must have been happy to be re-united, and living what was then almost a semi-rural existence at Newtown, as they had in Cornwall, but they also faced some sadness. First with the loss of Samuel’s 6-year-old daughter Sophia in September 1854, soon after the move to Newtown. Then, in 1857, the death of Samuel’s sister, Sidwell Bennett age 33. Followed in 1858 by Samuel’s sister Catherine aged 36; married to builder William Bailey, they lived close by in what was then Cooks River Road (now that section of King St, Newtown beyond its junction with Enmore Road). Both sisters were victims of “consumption”, (TB). And then, in 1860 the two grandmothers both died; Ann Bennett in June and Elizabeth Sellars in July. All were buried at the Camperdown Cemetery in adjoining graves, together with Samuel’s daughter Catherine, who had died aged 6 of scarlet fever in 1853, the year before the move to Newtown.
There was also cause for celebration, with the marriage of Samuel’s youngest sister Margaret in 1855, the birth of a son Christopher in 1857 and the marriage of Samuel’s brother, also Christopher, in September 1860.
They were living here when Samuel took the huge step of purchasing The Empire in partnership with William Hanson in 1859. And, this is where Samuel was when he found the time to write The History of Australian Discovery and Colonisation, first serialised in The Weekly Empire from February 1865 to October 1866.
When young, the children attended Sampson’s Academy, a short walk away on the corner of King St and Missenden Road, Newtown, with Alfred moving on to Dr Pendrill’s Academy at Glebe Point to finish his education before commencing work in the composing room at The Empire in late 1865.
Rose returns to Rosebank in 1873
After Samuel and Eliza left Newtown in 1868 the houses were rented until in 1873, following their marriage, Rose and John Heaton moved into Rosebank. During this time, Samuel added to the property by acquiring 2 adjoining lots (parts of original Lot 1) fronting Queen Street. The northern lot, 27 1/2 perches, was purchased in 1872 from James Brierley, and the southern lot, 1 rood 3 ¾ perches, in 1873 from John Heaton, (who had purchased it only the year before from Edward Mason Hunt, probably as a proxy for Samuel). With an eye on the future, these purchases were probably made to provide separate access to Rosebank from Queen Street, to facilitate with the separate leasing or future sale of the residences.
Rosebank was demolished in the mid 1960s for the construction of a home unit block.
Willow Lodge still stands see below.
Bennett Street and the Bennett Estate
In July 1905, Christopher Bennett and Walter Jeffrey (Managing Editor of the Evening News), acting as the executors of Samuel’s Estate, sold the original lot along with the other 2 lots Samuel had acquired in the 1870’s. The new owner quickly subdivided the land and submitted it for auction on 18 November the same year, marketing it as Bennett’s Estate.
The “narrow unnamed street” as it was described at Eliza’s probate, became Bennett Street. Rosebank, on Lot 1 became 14-18 Bennett Street and Lot 31, the site of “Willow Lodge”, became 206 Wilson Street.