When the partnership between William Hanson and Samuel Bennett to run The Empire ended abruptly on 3 July 1867 leaving Samuel as the sole proprietor, he decided that he needed to live closer to the business. He, Eliza and their family moved to Ashmore House in Kent Street, North. Rose the eldest was 22 years old and Alfred at 16 had just left school and started work at The Empire as a compositor. Frank and Chris, 14 and 10, were still at school.
The house they rented had been built for Captain Samuel Ashmore, a well-respected Master Mariner and later marine surveyor, whose name lives on as a result of his discovery and charting of Ashmore Reef in the Torres Strait in 1811. In 1843 he purchased what was for the area a large block of land from John & Robert Campbell of Campbell’s Wharf. The block was located just below the sandstone cliff (probably the result of sandstone excavation) which marked the southern boundary of the land occupied by the Military Hospital built in 1815 by Lachlan Macquarie. He chose the location because of its proximity to the Darling Harbour shipping.
In addition to the substantial brick home (described in the Sydney Mail of 1913 as “a high-class residence”), Ashmore also built a small observatory to pursue his interest in astronomy and celestial navigation.
By 1868 when the Bennetts leased the house, the Hospital had become Fort Street Model School, the military having moved out to Victoria Barracks at Paddington in 1848.
The house’s location in Kent Street North meant just a 10-minute walk to the old Empire Office at Dean’s Auction Rooms in Pitt Street next to the Herald Office. The Evening News Office, which was completed in December 1868, was only 3 blocks further up Pitt Street and Samuel would have been ideally placed to oversee its planning, construction and fitting out. And again, in 1873, to oversee the expansion of the office, when the adjacent block was incorporated. His greatest challenge was of course the management of the business of producing a morning and evening daily, every day except Sunday, and a large illustrated weekly. It is no wonder that on the way home, after putting the next morning’s Empire “to bed,” he and some of the staff took the liberty of a libation at his favourite watering hole, Jem Punch’s Hotel, on the corner of Pitt and King Streets, almost diagonally opposite the office.
Samuel and Eliza lived at Ashmore House until 1877 when, Samuel supposedly being then in semi-retirement, they made their move to Mundarrah Towers. Samuel, as well as keeping an eagle eye on Alfred’s management of the business, was also oversighting the renovation and landscaping of Mundarrah Towers and the construction of the new newspaper office in Kent Street, just down the road; a fairly hectic “retirement”.
By then:
Rose had married John Heaton in 1873 and they were living at “Rosebank”, Samuel’s and Eliza’s former home, in Wilson Street, Newtown.
Alfred had married Emily Cane in 1874 and was living in one of his father’s terraces in Bourke St Woolloomooloo, where he had been born and, under the watchful eye of Samuel, had taken over the management of the newspaper business.
Frank had left The Kings School in 1874, studied engineering in Sydney, then gone to England to gain further experience and returned with new printing machinery, of which he supervised the installation in the expanded Pitt Street office.
Christopher had left Kings in 1875 and was also learning the newspaper business.
We have not found any images of Ashmore House from around the Bennett’s time. While a sought-after area in the mid-1800’s, the area declined in the 1890’s. The house fell into disrepair and was finally demolished and is now the site of the Rocks Fire Station.
The house, even in its reduced state was however a favoured subject for artists.
In addition to the etching at the top of the page, the sketch below by Sydney Ure Smith appeared in the Sydney Mail in 1913.
Lionel Lindsay also found it interesting (etching dated 1917).
