Orielton is a heritage-listed former hunting, pleasure garden, farming estate, weekender, cereal cropping, flour mill and pastoral property and now horse agistment and residence located at 181–183 Northern Road in the south-western Sydney suburb of Harrington Park in the Camden Council local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built from 1815 to 1834. It is also known as Orielton Farm and Orielton Homestead. The property is privately owned. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 22 December 2006.
History Early Colonial history Edward Lord was granted in the Parish of Narellan that he then named Orielton Park in about 1815. He established a Tasmanian property and this Camden (Cowpastures) property from 1814. His principal residence was in Tasmania. Initial occupation at Camden/Narellan probably included siting a shelter to take in the sublime prospect afforded by the current location of the house. Timber-getting for fuel and fencing and clearing of land for cropping were establishment processes of this time. The initial landscape was probably open forest with grass understorey. Lord's grant included extensive alluvial flats along Narellan Creek and these were probably soon put to cultivation for cereal and hay production.Tropman & Tropman, 2015, 26
Orielton was used from 1822 to 1841 as an outstation by John Dickson. James Dickson (John's brother) lived at Nonorrah (now Maryland) to the north and managed both properties. Agricultural use of Orielton from the 1828 census showed cattle and sheep stocked on Dickson's properties and he cultivated land for cropping, growing cereal (wheat and barley) for milling in his mills. Dickson would probably have sited (probably the confirmed (later) house site) the main residence (manager's house) to provide an outlook and surveillance over the estate. He was using Orielton for cereal production and dairy cheese-making and built barns and operated threshing and winnowing machinery. The Australian Auction Company described Orielton estate as having a substantial built brick cottage, commodious stabling, an excellent built barn with two floors, containing therein 8 horse-power threshing and winnowing machine'.Cable, Notes of the history of Orielton. This was probably built . In 1834, fifty men were working on the farm at Orielton - there would have been extensive quarters. The steam mill (three storeys high) was constructed in this period, possibly by Dickson, but most likely by the trustees.Thomas Barker.
In 1834 Orielton was noted in letters written by David Waugh as being a productive farm. By 1835, of Orielton estate was amalgamated with the neighbouring Wivenhoe.
In 1847 it was purchased by Camden miller, John Perry who had been using its mill and occupying Orielton before purchase. Perry was growing cereals and milling them for flour. Agriculture continued with cereal crops and livestock grazing. Perry later subdivided a portion of the estate and leased the main property to Charles Thompson, Clerk of the Bench to Camden Court. During the whole of this early period the estate seems to have been used mainly for grazing, with some limited agriculture.
Ownership, 1861 to 1876 In 1861 William Peisley, a carcass butcher bought Orielton. From 1861 until 1864 when Peisley put it up for auction and it was bought by (Sydney) absentee owner, "gentleman" John Thomas Neile. Neile bought the estate in two parcels – the Home Farm (in 1864, of ), in cultivation; and a second farm on the other (eastern) side of the "Great South" (now The Northern) Road, of with a farm house and stockyard. The Mill (recently built by previous owner Perry, the miller "on the best position in the district" and in of paddocks, was passed in at auction. Neile then bought it for A£600 – a knock-down price for so elaborate a structure. He maintained the whole property as a going concern until 1876. It featured extensive cleared and fenced paddocks, paling-fenced orchard and picking garden adjacent to the west side of the house, extensive buildings/quarters set on a knoll above the alluvial flats and below the ridge line, extensive trees and shrubs to the east or front entry, probably cypress, Bunya or hoop pines and other broad-canopied trees, a three-storey mill, livestock shelters and paddocks, ploughed paddocks and a cottage fronting the Northern Road's eastern side farm.
In 1863 Abraham Davy of Harrington Park purchased Lot 1 of Orielton Farm () from three Sydney businessmen who had earlier purchased the estate - John Lait of Sydney, James Ryan of Emu Plains and James Jones of Sydney.
An auction notice in 1864 describes Orielton's extensive development. It was sold to Neile, who bought a major homestead with infrastructure. A (likely 1865) photograph from the summit of the hill to the west, shows a well-kept farm complex in an ordered estate. The Peisley family came to be regarded as local gentry and some family members remained prominent in the district after they left Orielton in 1876. People came to Orielton from Sydney, using the train to Campbelltown to shoot over Orielton's land and attend the adjacent Harrington Park race track. The Peisley family knew the Davy family who occupied Harrington Park from 1852 to 1870.Tropman & Tropman, 2015, 26-7
During the early 1870s the sport of coursing (the pursuit of live hares by greyhounds across the countryside) was introduced to Orielton which became a popular activity at both the Orielton and Harrington Park estates. By the 1870s Harrington Park house had established a reputation as a gentleman's country seat, with "hospitality, picturesqueness and the hunt bringing interesting associations to the English eye".
In 1874, Harrington Park and Lot 1 of Orielton was purchased by William Rudd Snr, a grazier of Houtong Station in the Lower Murrumbidgee who also then owned neighbouring Harrington Park. Rudd changed the perceptions of Orielton and Harrington Park as a "gentleman's seat" to that of a graziers property. He also gained control of the remaining parts of Orielton estate. Harrington Park and Orielton remained within the Rudd and Britton (descendant) families until 1933 when (with the Great Depression having an impact) they were sold to Arthur and Elaine Swan.
Ownership, 1876 to 1943 Mrs Harriet Beard, widow of Wynyard Square, Sydney bought and occupied Orielton in 1876 when the Rudds were living at Harrington Park and both were responsible for developing the properties in the Victorian period building design and garden or landscape schemes. The Beard family became involved in district affairs and were esteemed as gentry. The Beards changed and developed the homestead extensively to relate to the southern prospect and expansive views to Studley Park and the floodplain of Narellan Creek. At one stage, a small school was conducted at Orielton. With the shift to grazing, the great barn would have lost its original function.Tropman & Tropman, 2015, 78 The existing access and arrival drives date to this era, as does the terracing south of the house and its extension and reorientation to the south, with two-storey Victorian Italianate style southern facade. Harriet appears to have made Orielton a large residential villa, making many garden plantings including Bunya pines, hoop pines, funeral cypress, Moreton Bay fig, maritime pine, Austrian pine, privet (hedges), photinia (hedges) and European olives to the orchard's northern boundary. These plantings probably reflect Victorian era symbolism relating to her loss of a husband, and some may relate to her own death in 1910.Tropman & Tropman, 2015, 27 The estate was held in trust until it sold in 1912 to Frederick Walker (solicitor), Henry Webster (Bank Manager) and John Morton (physician) as joint tenants and was leased to Ephraim Cross, a Narellan storekeeper. Cross' family had been Camden brickmakers (making bricks for Studley Park and Camelot), and later bought the property. The 1912 sale was of approximately , of which were cleared, balanced and ring-barked, subdivided into paddocks and well-grassed and watered from the creek with five dams. The property was described as having "extensive stabling and carriage room, milking shed, barns, vegetable gardens etc, etc. Brick barn (100" x 40') of 3 floors, engine house, saw bench, pumping plant, windmill, workshop, two cottages'.
Cross sold the section east of The Northern Road to Harrington Park in 1926 and the remainder (including the houe) to Yvonne Coleman in 1927. The northern farm building was lost in a fire in 1928. It was considered by the local community to be where Cross operated a spirits distillery. Coleman sold it in 1930 to William Bernard Pilling of Rushcutters' Bay, builder and investor, who in turn sold it in 1931 to William Henry Trautwein, of Sydney, manager, through Union Investments. The property then returned to Pilling's ownership.
The Pilling family in 1930 had Orielton run by estate managers with its homestead being maintained as a country residence for the family to visit. Daughter Eileen Pilling described her father as not a farmer but that he had bought at Narellan which included Orielton estate. He ran 100 cows on the southern end of it, where timber bales with galvanised iron roofs housed the cows. The family lived in Elizabeth Bay. She would visit on school holidays and remembers the ornate iron verandah, bullnose bay, French doors onto the verandah with vistas to Narellan. She recalls the long drive lined with trees and at the entry to the house a carriage loop circled close to the garden, within which a large aviary was located with many colourful birds. Towards the front of the house was a tennis court (east of the carriage loop) and stone steps led to the Italianate facade through splendid gardens. An orchard west of the homestead was filled with nuts and fruit, including walnuts and almonds. A ballroom was located underneath the house.Tropman & Tropman, 2015, 29
By 1938 the Swans had purchased all the remaining parts of Orielton, and managed the two farms (with Harrington Park) as a single entity. The Swans upgraded the sections of Orielton's farm buildings and then allowed the Department of Defence to make the homestead liveable for their occupation, from 1942 to 1943.Tropman & Tropman;, 2015, 29
During World War II the Camden district was the scene of much military activity, and Orielton was occupied by the army for training and residential purposes.
Post World War II Since 1944 Orielton has been owned by the Fairfax family who also own neighbouring Harrington Park. The Fairfax family resided at Harrington Park and Orielton was managed as part of the Harrington Park estate. Orielton was important in Sir Warwick Oswald Fairfax's pursuit of breeding Stud Hereford cattle. The yarding, sheds and paddocks were modified to cater for the extensive breeding program he undertook. He set Orielton up as his holding and breeding centre for Harrington Park Poll Hereford stud. Fencing, paddocks and shelters were established to raise and manage stud livestock.Tropman &Tropman, 2015, 32 The steam mill appears to have been pulled down during this initial period of occupation. During this period, the property was an outstation with tenants occupying Orielton house. A dam visible in a 1947 aerial photograph south-west of the homestead was expanded by Fairfax , across the western boundary of the former picking garden and orchard. In the 1960s Warwick Fairfax was knighted, Orielton's windows were boarded up and some parts of the estate were used for goat farming.Tropman & Tropman, 2015, 83