Denham Court is a heritage-listed former residence and farm estate and now residence located at 238 Campbelltown Road, Denham Court, New South Wales, an outer suburb of Sydney Australia. It was designed by John Verge and built from 1820 to 1829. The property is privately owned. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
History Glenda Chalker (a Cubbitch Barta clan traditional owner) records corroborees, including local Aboriginal Australian and visiting groups, occurring at the Denham Court estate into the 1850s.Godden Mackay Logan, 2012, 20
When the first fleet arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788 they found the soil unsuitable for farming and soon looked towards the heavy clay and loam soils of the Cumberland Plain (to the west) to sustain the colony. Early agricultural settlements were located on the rich alluvial soils of the Nepean, Hawkesbury and Georges River areas, as well as South Creek near St.Marys and at the head of the Parramatta River where the settlement of Rose Hill (later Parramatta) was established about six months after the fleet landed. A settlement at the Hawkesbury was established in 1794.
By 1804 much of the Cumberland Plain had been settled and Governor King began to look for other regions in the colony for favourable arable land. The only suitable land within the Cumberland Plain was the area known as the Cowpastures, located in the southwestern corner. This area was named after the discovery in 1795 of cows from the first fleet which had wandered off into the bush. The Cowpastures had remained unoccupied due to the official decree that reserved the land for the wild cattle (to encourage their increase).
In December 1803 Governor King and Mrs King visited the Cowpastures for themselves and the Sydney Gazette reported that Mrs King was the first "white lady" to have crossed the Nepean River. The track to the Cowpastures led from Prospect and on 17 September 1805 James Meehan, under instructions from Governor King, commenced a survey of the track from Prospect to the Nepean Crossing and a rough road followed the marked line. This became known as Cowpasture Road, later the Hume Highway, most of which is today part of the Camden Valley Way.
Several visits to the area by the colonial gentry took place at this time, which resulted in their desire to acquire some of this rich land for themselves. They saw the area as containing very good grazing land. Captain Henry Waterhouse described the area in a letter to John Macarthur in 1804 as follows: " I am at a loss to describe the face of the country other than as a beautiful park, totally divested of underwood, interspersed with plains, with rich luxuriant grass".
Earlier Europeans had described "large ponds covered with ducks and the black swan, the margins of which were fringed with shrubs of the most delightful tints". The Europeans thought the flats were perfect for cattle and the hills would carry sheep. They admired the absence of underbush – probably achieved through Aboriginal burning off – and felt comfortable with a landscape that reminded them of an English gentleman's park.
John Macarthur received the first land grant in the Cowpastures region in 1805 for his role in the early wool industry in the colony. Lord Camden rewarded him with and Macarthur chose the highly coveted Cowpastures for his grant, though Governor King tried to prevent him taking it. Macarthur also organised an grant for his friend Walter Davidson, who allowed Macarthur to use his land freely after Davidson returned to England. In this manner Macarthur controlled of riverbank on the site where the wild cattle had first discovered the best pasture near Sydney. Later purchases and exchanges increased the Macarthur land there to over , an endowment that Governor Macquarie greatly resented.
Other early grants were in the Parishes of Minto and in adjoining Evan, Bringelly, Narellan and Cook. These all lay west of Parramatta.Godden Mackay Logan, 2012, 20-21
Governor Macquarie drew up plans in 1820 for establishment of a town in the area, to be named Campbelltown after his wife Elizabeth's maiden name. With their forced return to England in 1822 these plans never came to fruition and it was not until the arrival of Governor Darling in 1827 that plans were again reinstated and the first settlers were allowed to take possession of their town land in 1831. In the early 1850s the railway line from Sydney to Goulburn was completed, with a station opening at Campbelltown in 1858. When Leppington House was offered for lease in 1865, one of its selling points was that it was near a railway. Campbelltown now provided easy access to Sydney and its markets and grew as the centre of the district. Although Camden was established in 1836, with no railway line it remained a small town.
The large estates that flanked Cowpasture Road (later Camden Valley Way) and the Northern Road were run largely as sheep and cattle farms, with wheat and other grain crops being grown as well until the 1850s. The houses were often built on surrounding ridges or hills, providing sweeping views of the countryside and ensuring that any passing traveller could appreciate the owner's status by viewing their impressive country mansions from the road. This land use pattern of large farm estates and small towns, established in the nineteenth century, remained largely the pattern of development of the area up until the late 1990s. Aerial photographs of the area in 1947 show a rural landscape with some limited urban development on either side of (then) Camden Valley Way.Godden Mackay Logan, 2012, 22-23
Denham Court Denham Court is situated on a grant of originally made by Governor Macquarie to Judge-Advocate Richard Atkins, a participant in the Bligh Rebellion.
Richard (Bowyer) Atkins (1745–1820), Deputy Judge Advocate, was born on 22 March 1745, the fifth son of Sir William Bowyer, baronet, and his wife Anne, née Stonhouse. He assumed the surname Atkins in recognition of a legacy from Sir Richard Atkins, of Clapham, Surrey, England. On 3 February 1773 he married Elizabeth, née Brady, of Dublin. He procured a military commission and by the 1780s became adjutant to the Isle of Man Corps. Addicted to liquor, immorality and insolvency he led a thoroughly dissolute life. Principally to evade creditors he resigned his commission and sailed for Sydney in the "Pitt", arriving in 1791. He made much of the fame of his brothers, Sir William Bowyer, Lieutenant-General Henry Bowyer and Admiral Sir George Bowyer and of being a close friend of Samuel Thornton, judge-advocate of London, and the governors were impressed.
Atkins was Judge Advocate from 1796 to 1796 and 1800–.NSW State Records, Colonial Secretary Index
Phillip made him a magistrate at Parramatta and in March 1792 appointed him registrar of the Vice-Admiralty Court; this enabled him to enhance the aura of influential prestige behind which he sheltered from existing creditors while engaging fresh credit locally on the security of his family name. It was soon commonplace knowledge that his bills were not met: Rev. Samuel Marsden considered them so doubtful that they might never be honoured. Atkins served as registrar of exports and imports, assistant inspector of public works at Parramatta and temporary superintendent of police, all to the governor's "most perfect satisfaction", and when Macarthur resigned as inspector of public works in 1796 Atkins took his place.
In 1798 Richard Dore arrived to take up a commission as judge-advocate but, when he died in 1800, Atkins was reappointed. Governor King recommended he take the office permanently despite his inebriate habits, for no other person in the colony was "at all equal to that office" and the salary, then about (Pounds) 350 with the benefit of several assigned servants and land grants, was insufficient inducement. Atkins remained the colony's principal legal officer for years. Of commanding stature and fine presence, when sober he was impressive enough to delude creditors and governors alike; but he was ignorant and merciless, an inveterate debauchee. Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson remarked on "his character for low debauchery and every degrading vice as well as a total want of every gentlemanly principle". Governor William Bligh deemed him "a disgrace to human jurisprudence", who 'has been the ridicule of the community. Bligh found it necessary to take legal advice from George Crossley an ex-convict attorney, whom Atkins himself employed as counsellor for many years.
Records of cases before Atkins while judge-advocate reinforce contemporary criticisms of his irresolution and unfamiliarity with law...The most prominent of his adventures on the bench was the trial of John Macarthur in 1808, an incident having an immediate part in the deposition of Bligh. Bligh precipitated the end of his government in adopting Atkins's recommendation that members be charged with treasonable practices. Major Johnston forthwith hastened to Sydney where, urged on by a petition which Macarthur sponsored, he arrested Bligh and took command. Atkins was immediately suspended, but soon made his peace with the rebels, though it was "from necessity alone" that in December 1808 Lieutenant-Governor Joseph Foveaux reinstated him.
This travesty was not long lasting. Atkins's relatives besought the secretary of state to find some permanent position in the colony which would disburden them of their black sheep, but he could be tolerated in public office no longer. Castlereagh ordered his recall, censuring his "want of professional education and practice" which had caused "great inconveniences". This was a mild appraisal of the decrepit old man whom Macquarie thought unlikely to survive his passage. However, he reached England safely and went into retirement. For a time he could not be found to give evidence at Johnston's court martial but he ultimately gave his testimony in a fawning fashion demonstrating his wavering loyalties and feeble character. His attorney in 1817 offered a composition to his creditors in New South Wales, but Atkins remained insolvent until his death in London in 1820.Bennett, J.M., Australian Dictionary of Biography online entry for Atkins, Richard, accessed 23/1/9
Atkins was recalled in 1810 and in 1812 the property was bought by Captain Richard Brooks. Brooks acquired adjoining grants of 50 acres and three grants of 200 acres and settled on the land in the mid-1820s although Liston states that there was a small cottage at Denham Court by 1821.Morris & Britton, 2000, 124
The original house at Denham Court was single storied but in 1832-33 Captain Brooks enlarged it by adding a two-storey (central) wing and two flanking low-fronted one storey wings. This house was designed by architect John Verge as a single-storey small replica of "Denham Court" in Middlesex, England which was erected in 1670.Robinsons, 1962