2011 Conference – The Woodriff Estate

 

The Woodriff Estate: Landlord and Tenant

The aim of my presentation today (at the 2011 Makings of a City History Conference) is to provide an understanding of the development and changes of the Woodriff estate in the context of the family who owned it and the people who lived on it. I would also like to identify some of the resources available to researchers of this family, their tenants and their estate. This paper is the result of my research for the History of Penrith project, which will feature in the published history.

Penrith began in 1815, as a military depot and court house on Crown land, surrounded by large land grants. Of all the families who owned land in Penrith, the Woodriffs rank as one of the most influential, owning 1000 acres from Woodriff Street to the river. Their ownership of land through land grant and inheritance, especially on the north and south sides of High Street, for over 100 years, impacted on the growth and development of the town.

Captain Daniel Woodriff first visited New South Wales in 1792 on the Kitty to report on the settlement’s military defences. He returned in 1802 as captain of the convict escort ship, Calcutta, accompanied by his three young sons. While in the colony Woodriff helped establish David Collin’s short-lived Port Phillip Bay settlement, before returning to Sydney to take a load of timber back to Britain. While in Sydney in 1804, Woodriff and his ship played an important role in quelling the Irish uprising at Vinegar Hill. He turned his ship’s guns to the shore, thus freeing soldiers, and preventing a simultaneous revolt in Sydney.

As a reward Woodriff was granted 1000 acres in the Evan district on the banks of the Nepean River, which he named Rodley Farm. [i] Woodriff had already requested compensation for his wife’s family’s loss of lands following the American War of Independence. Charles Grimes surveyed 1409 acres for Woodriff, but the land was resurveyed to 1000 acres in 1805. Rodley Farmfell bsurgeon Thomas Jamison’s 1000 acres, (Jamisontown) to the south and William Neate Chapman’s 1300 acres (Lambridge) to the north. The boundary of this grant is Woodriff Street to the east, Jamison Road to the south, the Nepean River to the west, and its northern boundary was Boundary Creek and the lagoon (which is now the sewerage treatment plant). It is probable that Woodriff never sited his grant. He returned to England in 1804 to continue his distinguished naval career. On board was William Neate Chapman who would also never return to NSW. Woodriff had spent most of his life in Royal Navy service and had lost four members of his family to the sea: his great grandfather, father, brother and son.[ii] In New South Wales, a succession of agents including, John Palmer, John Oxley, his brother-in-law James Norton, and Phillip Parker King managed Woodriff’s estate. The first lease was to William Martin, a former marine who leased the entire grant from 1804 until 1821. Surveyor George Evans and road builder William Cox completely changed the use and purpose of Woodriff’s estate, when Evans surveyed, and Cox built the new Western Road in 1815 back to Parramatta, through the dead centre of the estate. The first government building on the new Great Western Road was the military depot built, on the site of the present Penrith police station. Built by Cox in mid-1815 and set well back from the river, it represented the formalisation of law and order in the Evan district, away from Castlereagh.

After the road was completed, a small village developed around the government punt operated by Martin, providing refreshments, accommodation and goods for waiting travellers. In 1821, John McHenry took out a seven year lease of the estate. He found it difficult to remove Martin. McHenry had arrived in 1819 as a free settler and quickly established himself, wasting no time in pursuing better terms for his tenancy of Rodley Farm. McHenry was from the same town in Ireland as Sir John Jamison, Ballycastle in Antrim. He employed clearing gangs from the Emu Plains convict farm to improve the productivity of the estate.[iii] McHenry wrote to Woodriff, critical of Martin’s lack of enterprise stating the estate was ‘in a state of nature’. Furthermore, he pointed out the problems of a main road and four cross roads cutting through the estate, making it difficult to manage. Governor Macquarie had also made similar observations. Chapman’s adjoining Lambridge estate had been subdivided and leased from the time it was granted. In 1829, McHenry purchased it. McHenry and Sir John Jamison had also made separate approaches to Woodriff’s agents to purchase Rodley Farm, but to no avail.

In 1830, the estate was divided into two leases: either side of the road, Jacob Josephson had the south side paying £190 and John McHenry held the northern side paying £200 per annum. Sarah McHenry continued the lease after her husband’s death in 1832. Jacob Josephson (a former convict and silversmith) and free immigrant Charles Wilson built a substantial inn by the river. In 1837, Phillip Parker King advised Woodriff that Rodley Farm was ‘most valuable’ and for him not to think of selling it.[iv]Furthermore, he stated the estate was now ‘invaluable as a Township’ and if the estate were turned into allotments with river frontages, it would fetch a good income.

In 1846, Lieutenant-Colonel Godfrey Mundy had newly arrived in the colony and visited the Penrith district. He accompanied his cousin, the new governor, Sir Charles Fitzroy and his wife and attending party. Mundy observed that Penrith was a ‘neat little town’ although he was assured ‘the town was not a town’, because the proper township (Castlereagh) was some distance away, having been abandoned.[v] The road down to the river was lined with cottages of ‘split stuff and bark’. Mundy was not impressed by landlord Wilson nor his wife, who was so ‘ultra Yankee-like in her independence’ that it did not permit her to ‘rise from her chair to receive the daughter of a Duke and the lady of the Governor’.[vi] This very act was indicative of colonial Australia and the new found confidence of its inhabitants. Captain Daniel Woodriff, who had retired to Greenwich Hospital, died there in 1842 aged 85. The estate passed to his son, also Captain Daniel Woodriff, who was by 1851 living in Millbrook in Hampshire.[vii]

When the McHenry and Josephson leases expired in 1851, Rodley Farm was then divided into farm and town lots and leased in 1852 to sixteen tenants including Philpott Robbins, Edward Heavy, William Barlow and Henry Wilson. From the 1850s, landowners like Woodriff, Sarah McHenry (Lambridge) and John Tindale (Hornseywood) were subdividing and leasing their land into smaller allotments to accommodate not only tenant farmers, but an ever increasing number of shopkeepers, mechanics and labourers. The growing confidence of the district’s leaders in their ability and economic soundness was demonstrated by their Penrith Nepean Bridge Company venture, proposed before the discovery of gold. In 1850, they approached the government to sanction their toll bridge over the Nepean River. Although it was to be built abutting Woodriff’s land, there is no indication of his direct participation. These developments, as well as correspondence from groups of residents on the estate, such as the Penrith Road Committee, may have influenced his son’s decision to emigrate in 1851.

The Woodriff estate became known as Lower Penrith. Although flood prone and low-lying, lessees built farms, hotels, shops and houses creating a community of workers, farmers and business people. Daniel Woodriff and his wife Jane and daughter Agnes arrived as unassisted passengers on the Vimiera in December 1851.^[viii] They settled at Parramatta, renting Reverend Samuel Marsden’s former Newlands cottage in Macarthur Street.^[ix] A daughter, Florence was born there in 1852 and later two sons, Frederick Daniel in 1856 and Francis Henry in 1858. During the 1850s, Daniel, a surveyor, acted as agent and attorney for his father, managing the estate until his father’s death in September 1860.

In this capacity in 1857, Woodriff signed insurance papers for the Governor Bourke Inn, located on the estate by the river. The inn was leased to Henry Wilson and insured for £2,500.^[x] This inn had been built by Henry’s father Charles whose licence dated from 1831 and so presumably, the Josephson/Wilson family had one of the longest leases on the Woodriff estate. By the early 1860s, tenants had steadily increased to be about twenty-five, mostly with fourteen year leases, with lease payments due in May and November.

The emergence of local government from the late 1850s spelt a great change to people living in and around Penrith. Its residents were keen to accept this new tier of government. It meant a level of independence and a move away from the sole decision making of large landowners. In July 1860, the first petition was presented to the Governor. A counter petition successfully headed by future mayor James Riley, finished the movement. Not to be thwarted another petition was presented in February 1862.^[xi] This new proposed district was more realistic. However, a counter petition followed, headed by leaseholder of the Woodriff estate William Simpson, its opposition was in similar terms to the 1860 counter-petition, and was signed by Daniel Woodriff of Parramatta, John King Lethbridge and many Woodriff lessees: Hugh Curry, Henry Tubb, Philpott Robbins, Peter Wyche and Andrew Heavey.^[xii] The movement towards incorporation died for another eight years. In that time, ownership of the Woodriff estate changed.

Thomas Smith held his first Red Cow Inn licence at Colyton on the Western Road from 1846, before he transferred it to Penrith in anticipation of the railway reaching Penrith in 1862.[xiii]In that year Smith held two leases on the Woodriff estate, a thirty year lease at £30 annual rent,and a seven and a half year lease. Smith was keen to protect his idea and dealt quickly with a rival who attempted to cash in. In January 1863, he wrote to Daniel Woodriff informing him that Robert Elliott had applied for a publican’s licence on land on the south side of High Street that Woodriff had leased to Ralph Nash.^[xiv] Smith reminded Woodriff that a clause in Nash’s lease stated that no inn was to be built on that allotment. In December 1865, a few weeks after Daniel Woodriff’s death, Smith purchased the two acres on which his Red Cow Inn stood. By 1871, he owned the Red Cow, auction rooms in Station Street, and over two hundred acres north of the railway line, all purchased from the Woodriff family.

In order to improve the family’s fortune and to provide for the education of his children, Daniel Woodriff had not only acted as a Justice of the Peace at Parramatta Court House, he also worked extensively throughout Queensland as a surveyor. When he died in November 1865 at just forty-two years old, his estate at Penrith passed to his sons, Frederick aged nine and seven-year-old Francis, in trust until the younger reached the age of twenty-one. Jane Woodriff moved her family to Ormley, in The Boulevarde, Petersham. Along with the boys’ trustee and family friend, Captain Charles Wray Finch, the Penrith estate was managed by local Penrith estate agent, Robert Stuart, who received a 5% commission on rents.

Expenses incurred on the estate included repairs to property and fences following floods, pulling down old houses, paying Samuel Jackson for surveying work and in attending Daniel Dolan’s insolvency hearing in Sydney in 1870.^[xv] Captain Finch and Jane Woodriff regularly drew amounts of between £50 and £100 from the estate accounts. The only surviving rent book of the Woodriff estate is held in the National Library and commences on 1 November 1865, the month Daniel died and finishes in 1881, the year the boys drew up their partition deed. It is among the Woodriff Papers that were a bequest from the estate of Francis Henry Woodriff after his death in 1950. At the time of Daniel’s death in 1865 there were approximately thirty-five tenants on about 87 separate properties. They held leases ranging from a few years to thirty years. Butchers George and Ann Dent held a fourteen year lease which they took out in 1861 for which they paid an annual rent of £12-12-0. Locals who held long term leases included the Holliers, Andrew Heavey, Daniel Dolan, Robert and Thomas Frost, Michael Kilgannon, William Tuxford, Ralph Nash and Elizabeth De Gill. Blacksmith Philpott Robbins had held his lease for fourteen years since 1852. It was located where Memory Park is today, on the corner of High and Woodriff Streets. It had been a blacksmith and wheelwright shop for over fifty years before its dedication as a memorial to world war one diggers. Peter Wyche, also a wheelwright and blacksmith, held a thirty-year lease from 1862 on the north side of High Street. Originally from Lancashire, Wyche had arrived as a convict in 1833, and by the 1860s had a well established business in Penrith.

In August 1870, another petition to incorporate Penrith was presented to the Governor.^[xvi] This time, the movement was headed by James Riley, and supported by landowners, householders and leaseholders. Ann Rolston , Elizabeth De Gill and Jane Wilcox, lessees on the Woodriff estate were among those who signed a counter petition. Although the counter-petitions had more signatures, the government’s decision was made and the Penrith district was proclaimed a municipality on 13 May 1871.

Labouring work for Council became an important employment opportunity for unskilled workers in the district. The majority of these labourers and mechanics and their families lived on the Woodriff estate. Men like George Jordan, Ralph and John Nash, Philpott Robbins, Charles Gilbert and Michael Kilgannon, all worked for Council. Labourers were paid four shillings a day.

‘Old Mick’ Kilgannon was one of the first men to work for Council as a day labourer and maintenance man. In July 1884 he was crushed to death from a fall of earth while repairing Brell’s bridge in Castlereagh Street. He had lived on the Woodriff estate from the early 1860s until 1881 when the family purchased a property in Henry Street.

Personal associations played an important role in the selection of labourers. Ephraim (Robert) Alderman had lived on the Woodriff estate since 1868 leasing a cottage and thirty-two acres on the Western Road. He received regular jobs labouring on road works. By the late 1880s Alderman had fallen on hard times. John Price lent him a horse and cart to help his employment prospects. Edward Cain leased thirty-five acres, which he sublet to Chinese market gardeners. This land is now Woodriff Gardens.

Of the 413 properties valued for rates for the Council in its first year, 1871, 87 were owned by Jane Woodriff. Although she owned these properties, she did not pay the rates. These were paid by lessees. Her family did not pay rates until they lived in the district from 1882. Just before her death in 1878, she held 63 properties, a sign the family had divested itself of some of its estate. Penrith, at this time was declared a ‘quaint old place’ by tourist guides. Although Penrith had developed as two towns, Lower Penrith, the private town of the Woodriff family, and Penrith, on high ground, the social, administrative and spiritual centre of the town, it would gradually merge as a cohesive urban centre as the municipal government emerged, representing all residents of the district.

Soon after Jane Woodriff’s death, her home at Petersham was let by her son Francis and her grown children lived elsewhere. When Francis turned twenty-one, Frederick and Francis were eligible to inherit their great grandfather’s land grant at Penrith. A partition deed was drawn up and signed on 21 June 1881. It divided the estate, 497 acres south of the Western Road to Frederick and 503 acres north of the Western Road to Francis. The partition was between the two brothers and Robert Stuart as agent. With these arrangements in hand the two brothers moved to Penrith. Some land within these two portions had already been sold. The Council valuation books show Frederick held 27 properties and Francis 33. Within Francis’s portion, Thomas Smith purchased 224 acres, the government, twenty-two acres for the railway, and twenty-seven smaller allotments (mostly along High, Station and Riley Streets) had been sold to tenants including Edmund Nash, William Henry Judges, George and Thomas Clissold, John Tipping, John Barlow, Margaret Robbins, Peter Wyche and Thomas Cadden. This left a balance of 244 acres for Francis and 489 acres to Frederick.

Frederick married Mary Ann Catherine (Katie) Kelleher in February 1882 at St Stephens Anglican Church. Katie, as she was known was born in Hopetown, her father being a former military officer, Cornelius Kelleher. In the following month, the young couple moved into Rodley, their newly-built home near Mulgoa Road.[xvii] This property, eighteen acres in all, was valued in 1904 at £1550. Rodley was a brick villa with four bedrooms, verandahs on three sides, kitchen, servants’ quarters, pantry, store room and bath room. Four paddocks, a small orchard, stable and buggy house, corn and hay sheds adjoined the house. As soon as they married Frederick had his land surveyed by his brother-in-law Charles Worth.[xviii] In 1886 it was advertised for let when they travelled overseas.[xix]

Also in 1882, Francis was married to Margaretta Mary Tingcombe in Christ Church Sydney. Margaretta was the daughter of the Reverend Henry Tingcombe, who had been Clerk at Penrith Court House and later rector of St John’s at Camden. A few years after they married, Francis and Margaretta travelled to England, visiting relatives. While in England, plans were prepared for their home to be built in Penrith. Upon their return, they lived with their growing family on Liverpool Road Enfield until their two-storey mansion Combewood, was completed in 1890.[xx]

Although Penrith grew out of private town developments, they were hemmed in by large estates for most of the nineteenth century. The break up of these estates began in earnest during the boom of the 1880s, promoted with the promise of improved rail services.[xxi] The sale of some of the Woodriff estate in 1879 was promoted as an unusual offer as it would be ‘the only chance of buying freehold land from first hands for some years to come’.[xxii] Francis was criticized in 1885 for locking up his property. Buyers were particularly after land in High Street to build businesses and private homes. The Woodriff, Lemon Grove and Tindale estates were targeted as prime land on which a developing Penrith could flourish.

When Frederick Woodriff suddenly died on 24 January 1904 aged forty-seven, he not only left a widow, but a heavily mortgaged estate. He had no money in the bank, no shares nor any life policies. Woodriff had a substantial home with furniture valued at close to £300, some livestock and farming implements, and an overdraft of £6,664 secured by mortgage on his real estate to the bank. His property, more than two thirds of his half share of the Woodriff original land grant, was valued at £8,666.[xxiii] Frederick’s estate entailed twenty-two town lots and farms, nineteen of which were rented with an annual income of less than £600. His heavy mortgage constrained development and any improvements to his properties. In many instances, any improvements on these properties were from the pockets of lessees. The blocks of land running along the river were small farms generally with a weatherboard cottage. The valuers considered the land south of High Street and Union Road low and swampy with an ‘objectionable drain’ passing through it. This drain had been dug since at least the early 1880s and was locally referred to as Frog Hollow.

Having no children, Woodriff bequeathed his entire mortgaged estate to his wife Katie for her sole use. Before his death, Woodriff had Rodley for sale from 1896. The advertisement in 1896 stated that electric light was installed throughout the residence, but it had not sold. In 1901, he had tried to sell over 450 acres of his farming land, mostly fronting the Nepean River, and his home Rodley and grounds of eighteen acres on Mulgoa Road. This substantial sale represented almost all of his estate. The only land not for sale at this time were the smaller blocks north of Union Road and fronting the southern side of High Street, east to Woodriff Street and those fronting the western side of that street.

What Woodriff could not achieve in his lifetime was quickly accomplished by his wife – that being the sale of his Penrith estate. Katie had the household furniture sold by auction on 5 March, just over a month after Frederick’s death and before the death duties were paid on his estate.[xxiv] She sold furniture from the dining room, drawing room, hall, study and three bedrooms as well as the servants room, kitchen, dairy (including the jersey cow) and stables. Among the items sold were the ‘splendid microscope’, upright grand piano, a set of Picturesque Atlas in morocco binding, two musical boxes of ‘exceptional sweetness’, a large array of tea and dining services, carpets, ornaments, framed pictures and her bedroom suite. Rodley was let at the same time as her auction. She did not sell it until around 1919. Lessees included a secession of high profile families like Waldron and Vine. Although after Frederick’s death Katie only occasionally returned to Penrith, she solely managed her Penrith estate.[xxv]

One of the most significant and controversial pieces of land in Penrith at this time was Katie Woodriff’s property located on the south-western corner of Woodriff and High Streets. When Katie sold this property in December 1913 to Minnie Everingham, the wife of builder and auctioneer Enoch Everingham, the dilapidated building and sheds were still used as a blacksmith’s shop and coach factory.[xxvi] Originally leased by Philpott Robbins from the 1850s, and later George Besley, it had by the turn of the century probably retained some of its original buildings.

However, there was and had been for many years a dispute between Frederick Woodriff and the Municipal Council over 33 feet of land, which the Council considered to be part of Woodriff Street, a public road, which ran between the Woodriff and Tindale estates.[xxvii] After Minnie Everingham had purchased the land she continued the stance that the disputed strip of land was not a public thoroughfare, but her land. Minnie filed a statement of claim against the Council in October 1914 in the Supreme Court, asserting the Council was threatening to enter her land. She won the case, but the Council appealed to the Full Bench. In April 1916, they found in favour of the Council and that the disputed 33 feet was a right of way and not part of Minnie’s property. Minnie appealed to the newly established High Court but withdrew her appeal. Within a few years, this property would become a public memorial park to the town’s soldiers of the Great War. In August, the committee had begun negotiations with both Minnie Everingham and Katie Woodriff.

With the 33 feet of land donated by Council and £200 in hand, the Committee borrowed £600 from Katie Woodriff. They purchased the block for £900 from Minnie Everingham on 22 March 1922, the price she paid for it in 1913.[xxviii] Brothers, Louis, Frank and Arthur Judges, Henry Lack and Oscar Fletcher took out the mortgage for three years at a 7% interest rate. This mortgage was discharged on 19 July 1923, just two months before Katie died. Finally, in July 1922, nearly three and a half years after war’s end, Memory Park became a reality.

When Katie Woodriff died in Palmer Street Sydney on 28 September 1923 she left an estate of £9379. Katie died from burns she received when her clothing caught fire. She owned no real estate, shares, dividends or much in the way of personal items. What she did hold were mortgages owing to her for £8334. Her estate in 1923 was worth more than her husband’s debt in 1904. After her husband’s death, Katie established herself as a mortgager, providing a steady income for herself. Having no children, Katie left no bequests to her Woodriff or Kelleher relatives, endowing her money instead to Sydney Hospital and to other charities.

On the north side of High Street, Francis and Margaretta were busy raising a large family. Three of their sons enlisted in world war one, Geoffrey, Francis and Daniel. Geoffrey was killed in action. His cousins, from Studley Park, Werrington Noel and Henry Tingcombe also died during the Great War. After the War the government decided to create a soldier irrigation settlement scheme on the banks of the Nepean River, adjoining the Woodriff estate. Some of their tenant farms were also taken by the irrigation scheme and another farm of twenty acres was arranged to be purchased under the Closer Settlement Scheme by a returned soldier. Donald Creevey negotiated to purchase a tenant farm leased by Edmund Hungerford. This farm was located north of the railway line and west of Peach Tree Creek, on land that is now known as Weir Reserve. Hungerford’s lease was still valid and he would not give up his lease, indicating that he may also wish to purchase the farm. In his frustration with protracted proceedings, Creevey wrote to Prime Minister Billy Hughes, pointing out the problems with the scheme and soliciting his help.[xxix] Hungerford’s lease held firm and with legal advice from the Crown Solicitor, Creevey gave up.

After Francis died in 1951 and Margaretta in 1952, their estate was sold by their executors. His estate was extensive. He still held thirteen properties with twenty-five tenants, all from his share of the Woodriff estate. These properties were valued at £35,600. Combewood and its surrounding farmland had been rezoned for industrial use and the land and house were sold to an industrial developer. Their son, Alan’s daughter Margaret had married Broughton Cox, thus bringing together two of the most influential families in the Nepean district. They lived at Mudgee on one of Henry Cox’s properties and all the while fought to keep Combewood standing and out of the path of bulldozers, developers, road makers and vandals. Combewood and Rodley House, stand as a testimony to the Woodriff family and their confidence in their estate and its future. We are fortunate they are both standing today: one, occupied by a direct descendant, and the other by a family who has lived there for more than fifty years.

There are a lot of what –ifs with the history of this estate.

What if John McHenry had lived longer, what plans and changes he might have achieved during his 21 year lease.

What if he had convinced Woodriff to sell Rodley Farm.

What if Daniel Woodriff III had lived longer and moved his family to Penrith.

What if Fred had been successful in selling his property earlier, in the 1890s.

What if he and Katie had children –

What is for certain, the people of the town of Penrith became a community, whether they be landlord or tenant with a common goal of improving their lives. In 1871, the Council was led by landlords, but the tenants were not far behind, waiting their opportunity.

© Lorraine Stacker

Penrith City Library