NEALES COTTAGE 1854

HISTORIC HOUSES TRUST


STATE LIBRARY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

In 1831 George and Bridget Neale and their young daughter Elizabeth Mary, moved into a small timber cottage, built between Hambledon Cottage and the creek. Over the next 23 years twelve more children were born and raised there. George Neale, a wheelwright, worked for the Macarthurs for most of his adult life.

When Elizabeth Farm was finally vacated by the Macarthurs in 1854, the eldest son Edward and his agents the Allports distributed or sold off the family’s old furniture and fittings. Around this time, a foundation stone was laid for a new brick cottage for Neales family – along with a generous lift time lease, on minimal rent, in recognition of their long and loyal service to the estate.

Following Edward's furniture clearances, a dining room table from Elizabeth Farm was purchased or given to the Neales. This campaign style mahogany table remained in Neale family ownership until recent years when its existence, along with a substantial amount of Neale Family documents and records, finally surfaced.

Several new photographs found amongst these records, confirm the location and form of the new cottage, built by Edward Macarthur in the mid 1850s.

These show a single fronted cottage facing east, enclosed by a semi-circular picket fence, with stables and outbuildings to the south. The well established garden and coach house of Hambledon is seen to the north across a three railed hardwood fence.

In 1882, the widower George Neale surrendered his lifetime leasehold and the cottage passed through various owners. The last glimpse of Neales’ Cottage appears in an aerial photo of the 1950s showing a small derelict feature at the rear of a mostly vacant site a few years before the construction of the Wyeth Pharmaceutical factory.