Where is Sydney's Oldest House?

by glenop (subscribe)

You would think that identifying the oldest houses in Sydney would be dead easy. You would have thought that a historical organisation or notable historian, academic or even a government department would have identified and compiled a definitive one through ten list of the oldest houses in Sydney by now. But to my disbelief, to my horror even, I discovered that no such list exists. I approached the Sydney Historical Association, The History Council of NSW, Historic Houses Trust, The National Trust, Royal Australian Historical Trust and The Department of Environment and Heritage and nope, sorry they all said, we don't have such a list, why don't you try so and so, and around and around I went.

But there was another degree of difficulty. Am I talking about the City of Sydney or Greater Sydney?

So despite having no formal qualifications in history of any description, I decided to undertake my own search. Using the resources of the University of Google and the good folk at the Department of Environment and Heritage who I asked to compile a list for me based on dates of their own self confessed incomplete data base, I attempted to cobble together my own imperfect list.


I was a little surprised to discover that the oldest houses, in fact the oldest complete buildings of any sort in Australia, are not in central Sydney but in Parramatta. Elizabeth Farm lays claim to being the oldest surviving house in Australia. Built for John Macarthur, the father of the wool industry, and his wife Elizabeth, it dates back to 1793, five years after the founding of Sydney. The Governors Dairy Cottage (1798) and parts of old Government House (1799) are also in Parramatta.


After these notable 18th century dwellings at Parramatta, there are a cluster of houses scattered around greater Sydney that claim to have elements of their building dating to around 1810. I can't split them, as definitive construction commencement and completion dates are vague. These residences include Claremont House at Windsor, Collingwood House at Liverpool and Glenfield Farm in Casula.


The oldest house in the City of Sydney is undoubtedly Cadman's Cottage located on the foreshore of The Rocks next to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Or is it? There is little doubt that bricks and mortor speaking it is the oldest surviving house in the City of Sydney, dating back to 1815. But as the house was actually built as a barracks and wasn't actually lived in as a house until 1827, which puts the next oldest house into the frame. The Francis Greenway designed Cleveland House in Surry Hills dates back to 1823 and mischievous historians claim that this is the oldest existing purpose built house and the longest continuously lived in house in Sydney.


So as you can see, I still don't have a definitive one through ten list and I can see why nobody has been game enough to put their name to such a list. The vagaries of identifying completion dates or identifying if the house was lived in or not makes any list open to debate and criticism. I've done all I can do. I am going to leave it to the qualified historians to argue over dates and locations and come up with the definitive one to ten list of Sydney's oldest houses.

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