In celebration of the 200-year anniversary of the original Winbourne mansion, the gates to the property are being opened for the first time in years, encouraging locals and history-lovers to go in and see everything it has to offer.
The first Winbourne mansion was built by one of the area’s most iconic historical families on their Mulgoa land back in 1824.
“The mansion was built by the Cox family. They were quite a wealthy family that was given a grant by the NSW Government, so they had Fernhill, they had Winbourne, and they had the cottage, and they had Glenmore,” said Conference Venue Manager, Lisa Hodgskin.
Initially, it was just a one-storey building, though it was extended to a second just years later as their family grew.
The Cox’s lived on the property and aimed to develop it as a centre for agriculture, complete with a baker, and a butcher, a blacksmith and a distillery, making the property a fairly self-sufficient town.
The financial crash of the 1890s forced the Cox’s to sell the property in 1901 to Peter Hewitt, whose family, after his passing, leased it out, and it became a guesthouse until it burned down in the 1920s.
“When it burned down, Winbourne was being run as a holiday resort for the wealthy in Sydney. They would come out here by horse and cart back in those days, and they would stay out here to shoot, to fish – it was kind of like their country escape,” she said.
At the time, Mulgoa and Wallacia were incredibly popular holiday destinations, meaning that once the original mansion burned down, the owners wanted to do their best to stay in the industry, instead creating a new guesthouse out of the stables.
The stables were designed by the same architect as Sydney’s St Marys Cathedral, and remained a popular holiday destination until 1958, when the property was purchased by the Christian Brothers. It’s been run as a retreat since the 1970s.
“Majority of our business is Catholic school camps, church groups, we do weddings, we do corporate – pretty much anything that we can run here,” she said.
Hodgskin said that they’re hoping to highlight the site’s history once again with the Open Day celebration, to be held on August 25.
“They used to run open days back in the past, but it hasn’t been done for a while, and we know that people drive past that iron gate out the front and wonder what’s down the end of that driveway,” she said.
According to Hodgskin, the Open Day event has become much larger than she anticipated, with plenty on offer.
“We’ve got about 40 market stalls and about eight food trucks coming,” she said.
“We’ve got historical talks – Dr James Broadbent is doing two historical talks, and they booked out really quickly.
“Friends of Fernhill will also be here doing history tours of the museum, and if anyone’s got any questions, I’ve made a whole heap of information posters that I’m going to have around the property, so people can walk around and read them.”
Hodgskin said she’s hoping to see as many people come through the gates as possible, to allow them to feel what she does working there each day.
“It’s just such a lovely spot, and it’s got such a lovely feeling, driving through those gates every day,” she said.
“We just want people to come and see us, and see what’s here.”
For more information, visit the ‘200 Years of Winbourne – Open Day’ Facebook page, or http://www.winbourne.org.
Cassidy Pearce
Cassidy Pearce is a news and entertainment journalist with The Western Weekender. A graduate of the University of Technology Sydney, she has previously worked with Good Morning Macarthur and joined the Weekender in 2022.