Dee Why’s oldest building – the Home of Rest – turns 130
On a hill overlooking Dee Why stands the suburb’s oldest building – the Home of Rest – which turned 130 this year.
Manly
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On a hill overlooking Dee Why stands the suburb’s oldest building – the Home of Rest – which turned 130 this year.
Built as a retreat for Salvation Army officers and later used as the part of an aged care facility, the Home of Rest is now the centre of a construction site for what will be three residential buildings – one of seven-storeys and two of six-storeys, that will contain a total of 126 apartments.
Now historian and Cromer resident Keith Amos has researched the history of the Home of Rest – which later became part of Pacific Lodge and was saved from demolition by its heritage listing.
The roots of the Salvation Army’s history on the northern beaches goes back to a time long before the organisation’s founding in England in 1865.]
In 1802, brothers James and William arrived in Sydney as convicts – their death sentenced for stealing a sheep in England having been commuted to transportation to the colony.
Within a few years, James had bought land and was farming 20ha at Ryde and by the following year he was farming another parcel of land in partnership with William.
By 1810 the brothers had left farming and taken up boatbuilding at Darling Harbour, building vessels of up to 100t and more.
One ship they built sold for more than £500 – an enormous sum for that time and an indication of how far the two had come within a decade of their arrival as convicts.
Boatbuilding soon gave way to building and selling properties around The Rocks but their successful partnership was shattered by the murder of William at Parramatta in 1814.
By 1821, James had married and returned to farming, having been granted 20ha at Roseville.
It was about this time that the Jenkins family became involved with the northern beaches.
A friend of the family, Alexander Macdonald, bequeathed land he owned at North Narrabeen to Jenkins’ eldest daughter, Elizabeth – three blocks totalling 81ha extending from North Narrabeen to Mona Vale.
James then purchased two blocks of land nearby in 1823 – 20ha at Mona Vale and 166ha along the Narrabeen-Collaroy beachfront.
In the same year he successfully applied for permissive occupancy of a further 284ha at Mona Vale, adjacent to the lots his daughter had inherited.
Within two years James also bought 200ha including Long Reef and the northern side of Dee Why Lagoon, along with 81ha south of the lagoon.
So by 1825 James Jenkins and his family owned all of the foreshore land from what is now Mona Vale Hospital to Dee Why Beach rock pool, including Collaroy Plateau.
In 1826 James bought a further 40ha at Manly Vale, near the corner of Condamine St and Kentwell Rd, on which he built a five-room stone house.
The problem with farming on the peninsula, however, was that getting the animals or produce to Sydney involved a long and arduous trip along rough tracks and across water.
To remedy this, Jenkins built a road with 13 bridges from Collaroy to the water’s edge at North Harbour, where a stone halfway house was built.
The route of the road followed a track that had previously been known as Campbell’s line after an earlier settler in the area.
From the loading point below King Ave at Balgowlah, the Jenkins road travelled a line largely followed by present-day Condamine St, Old Pittwater Rd and Pittwater Rd.
In one stroke, Jenkins effectively opened up the whole of the peninsula.
On the death of James Jenkins in 1835, his eldest daughter Elizabeth became the
family matriarch, making most of the decisions about the family’s large landholdings.
While her father lived at Darling Harbour when he was alive, Elizabeth lived at a house at Collaroy near what came to be called Homestead Ave.
As Dr Amos relates: “Living such an isolated existence, it isn’t surprising that Elizabeth became ardently enthused with the Salvation Army’s evangelism.
“She began attending Army meetings in the city and was converted at one, either at Newtown or Waterloo, about 1882.
“After this, Army officers began calling in at the homestead, one of whom, a Captain Saunders may have been related.
“Commensurate with her growing trust in and desire to support the Army, Elizabeth gifted the organisation 30 acres (12ha) at Pipeclay Point, Narrabeen Lagoon, in 1885, followed by three more gifts totalling 42 acres (17ha) at Dee Why over the years 1890 to 1892.
“Quite soon after receiving Elizabeth’s gifted land at Dee Why, the Army recognised how suitable it was for a retreat of the kind it had opened elsewhere – a rest home where over-fatigued officers could relax and recuperate.
“When the idea was discussed with Elizabeth, she promptly donated £400 to help build it.
“The building was a pleasant roomy-looking single-storey villa, Victorian in style, of rendered masonry with a corrugated iron hipped roof and tall chimneys. “The verandahs had elegant cast-iron balustrades, columns and valence, and the usual striped-red roofs typical of the era.
The balustrades were a bespoke feature, attractively displaying the letters ‘SAHR’ – Salvation Army Home of Rest.
“The landscaped grounds were terraced at the front and featured two rustic little pavilions with thatched roofs, seats and tables; one on each side of the building, positioned for their views and cooling breezes in summer.
“Inside, a wide hall ran east to west the length of the building. On one side at the front, the main sitting room had a large bay window opening onto the verandah, an open fireplace, comfortable lounge chairs, and on the walls, portraits of General Booth (the Salvation Army founder) and Mrs Booth, also Commissioner Coombs (a principal Australian Army officer) and Mrs Coombs.
“Opposite was a similar-sized room, for either a sitting room or bedroom, furnished with a handsome writing desk and a huge brass-mounted double bed. “Off the hall were three well-furnished large bedrooms; lesser bedrooms with twin single beds, mosquito curtains, pine washstand and dressing table; a spacious dining room, kitchen and bathrooms; and a hospital room for any emergency.
“The water supply came from two 1000-gallon tanks and from a spring of crystal-clear water below the building.”
But the completion of the Home of Rest coincided with the economic depression of the 1890s following an overextension of the property boom of the 1880s, among other factors.
Many banks failed and Elizabeth Jenkins feared her bank, the Australian Banking Company, might go under, leaving her stranded.
As Dr Amos wrote: “Mortgaging her land was an option but with the depression so dire, the expected income was insufficient for her brother John and herself to live on (their sister Martha had died in 1890).
“However when Elizabeth conveyed her plight to the Salvation Army, it undertook to see how the organisation could assist her.
“Quick action was needed, as it was feared the bank might go into receivership within a month.
“One option was that the Army buy a portion of Elizabeth’s land, however an alternative plan was preferable to both: that Elizabeth bequeath all her land to the Army in return for (an immediately arranged) successive family annuity – £175 per annum paid to Elizabeth, the same inherited on her death by John, and then on John’s death, £52 per annum each to their two nieces and a nephew.
“Elizabeth, John and any family members would continue living at their Collaroy home until she died, whereupon all deeds she and John held would be transferred to the Army.
“Settled in haste, the agreement was initially on trust and not legally formalised until Elizabeth changed her will. Duly signed on 27 July 1894, the new will made the Army her sole heir.”
Elizabeth Jenkins died in 1900 and all her property – worth more than £5000 – passed to the Salvation Army.
An industrial farm was established on the land downhill from the Home of Rest in the mid-1890s and was used to train socially-disadvantaged men in farm work but it because unviable within a few years and it was closed in 1913 and the land was subdivided and sold.
Just north of the Home of Rest the Salvation Army erected a “sanatorium for inebriates” in 1911 – a two-storey building that could accommodate 25 men.
The sanatorium remained on the site until 1939, when the Army founded the Pacific Lodge Men’s Eventide Home, which comprised a number of single-storey buildings, for which the old Home of Rest became the administration office.
Pacific Lodge cost £2342 to build and originally accommodated 25 men, later increasing to 50.
Pacific Lodge continued to be used until 2016m, when newer facilities were build at Collaroy.
As Dr Amos points out, a condition of the sale was that the original Home of Rest had to be retained, having been heritage-listed by Warringah Council in 2000 and placed on the state heritage list in 2011.
The NSW Heritage Inventory records the building’s historical significance as being: “a rare example of a Victorian Filigree residence and one of the oldest structures in the area. Historically important for its association with Elizabeth Jenkins and the continued occupation and use of the building since the 1890s”.
The 1.6ha site was sold in 2016 to Rose Pty Ltd for $26.5 million and in 2019 approval was given to Hamptons By Rose to build three six- and seven-storey buildings containing 126 apartments.
An attempt by the developer to add another storey to each building and increase the number of apartment to 147 was refused last year by the state government’s Sydney North Planning Panel.
The Home of Rest will be retained and adaptively reused, ensuring the 130-year-old building – the oldest in Dee Why – stands a good chance of standing for another 130 years.
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