Sydney’s ‘playground of the south’ Primrose House facing the wrecking ball

BOARDING house, hotel, private home, hospital for World War I diggers, sly grog venue and convalescent unit, locals are concerned a piece of Dolls Point history will be lost.

Scarborough (later Primrose) House, Sandringham Picture: Supplied

WITH three officers hiding in bayside shrubbery as their colleague Constable McDermott and his female companion “Winnie” laid the money trail, a sly grog conviction for selling liquor without a licence should have been in the bottle.

Instead, the operator of a private club and dining room in park-like grounds on Botany Bay hid three 10-shilling notes paid by McDermott, then accused the officer of bringing his own stout into Corrimal Hall.

Billed as “An Arabian Night At Corrimal Hall”, the April 1927 court case against William Taylor proved a media sensation. Corrimal Hall was the sixth incarnation of an imposing three-storey brick and stucco hotel built at Dolls Point on Sans Souci estate in 1891.

Used as a boarding house, private home, Red Cross hospital for World War I veterans, a children’s home, boarding school, possible house-of-ill-repute and St George Hospital convalescent unit, Dolls Point locals are concerned the once grand old house has a limited future.

The South Eastern Sydney Local Health District plans to sell the villa, set on a 5000sq m beachfront block opposite parkland. Although given heritage significance by Rockdale Council, the building now known as Primrose House is not listed on the NSW Heritage register, meaning it could be demolished.

Young boys play in front of Scarborough (later Primrose) House, Sandringham.

Rockdale Council has applied to the NSW Heritage office for heritage listing. Supportive residents will meet at Primrose House at 2pm tomorrow, when historian Garry Darby will launch his book, Primrose House, Dolls Point: A History.

Built on six housing blocks that were part of an 1840 grant to James Betts, in 1885 property developer George Carruthers and his lawyer brother Joe, NSW premier from 1904-1907, lobbied to have a steam tramway built from Kogarah Station to Russell Avenue at Sans Souci. The Carruthers auctioned blocks in Sans Souci Estate in 1887. Sydney tobacconist James Eve bought six blocks extending to Botany Bay in 1889, spending £7000 to complete the Scarborough Family Hotel as “the playground of the south” in 1891. Aside from fishing, sailing and swimming the area also offered horseracing and pigeon shooting.

Although Eve’s hotel, able to accommodate 40 couples, was one of the first buildings in the area lit by electricity, it could not compete with its better established neighbour, The Prince of Wales Hotel about 500m further south.

Christ Church St Laurence opened a private boys school in Scarborough House, in 1930.

The 1890s depression bankrupted James Eve and George Carruthers, who in October 1892 auctioned remaining blocks in “Sans Souci township near Lady Robinson’s Beach, Cook Park ... and Scarborough Hotel, Doll’s Point”.

When Eve did not renew the Scarborough liquor licence after 1893, the hotel became home to several wealthy tenants, including Joe Carruthers after the collapse of his marriage. From the mid-1890s operators used the hotel as a private club.

With sly grog charges levelled on New Year’s Eve 1896 against Jean Ludolff and on January 4, 1897, against Leslie Holland at the 100-member Scarborough Club, Darby says the venue became embroiled in debates about the legality of private drinking clubs.

In 1919 the Red Cross opened a convalescent hospital in the hotel, where severely wounded soldiers returning from World War I recuperated “by the sparkling waters of Botany Bay”.

A meeting at Sydney Town Hall in April 1921 decided to invest £6000 to establish Australia’s first Dr Barnardo’s Home for Boys at Scarborough. More than 100 guests attended the opening of the “big, comfortable residence with extensive grounds that fringe the waterfront”. It housed 50 “well tanned and sturdy, happy looking” boys.

Herman Primrose, the St George Hospital board chairman whom Primrose House was named after.

Newspaper proprietor Hugh Denison told guests many misconceptions surrounded Barnodo’s, including that “lads were to be hired out as cheap labour to people who would subject them to a form of child slavery” and Barnardo’s committee intended to flood the local labour market to reduce labour costs. The home closed in 1924, possibly due to boys’ complaints about mosquito and sandfly bites.

Acquired by retired stevedore Alexander Allan in 1926, Scarbourgh House became a private club and dining room, trading as Corrimal Hall when Taylor had 76 bottles of wine and spirits confiscated from his private quarters in the 1927 raid. Despite Taylor’s protests that the liquor was for personal consumption, he was convicted after a lengthy hearing at Kogarah Court.

Around that time it was rumoured an “ant trail” of men arrived in Russell Ave by tram to walk to the building, where they stayed half an hour, then made their way back to the tram.

Christ Church St Laurence opened a private boys school in 1930, charging up to £6 for day students and £29 a term for boarders. Again beset by an economic depression, the school closed in 1932. After Allen’s death, in 1936 Scarborough sold to St George Hospital, which renamed it after hospital board chairman and Kogarah solicitor Herman Primrose.

Originally published as Sydney’s ‘playground of the south’ Primrose House facing the wrecking ball