The Mcintosh family has been custodians of Denbigh on Sydney’s South-Western periphery for 156 years. They are working hard to ensure the property remains intact for future generations.
The smell of garden at Denbigh greets visitors long before they’ve even set eyes on the Clivea-lined driveway or the yellow bungalow homestead. The heady scent of jasmine in full bloom assaults the senses as guests arrive for Susie and Ian McIntosh’s early spring open day. The jasmine cascades over the front fence, climbs up tree trunks and tumbles over walls throughout the garden, which, in a sense, has been a work in progress since 1812. In that year, the property in the newly discovered Cowpastures district was granted to merchant Charles Hook as a reward for his loyalty to Governor Bligh during the military coup that became known as the Rum Rebellion. Hook supplemented his 1000-acre (404-hectare) grant from Governor Macquarie with a further 200 acres (80ha).
Wary of Aboriginal attack, he supervised the convict construction of the first building, a stables from locally quarried stone, which was protected by barred turret windows. He surrounded the property with a high paling fence, then sited other outbuildings around a forest red gum, which remains a focal point for the property to the present day and is estimated to be at least 230 years old. In 1817, Hook also started building the timber bungalow, which had a shingled hipped roof and broad verandahs decorated with a distinctive metal trim, possibly inspired like the house itself, from time spent in India. Following Hook’s death, his wife, Sarah, sold Denbigh to the Reverend Thomas Hassall, better known as the ‘galloping parson’ for the pace at which he covered his parish, which extended from Marulan to Parramatta, a distance of 160km and no mean feat on horseback. Thomas had spent time as a young boy on Tahiti where his parents were sent from London as missionaries. Susie believes that it was there, as a child playing with Tahitian children, that Thomas developed a respect for, and understanding of, Indigenous cultures that was shared by very few at the time. Sympathetic to Aboriginal people in the Cowpastures, the high fences around Denbigh came down and Thomas befriended those living on Denbigh. The land was at the confluence of three language groups – Dharug, Tharawal and Gandangara – and as late as the 1850s Thomas’s son, James, recorded ceremonial gatherings at the front of the homestead. In 1838, Hassall Snr commenced work on a two-storey addition to the house made from bricks fired from clay found on the property.
As a child growing up at Denbigh, Ian recalls his grandparents living in the bungalow and his family in the extension. “There were French doors between the two buildings,” he says. “They served as a kind of ‘iron curtain’. We children only crossed over for afternoon tea and treats after school. Our grandparents came for Sunday roast dinners in the dining room of ‘our section’.” The McIntosh family first leased Denbigh from Thomas’ widow Anne, then bought the property in 1868. They bred draught horses for brewery carts and horse-drawn buses in Sydney, grew wheat and raised cattle. In 1910,the Denbigh Ayrshire stud was founded and in 1971 the McIntosh family started a Holstein stud. Both have produced many champions at the Sydney Royal and local shows. Through the generations – Ian and Susie’s children, Jamie and Mimi, are the sixth to call Denbigh home – the McIntoshes have added slab stables, hay sheds, milking bails, machinery sheds and silos. The property supported a working dairy well into Ian’s adult life, though it was no longer operating when Susie met Ian and moved in as a newlywed in the early 1990s.
These days, the land is agisted and Ian and Susie have spent the best part of the past two decades restoring the many heritage buildings. “When we became the custodians, we engaged [heritage architect] Alan Croker of Design 5 to come up with a conservation plan,” Ian says, Serendipity comes in many guises and for Ian and Susie, it began when a harness room wall collapsed. “We engaged builder James Haney to fix it,” Susie recalls. “He’s a truly remarkable tradesperson, more of an artist really. He patches rather than restores and he’s responsible for having saved and preserved many of our buildings. Without him, the Denbigh you see today would not exist.” James is also responsible for stone birdbaths in the garden and various metal installations around the grounds, which are among many artworks displayed.
Susie points to noteworthy original features of the grounds including the wind-shielding western grove of African olive trees, initially imported by John and Elizabeth Macarthur who built nearby Camden Park. There’s also a towering bunya pine that was planted in the early days as a homestead marker and Old Blush China roses in the beds at the front of the bungalow are believed to be the first ever grown in the colony. “While Denbigh always had a garden, Ian’s mother, Lesley, was responsible for most of the present-day structure,” Susie says. “I found the responsibility of taking over from her quite daunting, so we hired horticulturalist Gavin Noaks to advise us. Sadly, he passed away but his partner, Jodie Asher, has carried on helping in the garden and I’m indebted to her for maintenance and helping us get ready for charity open days.” Since Denbigh was added to the NSW State Heritage Register in 2006, the McIntoshes and Ian’s cousin, Angela Head, have been successful in having a curtilage of 500 acres (202ha) created on their adjoining lands to protect this extraordinary remnant of colonial farm life. While suburbia may be creeping ever closer, they can rest assured that Denbigh and its buildings nestled in that the Traditional Owners call ‘the valley of peace’.
