Mount Vernon was built for the Kiama police magistrate in 1874 and is for sale for the first time in more than six decades. Photo: Ray White Kiama.
The historic Kiama property Mount Vernon is for sale for the first time in more than 60 years, with a price guide of $4.4-$4.9 million. This is the story behind the 150-year-old home.
Constructed in 1874 and named after George Washington’s plantation, Mount Vernon was built in 1874 for the Kiama police magistrate Henry Connell and presumably named by him after the American president’s residence.
Whether or not Henry Connell knew that it was actually Washington’s older half-brother, Lawrence Washington who had inherited it and changed its name from “Little Hunting Creek Plantation” in honour of Edward Vernon is uncertain.
Lawrence Washington had served under Vice Admiral Vernon when he commanded the British when it captured Porto Bello from the Spanish in 1739. And when George Washington inherited the property, he retained the name in honour of his brother’s commander and friend.
Edward Vernon died in Suffolk, England, in 1757 and there is even a monument to him in Westminster Abbey.
It was the same man who first mixed the sailors’ rum with water and they called the drink “grog” after Vernon’s grogram waistcoat. Few people apart from Shakespeare and some illustrious others have succeeded in causing a word with such long currency to be added to the English language.
Kiama’s Henry Connell was the eldest son of the late Henry Connell, Assistant Commissary-General, Sydney, and grandson of the late Anthony Connell, Recorder of Cork and Kinsale, Ireland.
He was born in Macquarie Street, Sydney, in 1828, and was educated at the Sydney College. At the age of 16 he is said to have entered the public service in the Colonial Secretary’s Department, from which in 1860 he was promoted to the Central Police Office as clerk of petty sessions. After three years’ service in that position he was transferred to Kiama in the same role.
Construction on his Kiama property began in the same year. Connell was appointed police magistrate of Kiama, a position he held until his retirement in December 1888.
But the Kiama job made Connell a very busy boy as, in addition to the office of police magistrate and clerk of petty sessions, he performed the duties of land agent, collector of customs, registrar of the district and small debts, registrar of births, deaths and marriages, coroner, district registrar in bankruptcy, guardian of minors and chairman of the licensing court.
In these positions Connell learned a hell of a lot about the law and authored a book of nearly 900 pages titled New South Wales Magisterial Digest, as a practical guide for magistrates, clerks of petty sessions, attorneys and constables.
It was reviewed very favourably and every bench in the colony was supplied with a copy by the government. The edition of 2000 copies cost two guineas a copy and that sum was likely enough to fund the building of Kiama’s Mount Vernon.
The estate originally boasted uninterrupted views of Kiama Harbour which must have assisted Connell in his role as collector of customs.
Perhaps Henry Connell in naming the property was aware that Mount Vernon in Virginia was positioned on a hill looking down upon the Potomac River.
Here it became something of a custom for a bell to toll when a boat passed – just as a bell was once rung to announce the approach of vessels in Kiama.
Connell became an important figure in the local community and his position did not come without its perks – and benefitted the Mount Vernon property even after Connell’s death in 1895 at Blackheath NSW to where he had reluctantly moved hoping to relieve his asthma.
For example, in 1900 during construction of an intermediate reservoir in connection with the Kiama water supply, the engineer, Mr Fleming, who was the superintendent of the pipe-laying, took Mount Vernon for a residence and, using the excuse that in order “to reduce risk connected with the reservoir”, he connected the Mount Vernon property first.
Prior to that however, Connell’s son Charles, when still in residence at Mount Vernon, sold off two and half acres (1 ha) of very desirable land in Noorinan Street, Kiama.
The Mount Vernon property was eventually purchased by Mr and Mrs T V Blomfield – another then important family in Kiama.
Mr Blomfield, chief inspector of the Department of Public Health for 11 years and long associated with the milk trade since his earliest days, was jokingly said to “know nearly every cow man in the state”.
TVB, as he was called, was so well thought of among the local milking fraternity that in 1930 the Kiama farmers “presented him with a wallet of 400 notes”.
Meanwhile, Mrs Blomfield busied herself with work for Kiama’s Christ Church and the creation of an admired garden for Mount Vernon that became a riot of blooms by cultivating flowers of almost every variety.
Mount Vernon was first connected to electricity at considerable expense in 1940.
Mount Vernon was purchased by Joan and John Fraser in 1961. At the time the property was covered in lantana bushes and Joan devoted herself to restoring Mount Vernon and creating a fine garden.
The property is for sale through Ray White Kiama.
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