Ingleburn House

  

  Possibly members of the Allen family outside Ingleburn House. Photo is undated. (Tregear Collection)

Another of Campbelltown's beautiful old buildings that is no longer with us is Ingleburn House. Those of you familiar with Ingleburn would know the site now as Ingleburn Fair next to the railway station. All traces of the house were obliterated in the mid 1970s to make way for this shopping centre. Again, history came off second best.

There appears no exact date for the construction of Ingleburn House. An amateur historian from Ingleburn believes the first stage of it was built before 1840. We do know that the land the house was built on was originally a land grant of 80 acres given to William Neale. In 1831, it was bought by David Noonan and then sold in 1851 to Mary Kennedy, formerly Ruse and her husband. Mary retained it until her death in 1871. It is thought that the name Ingleburn House was used after Mr and Mrs Laycock bought the house in 1881. They added a bay-windowed wing.

When the southern railway line was built in 1858 it took most of the front yard of the house, a barn and some cowsheds. Also the western side of the grant was divided by the railway tracks.

In 1898 Mr and Mrs William John Collins were living on the property when they celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. In the same year their daughter Maiben married Percy McDonald and their ceremony was also celebrated there. Another wedding occurred there in 1907. In the early 1900s the house was described by a local as 'a rambling old cottage'.

                             Collins family wedding at Ingleburn House in 1898

Mr and Mrs Robert Allen lived in the house in 1908 until about 1923 and during their occupancy another wedding was held there. It was recorded that the house had nine rooms and one large room that was used for roller skating, dances and social functions. Jean Hounslow, a descendent of the Allen family, remembered her mother said the kitchen had a dirt floor. She remembered a story about her grandmother seeing a snake coming along the wall and she got the shovel and jumped out the window and killed the snake. That area near the railway was noted for its large amount of snakes. Apologies to all you herpetophobics!

An amusing fact about the house was that during the Second World War the house was jazzed up and called the Moulin Rouge (in a neon sign) and opened as a night club. Imagine this in 1940s Ingleburn!

                   Allen family wedding portrait outside Ingleburn House c. 1917


The last resident to call Ingleburn House home was a Mrs Campbell who lived there for many years. In 1975, a Campbelltown Ingleburn News article described the colonial building as falling to neglect and destruction. Its colonial architecture had been degraded and the verandah completely destroyed the week before. It talked about council's plans to comprehensively develop the area. Ingleburn House was demolished not long after.

Its Moulin Rouge night club days long gone. The house photographed in 1973 not long before it was demolished (Helen Proudfoot; courtesy of Business Land Group, Campbelltown)


So next time you're approaching Ingleburn Station, take a glance towards Ingleburn Fair and imagine the 'rambling old cottage' that once graced this piece of land.

Written by Andrew Allen

Sources:

Campbelltown Ingleburn News May 13, 1975

Arthur and Jean Hounslow Interview, Campbelltown City Library, May 23, 2013

Kerr, David
Recollections of Old Ingleburn
in Grist Mills, Vol.21, No.1, March 2008

A City in Need of a Cinema

As a kid growing up in Campbelltown in the seventies I particularly recall Mawson Park with its tube-steel merry-go-round, a toy shop crammed into the back of Allen’s newsagency and the indoor roller-skating rink. But what we all really craved was our own cinema.To see the latest Bond adventure or sci-fi blockbuster meant a trip to Sydney and that meant begging parents to take us.

With fifty families moving into the area a week, Campbelltown Council saw the need too, and after unsuccessfully trying to interest private backers decided to build it themselves. Using money from council’s trading operations to avoid using funds from rate payers the council engaged the services of Centennial constructions and Harmar Theatres to build the twin cinema complex at Dumaresq street.

Dumaresq Street Twin Cinema in 1993

 

It was opened in October 1981 by Ald. Guy Thomas with Bill Collins in attendance at a screening of "Gallipoli" – on both screens.
From 1981 on we could go and see, without any parent pestering, Poltergeist, Jaws 2 and Raiders of the Lost Ark as many times as we liked as long as the pocket money held out. Movies became a fortnightly treat rather than semi-annual. The eighties, for us was the golden age of cinema.

Of course what I hadn’t known then was that there had previously been two cinemas in Campbelltown. Sidney Bragg operated one in the old Town Hall, initially with a hand-cranked silent projector.  After becoming fully electric in 1920 it operated for a further six years, under various management, before closing in February 1926. The building of a new cinema, the Macquarie, was well underway at this time on the corner of Queen and Browne Street and I wonder if this had any bearing on the last movie chosen to play at the Town Hall - “The Uninvited Guest.”

The Macquarie Cinema screened it's first double feature in August of that year with a Western and a movie appropriately called "When the doors open"

From the cover of the the Macquarie Cinema Silver
Anniversary programme, May 1956

The Macquarie Cinema was built by local Doctor William Mawson largely from the sandstone bricks of the demolished Kendall’s Mill. Mindful of the Town Hall cinema's limitations, Mawson and the local architect A.W. Moule purpose-built this cinema with auditorium and stage, seating over 450 which rose to 700 with later improvements. Sadly, the building would be freezing cold in winter and boiling hot in summer. Fans were installed in the 1930’s but did little to cool patrons who instead threw lollies at the spinning blades for entertainment.

On occasions, the sound of a Ford Prefect motor could be heard as a back-up generator during Post War electricity strikes.

At the height of its popularity the Macquarie Cinema showed a newsreel, travelogue, two feature films and sometimes a cartoon, totalling 3hours of entertainment all for of one and nine pence.
The decline of the cinema began with the introduction of TV and in 1966 the Mawson estate sold the cinema to “Skatelands” for approximately $20,000 and for a time it became a roller-skating rink run by local bicycle shop owner Jack Hepher.

The Macquarie Cinema on the corner of Queen and Browne St in April 1977

Sadly the building began to decay and after being used as storage for Downes department store it was demolished in 1979.

 

Written by
Michael Sullivan

References:
The Macquarie cinema by Juleanne Horsman
The Macquarie Cinema Silver Anniversary programme, May 1956
Only a bird in a guilded cage by John Daley Local History Librarian, Campbelltown City library. Sep 1982
Campbelltown-Ingleburn News p29, 20 October 1981
Campbelltown Cinema 1917-1927 by Norm Campbell
Campbelltown City Library Oral Histories online

A Father's Love

For eleven weeks of the bleak winter of 1864, George Monk kept a vigil at his son's bedside. Six year old John Nimrod Monk, the second of six children born to George and Emma Monk, was suffering from an unknown illness, a condition that would probably be cured today but deadly in 1864. Young John Nimrod eventually lost his battle on August 24 of that year. Imagine the heartbreak George and Emma experienced and the shock felt by the small village of Campbelltown.

George was a plasterer and painter by trade, so we know he was a skilled craftsman. When his precious son passed away, George put his skills to use by carving his tombstone. The monument is decorated with images of fish and birds. However, the most striking feature is the likeness of a young boy. His head sits at the top of the monument located in St Peter's Anglican Cemetery.

Most believe that the young boy is carved in the image of John Nimrod. I'm convinced it is- a father's eternal tribute to the memory of a son taken from him far too soon.

Written by Andrew Allen

Source:

FOWLER, Verlie 1994
A Stroll Through St Peter's Churchyard Campbelltown, NSW