Summer Hill, seven kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, is a small suburb with a village feel to it. Since the 1970s it has seen an increase in the concentration of medium density apartment blocks, though many Federation-era houses have been retained. One of the largest heritage properties, 46–56 Liverpool Road, a historic mansion converted into an exclusive estate, represents one of the suburb’s most interesting back stories.
In 2014 this former grand residence-cum-hospital underwent redevelopment as the Carleton Estate, the mansion, stables and grounds, were converted into 78 individual apartments located in four buildings. The gated estate offered residents a communal garden (and the option of garden plots to grow vegetables), billiards room, swimming pool, gymnasium and parklands.
What interests us though is the one hundred and thirty years preceding the creation of Carleton Estate. In 1879 Summer Hill got its own railway station on the main suburban line, prompting an influx of new residents to the suburb✱. One of these was Charles Carleton Skarratt, a prominent local hotelier (Royal Hotel, Sydney) with diverse business interests in transport, mining, insurance and a brewery. After the land here (part of the Underwood Estate) was subdivided, Skarratt amalgamated nine of the suburban lots and built the original mansion (1884) on this 12,000 sq m block on the corner of Liverpool and Gower Streets (RPA Heritage News , Vol III, Issue III (Oct 2012).
Prior to Skarratt acquiring the property it was part of the old Ashfield Racecourse, and going right back to origins this was part of Cadigal (Eora) land before 1788. The first white owner was ex-convict and jailor Henry Kable who was the recipient of early land grants (1794, 1804). Kable’s Farm was located on this property. Kable, like Skarratt, had diverse interests, merchant trading, other land holdings, a hotel, etc and was at one stage in partnership with James Underwood, an early owner of the Summer Hill estate.
CC Skarratt
After Skarratt’s death in 1900 ownership of the Victorian Italianate mansion and grounds passed from the family to leading Sydney surgeon Henry Hinder. Just after the Great War it was purchased by the Benevolent Society of NSW as the new site for its Renwick Hospital, to replace the old premises in Thomas Street, Ultimo. Officially opened in 1921 as a “lying-in hospital and a hospital for children whose parents could not afford to pay for their medical care” (‘Renwick Hospital for Infants, Summer Hill, 1921 – 1965’, https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nsw). Patient care centred round the main building and an auxiliary building in nearby Grosvenor Crescent (“Queen’s College”). Two more treatment buildings were added to the complex in 1928 and 1930. By 1937, it was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the hospital at Summer Hill had treated as many as 20,000 children (‘New Block at Renwick Hospital for Children, SMH, 24-June-1937).
In 1964 the state government bought the hospital from the Benevolent Society…from 1965 it was renamed the Grosvenor Hospital. It had a dual function – as an in-patients facility for children, and as an out-patients facility which “provided for the diagnosis and assessment of mentally retarded persons of all ages” (‘Find and Connect’).
There were sweeping changes to the institutional approach to the mentally ill in NSW following the Richmond Report and subsequent Mental Health Act in 1983. The new emphasis was on downsizing to small community resident units. The Summer Hill hospital was streamlined with a progressive reduction over the following years in the number of patient admitted. Renamed the Grosvenor Centre in 1985, the facility’s stated mission was the treatment of children with a “developmental disability of mind” (www.records.nsw.gov.au).
The NSW government was committed to a policy of deinstitutionalisation by 2010 and the writing was on the board for the Grosvenor Centre. From the late 1980s to the early 2000s responsibility for the Centre was shuffled from one government department to another – Health to Community Services to Ageing, The coup de grâce came in 2009…disregarding appeals by parents of the Centre’s 20 remaining child residents for a “stay of execution“, the government transferred the residents to purpose-built houses and the institution was closed (‘Find and Connect’). The path was now clear for redevelopment of the post-hospital space and the eventual creation of a gated community in the Carleton Estate.
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✱ the three decades from 1880-1910 saw the Summer Hill populace take on more of an upper class character with a stream of professionals especially from the fields of banking and finance moving to the suburb (‘Summer Hill’, Wikipedia)