115. Mamre House:

115. Mamre House:

Location: 181 Mamre Road Orchard Hills. Entrance is approximately 600m south of M4. Operated by the Sisters of Mercy. Property can be visited but morning tea is only provided in association with an organised historical tour – phone 96706178.

Altitude, Lat/Long: 29 m AHD;-33.7899,150.7676;

Time required at site: 30 mins – 1 hr.

Relevance to Cox’s Road: The Rev Samuel Marsden named his land grant after Mamre in the Holy Land. Mamre House was built in the early 1820s, initially as a wool storage barn, but the land grant itself dated from 1803. He appears never to have used Cox’s Road but his grandson of the same name became the Anglican Bishop of Bathurst. His life and influence however, interacted with many of the main characters of the story of Cox’s Road including Governor Macquarie, Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, as well as his neighbour, the botanist George Caley, to name just a few. Perhaps most tragically, was his role in the hanging of Caley’s botanical assistant, Mootwattin (Dan), a Dharug man (S48). Marsden helps us to better understand the conflicts, mindset, personal ambitions of the settler class, indeed the ‘spirit of the age’ that gave birth to Cox’s Road.

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