Camden Park's John Macarthur-Stanham seeks special tenant for dower house

The owners of one of the oldest homes in Australia, Camden Park, often lease out the 15 cottages dotted around the 400-hectare property on Sydney’s outskirts, but they’re being particularly circumspect  about finding just the right tenant for Brush Cottage.

After all, the three-bedroom house is not only just 150 metres from the Colonial Regency-style home of John and Edwina Macarthur-Stanham, but it shares the outlook over their acclaimed heritage garden.

“It’s not that we want to be in our neighbour’s face, or have them in ours, but when it comes to quasi-country life you want to make sure you get along with each other,” said Mr Macarthur-Stanham, a sixth generation descendant of wool industry pioneers John and Elizabeth Macarthur, for whom the house was built in 1835.

While Camden Park is regarded by the national trust as one of the finest designed contributions of colonial architect John Verge and remains one of the country’s oldest houses, Brush Cottage is a far more recent addition.

It was built as a dower house in the early 1980s to a sympathetic design by architect Phillip Cox for John Macarthur-Stanham’s grandmother Dame Helen Blaxland, a descendant of pastoralist and explorer Gregory Blaxland and whose Eastwood farm in Sydney was the inspiration behind Brush Cottage’s name.

Following her death in 1989, the cottage became home to Macarthur-Stanham’s father Quentin Macarthur-Stanham, who had initiated much of the conservation work of Camden Park before he died in 2008, aged 86.

About a decade ago Brush Cottage was leased to a local solicitor and his wife, who remained there until recently when they moved to retirement home.

“If we could clone the previous tenants then we would, but otherwise we are looking for an older couple who hopefully share an interest in gardening or at least who are looking for a half-tree change to a rural atmosphere,” Mr Macarthur-Stanham said.

LJ Hooker Bringelly’s Sandi Maxwell is asking $1100 to $1200 a week for the three-bedroom house.

“Houses and buildings need people to live in them because otherwise they deteriorate, but if we can’t find the right people to live there we’ll leave it vacant,” Mr Macarthur-Stanham said.