This quaint, free-standing, single-storey sandstone building facing Elizabeth Bay Road has a long, and useful, 150-year history.

John Hughes (1825-1885), a successful Sydney grocer, property developer and Catholic benefactor, was born in Ireland on 24th June 1825.

After immigrating to Australia, he purchased land at Elizabeth Bay in 1869 and over the next five years built an elegant residence, which he named Kincoppal, the Gaelic word for sea-horse, after a rock formation located on the harbour foreshore nearby.

Kincoppal still stands next to the sandstone building which was its former stables and then a caretaker’s cottage.

In 1882 the Pope appointed Hughes a knight of the Order of St Gregory; he was later promoted knight commander but died in 1885 before receiving the award.  He was survived by his wife, two sons and four daughters, two of whom became Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

Kincoppal was bequeathed to the elder daughter, Maria (1858-1951). The religious order of the Sacred Heart later established a convent school in 1903, in Bourke Street, Darlinghurst, on the site where Saint Margaret’s Hospital now stands.

In 1909 the convent school moved to Elizabeth Bay, Kincoppal, the site having been left to Mother Maria Hughes by her father.

They welcomed their first pupils at Elizabeth Bay in 1909.

Hughes’s sons (Sir) Thomas and John and their descendants were prominent in law and politics in Sydney in the following century.

The original Kincoppal house was constructed circa 1870 in the Victorian Italianate style and still stands in situ.

By 1943 Kincoppal House itself had been modified to allow for school students on the site.

Sometime previously, the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Rose Bay, had been founded in 1882.

In 1971 the two sites amalgamated and the Elizabeth Bay site was sold for a large apartment complex. The Rose Bay site was then known as Kincoppal-Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart.

The Kincoppal house at Elizabeth Bay was repurposed and sub-divided. It is now a private two-storey heritage apartment with its northern half used for the apartment complex offices

The original stables building, later a caretaker’s cottage, still stands and is used as a gym.

It is nestled in the fulcrum of the Elizabeth Bay Road crescent, quietly overlooking the historic Macleay Reserve.

By Andrew Woodhouse

Heritage Solutions