THE HAMPTON apartments, 15 Bayswater Road, Kings Cross, is now a nine-storey, high-end apartment block of 121 apartments, but it was once a glamorous international hotel for 83 years.

Apartment 902, the two-storey penthouse apartment is currently for sale through Jason Boon, Geoff Cox and Joss Reid

It is named after the former hotel on the site which was itself was possibly named after the prestigious 16th century royal palace, Hampton Court, London, giving it an added cache.

The former Hampton Court Hotel was closed in 1998 for a complete rebuild. Conversion of old hotels to apartments was a trend after the 2000 Sydney Olympics left a glut of hotel rooms. Conversions removed over 2,000 hotel rooms from the market, mainly around the Kings Cross and inner-city fringe areas. Converted hotels included well-known landmarks such as The Gazebo, Top of the Town, Sebel Townhouse, Oxford Koala, Chateau Commodore Hotel and The Rex.

The Hampton is the site of former Goderich Lodge, one of the original 1830s grand villas in the wider Darlinghurst area. Goderich Lodge, named after a British Prime Minister and designed by John Verge, also architect of Elizabeth Bay House, was sold in 1841 and rented by the first Anglican Bishop of Australia, Rev. Dr. William Grant Broughton. His wife died in the house in 1849. The next tenant was Surveyor-General, Samuel Augustus Perry and in the 1850s it was purchased by Frederick Tooth of Tooth’s Brewery fame who later sold it to a shipping merchant, Captain Charles Smith. Captain Smith died at Goderich in 1897 and his wife Marjorie stayed on at the home until 1904 when her daughter married.
It was demolished in 1915 and the Hampton Court Hotel erected.

The hotel was famous and hosted celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and the rock group AC/DC.

Local playwright and distinguished author Louis Nowra says in his book, “Kings Cross: A Biography,” that “Kings Cross is like a piece of urban DNA where the two spirals interweave … it’s always been a place of transformation and invention.”
In 1966 the hotel was partly the subject of a movie, “They’re a Weird Mob”, starring ‘Chips’ Rafferty and Walter Chiari, tracing the humorously naive antics of an Italian new arrival, Nino, in Sydney.
Footage shows original 1960s streetscapes and nightspots.

See this amusing and fascinating visual vignette: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw–7pQipBY

By Andrew Woodhouse
Heritage Solutions