Paringa Hall: Edmund Wright's 1882 creation at Adelaide's Somerton Park for the pastoralist heir James Cudmore
Paringa Hall mansion, at Adelaide's Somerton Park, designed by prominent South Australian architect Edmund Wright for James Cudmore, was sold to the Marist Brothers in 1914 for their Sacred Heart College.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Paringa Hall built in 1882 at Adelaide’s Somerton Park for wealthy pastoralist James Francis Cudmore had an entrance hall rated as the grandest in South Australia. But the £40,000 spent on the building, designed by prominent architect Edmund Wright, would add to his seriurs spiral in debt.
James Cudmore was born in October 1837 at sea between Hobart Town and Adelaide, as his parents, from the Anglo-Irish Quaker background, headed to settle in South Australia and eventual wealth from turning an Irish property inheritance into a spread of pastoral properties starting at Yongala in South Australia’s mid north.
James Cudmore was first educated by the Jesuits at Sevenhill then at the Collegiate School of St Peter, Adelaide, after the family had transferred to the Anglican church. From 1859, he managed the Paringa (208 square miles) sheep property and he leased Ned's Corner, along the River Murray. From these properties he overlanded sheep to Queensland and took up leases there.
In 1867 he married Margaret Budge. Three years later, with his wife's brother, he bought Gooyea (later Milo) on the Bulloo, Queensland. In 1876 he enlarged Ned's Corner in partnership with Robert Barr Smith and A. H. Pegler. By the end of the 1870s, 130,000 sheep were being shorn at his stations on the Murray and his Queensland prospects seemed excellent.
But, tiring of travelling between properties, Cudmore left too many decisions to his managers, and spent £40,000 building and furnishing Paringa Hall at Somerton Paringa Hall, with about 20 rooms, had lavish features such as mahogany stairwell with lizards carved into the column tops and stained glass windows letting in the light from the east. The hall had mosaic tiles on the floor and bronze classical female figures holding up the stair lights. The ballrooms’ exquisite ceiling had with portraits of mediaeval musical instruments. Black marble mantles adorned the many fireplaces. The clock in the stables kept South Australia’s correct time for many years.
The Cudmores moved into the new house in 1882 but, four years later, Cudmore went into insolvency. He had overreached by buying Welford Downs on the Barcoo in Queensland and amalgamating it with Milo. He had to take as additional partners Thomas Elder and W. R. Swan. They insisted on a change from cattle to sheep, needing expensive improvements.. Meanwhile, a rabbit plague reduced Cudmore’s woolclip by 80% and, by 1886, his debts exceeded £200,000.
An unsecured loan from the Bank of New Zealand helped pay his interest bills and he kept Paringa Hall by transferring it and other freeholds to his wife’s names and his unencumbered Queensland leases, Tara, Dartmouth and Blackall, to his sons. James Cudmore lived on at Paringa Hall until he died in 1912 when a life insurance policy enabled his estate to pay off his debts. In his will, he also provided for a spinster at Nailsworth who bore him two illegitimate children – in addition to the 11 children from his marriage.
James Cudmore’s wife Margaret also died in 1912 also and the house was sold to the Marist Brothers in 1914 for their Sacred Heart College originally established in 1897 at Port Adelaide. The Sacred Heart chapel was opened in 1924 as a memorial chapel for the old collegian soldiers who lost their lives during World War I. The grand chapel added to the Paringa Hall precinct.
