The Friends of Linnwood invite you to an open house at the historic Linnwood house, set on 5 hectares of beautiful grounds at Guildford, in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. Linnwood was built in 1891 by George McCredie, a prominent businessman, Mayor of Holroyd, an independent free trader, advocate of female suffrage, and an independent member for the State seat of Central Cumberland.
After his time in government, George McCredie was called upon to supervise the cleansing of the City of Sydney when there was an outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in 1900. A few years after his death in 1903, his wife Susan McCredie (nee’ Blackwood) leased Linnwood House to the Education Department as the State’s first and only Boys Truant School. The Department then purchased the property in 1921. In 1936 the property converted to a residential girls school for State Wards aged 14 years and upwards. By 1966 Linnwood was a Special Training School for Home Science for girls from deprived backgrounds. With changes in the welfare system, schools like Linnwood gradually became superfluous to the Department of Community Services’ needs.
After learning of the Department’s plans to sell the property on the open market, the Friends of Linnwood formed in 2002 to help preserve and protect the property, and it was successfully listed on the NSW State Heritage Register in February 2003.
When: 11am-4pm, Sunday 25 September 2016
Where: Historic Linnwood
25 Byron Road, Guildford
Cost: $3. Children under 5 years Admitted Free