The Old Monalta Estate

Taking Angelight's lead in tracking down the older significant buildings in our area, today I decided to blip the old Monalta Homestead. This became the Blackwood District Community Hospital and now it has changed again to be primarily a medical centre.

The hospital closed for a short period, then reopened after June 2012, but no longer operating as a "full service" hospital. The International Musculoskeletal Research Institute (IMRI) now makes the Blackwood Hospital its home. The Blackwood Hospital After Hours GP Clinic is a service provided by a co-operative of local General Practitioners and the hospital's Radiology Branch also remains.

About 10 years ago we went to this original house, then used as office space for the general hospital, when it was a member of the Open Garden Scheme. Sadly it has suffered hard times, both as a hospital and more so the garden. Today's view of the house and garden shows the original old building, looking slightly the worse for wear, and the garden even more run down.

See more decreptitude.

The following article was printed in the Adelaide Advertiser on November 18, 1953.

We could not have chosen a more pleasant day than yesterday to motor up to Blackwood to see what a few months hence will be opened as Blackwood district community hospital.

Chairman of it all is Mr. Gordon Brown, who is most enthusiastic about the local, and Government financial support it has received and the generous acquiescence of the owner, Mrs F.J. Blades, to let them have it at considerably less than what she would have received in a sale to a private home seeker.

Known as Monalta It is part of the Monalta estate, from which a spacious landscape view toward Mount Lofty summit is seen, a stimulating site for a hospital. Mr. Brown had arranged for a neighbour, Councillor H.O. Hannaford, to be there to tell me something about this historic hills property. He has been in the district for 35 years.

The stone homestead set in a forest of eucalypts and sheoaks was built originally by Mr. Justice (R. B.) Andrews, who, with Mr. Randolph Stow, was the first Queen's Counsel ' appointed in South Australia, in 1865. Mr. George Downer (of G. & J. Downer, solicitors) acquired it and enlarged the home. Mr. Hannaford bought it, with 100 acres, from the executors of the estate, Mr. J. Fred Downer and Mr. Frank H. Downer, in 1920.

He lived there until 1926 when, thanks to financial support from Mr. Ronald Angas and others, it become Wykeham boarding school for boys (principal, Mr. C.S. Hutchison, MA, Oxon.),with eight acres of grounds. The school was closed eventually and the property became the home of Mr. and Mrs F. J. Blades, who transformed the immediate surroundings into a veritable Botanic Garden, and gave it the name of Cherington.

Hurtle James Baynes, gardener for the Blades family for nearly eight years, was busy as usual yesterday when we called and were admiring the roses, flowering shrubs, including the snow-white perennial pyrethrum, the birch and other deciduous trees.

The old coach house, converted into a cottage, will be the nurses' quarters next March when the hospital will be opened with 12 of the 18 beds in the plan. The hospital will retain about seven acres. Incidentally, the Blackwood road frontage of Monalta is now owned by the Education- Department as a site for a central school. As we walked by the big house where contractors were busy Mr. Hannaford said to me "So many alterations - I hardly know my way around - doors where there was none.