Meroogal, Nowra

Meroogal, 35 West Street, Nowra

Meroogal was built in 1886 as a home for Mrs Jessie Catherine Thorburn, a widow, and four of her unmarried daughters. Jessie Catherine’s eldest son, Robert Taylor Thorburn, seems to have financed its construction probably from his share of profits from a goldmine at Yalwal, west of Nowra. The house was designed and probably built by Kenneth Mackenzie, Jessie Catherine’s brother.

Meroogal is a modest building when compared to many of the grand late 19th-century houses in Sydney, but it is quite grand compared to other residences in Nowra.

Originally the house was sited on one hectare of land. The garden today is about 1/10th of the original size but has largely been restored to its appearance in the late 1920s.

Between 1886 and 1900 the occupants of the house changed somewhat. However, by 1900 the occupants were the same as those who had moved in originally - Jessie Catherine and her four daughters, Annabella Jane (Miss Belle), Georgina Isabella (Miss Georgie), Jessie Catherine (Miss Kate) and Fanny Kennina (Miss Tottie).

In 1916 Jessie Catherine died. That year her second daughter Mary Susan Macgregor and her husband moved into ‘Kintore’, a cottage built for their retirement on Meroogal land. (‘Kintore’ was destroyed by a fire in the mid-1970s.) In the period from 1916 and 1939 two of the original four sisters died and Mary Macgregor moved into Meroogal, leasing Kintore to tenants. Miss Kate died in 1940 and Miss Tottie then went to live with relatives, never returning to Meroogal. Helen Macgregor, Mary Macgregor's daughter, became the principal occupant from 1945 until 1969.

The property is now owned by the NSW Historic Houses Trust and operates as a house museum – reflecting the decoration, contents and furnishings from a number of generations of occupants essentially from the one family.

Meroogal now contains the most intact collection of Victorian period furniture, and other related house contents, to be found in any rural area in NSW.